Indians, The Third Largest Group Of Illegal Immigrants Add To Border Crisis

A family of a father with his arms around his wife and daughter

Indians-third largest illegal immigrant population

Jagdish and Vaishaliben Patel left their home in Dingucha, Gujarat, for Canada, without telling a soul. They arrived in Toronto on January 12, 2022. Tragically, about a week later, their bodies were found 13 yards from the US border. They had frozen to death trying to cross into the U.S. on foot with their young children Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3.

The Patels likely traveled by road to the US border before attempting the illegal border crossing by foot. The Canadian authorities describe them as victims of human trafficking.

Leaving a life of poverty, for a better life abroad

What drives the Patel family and thousands like them to leave their home and community, hand over life savings to a smuggler, and attempt a perilous journey halfway around the world for a chance to live in the West?

“Study in the UK, Canada, Free Application, Offer Letter In 3 Days.”

Flyers like these are posted all over small towns in the state of Gujarat where Jagdish and Vaishaliben Patel lived.

According to reports, Jagdish Patel worked in a factory but was struggling to make ends meet. He wanted a better life and education for his kids and felt he could never achieve that in India.

“There’s definitely a dominant image of South Asians in the U.S. as coming on student visas or work visas, finding education and employment, oftentimes in white-collar positions,” says Pawan Dhingra Professor and Associate Dean of the Faculty at Amherst College.

But that does not paint a complete picture of working-class Indians. The success stories of Indians in America propels even working-class Indians to take this treacherous journey halfway across the world in the hope of a better future for their families.

“People will get you to, let’s say, the Middle East, or people will get you to Europe,” Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and the director of non-partisan research group Migration Policy Institute’s New York office. “The next journey from there would be to Africa. If not Africa, maybe then to South America. Then the next person will get you from South America to the south of Mexico. Then from the south of Mexico to the northern cities of Mexico, and then the next person will get you over to the U.S.”

Indians make up the 3rd largest illegal immigration population in the United States

A record 96,917 Indians were apprehended entering the United States without authorization between October 2022 to September 2023. That number has been increasing every year – with 30,662 encountered in the 2021 fiscal year and 63,927 in the 2022 fiscal year.

Out of the nearly 97,000 encounters in 2023, 30,010 were at the Canadian border and 41,770 at the Southern border. What is significant to recognize is that these numbers only represent those who were caught. The actual numbers are likely much higher.

Unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. come from many parts of the world, with Mexico being the most common origin country. While the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico has declined since 2017, the total number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from countries other than Mexico has grown rapidly.

After Mexico, the largest unauthorized immigrant populations in the U.S. in 2021 came from El Salvador, India, Guatemala, and Honduras.

According to the Pew Research Center, around 725,000 Indians currently live illegally in the US, making them the third largest illegal immigrant population.

Migration has fundamentally changed

“Migration has changed so fundamentally in the 30 years I’ve been doing this work,” said Angela Kelley, Chief Advisor for the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA).

Speaking at a Feb. 2 EMS briefing, “Border Crisis: What are the Policy Options Given the Polarized Politics” Kelley explained that the close to 10,000 daily encounters at the border are the result of increasingly ferocious and effective smuggling networks.

More people are leaving four failed nation states – Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua – for the U.S. A few years ago only 12% of the people at the border came from countries other than Mexico or Central America. “It’s now 52%,” said Kelley.

The influx of people puts a big strain on the immigration system, raising questions about how to process them, the kind of language support they need, and what kind of asylum cases they will present.

But what has changed are the demographics of the new migrants, said Kelley.

“It’s not young Mexican men coming to work. It’s women, it’s kids. Families. That is just dramatically different. So migration has changed.”

Inadequate US immigration policies

Kelley called US immigration policies grossly inadequate and unable to cope with the migrant influx. “The resources, the infrastructure to be able to manage people, to welcome them, to be able to provide for them –  all gone,” she said. This severely impacts asylum seekers for example, whose cases have stalled in the system for over 7 years.

“We have backlogs for people who applied for asylum that are 6, 7, 8 years long. Why is that important? Because if you are a legitimate asylum seeker, in 7 years, your case is gonna go stale. The witnesses won’t be there. You won’t be able to prove that you were really persecuted.”

Lack of immigration reform

A combination of factors is creating a perfect storm around the immigration process.

“The lack of immigration reform is part of the reason why we’re here,” said Vanessa Cardenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice. “When you add the political layer to that of course, we are sort of in this very tenuous moment,”

“Not only is our system completely outdated, but again, there are regional pressures, global pressures that have changed the migration patterns,” explains Cardenas.

Climate change migration and COVID’s impact on economic instability have exacerbated the unprecedented migration from more countries, explains Cardenas. It’s the last piece of this changing migration pattern.

The politics of immigration 

The immigration issue has become politicized in the U.S. as wrangling between both parties ensured the immigration bill was dead on arrival in the House.

The administration wanted $12 billion to establish legal pathways and deterrents at the border. However, “The GOP has identified immigration as their silver bullet,” said Cardenas, not to find a solution to the problem, but to use it as an organizing tactic to mobilize their base. The Republicans have a much simpler sound bite, added Kelley. “Borders are out of control, Biden’s got open borders, everybody’s coming in – you know the ugly rhetoric.”

Biden came into office with a very progressive vision for immigration and implemented some important policy changes that don’t get the coverage it deserves, said Cardenas. She referred to the parole program as a model for what the future should look like in creating more legal pathways to meet the needs of the economy.

However, “The White House doesn’t talk enough about what they’ve done because the President, to be blunt, is not as comfortable with this issue,” added Kelley.

Cardenas reiterated that a progressive approach could ensure that people can actually come to the U.S. with a visa versus a smuggler.

“I think accelerating the process of work permits is another very good policy that we should be looking at. I think TPS again is another tool in the administration sort of toolbox that they can use” she added.

The U.S. immigration system is broken and smugglers publicize that to their advantage. Migrants are simply pawns caught in the middle, losing to both.

Rethinking immigration pathways 

Immigration reform becomes imperative as people forced to flee war, climate change and political strife arrive in droves to the U.S., creating an impasse on domestic soil.

Lupita Martinez the Regional Policy Advocate with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) in Los Angeles says the migrant flow has completely upended the situation on the ground.

She is referring to the busloads of immigrants that governors of red states like Texas are sending to blue cities like New York, LA, Chicago, and Denver.

Organizations like CHIRA in coalition with other NGOs and the local government are scrambling to house the bussed immigrants. They have to provide medical attention, translation services, and wrap-around services like warm meals, housing, and mental health services to help migrants deal with their trauma.

“The first bus that we received was on June 14, 2023. We are now on bus 39,” said Martinez.