US-India Ties: Strategic or Transactional?

During the last Trump Administration in 2019, India's friends in Washington argued for a US policy of "strategic altruism" with India. The new Trump administration seems to be rejecting such talk. Prior to his recent meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House, President Donald Trump described India as the "worst abuser of tariffs" and announced "reciprocal tariffs" on Indian imports to the United States.  At the same time, Mr. Trump cracked down on both legal and illegal immigration from India. His administration is deporting thousands of illegal Indian immigrants in handcuffs and shackles on US military aircraft. Meanwhile, stringent new regulations on temporary work visas could significantly delay visa processing times and reduce the number of Indian workers employed in the United States on H1B visas. 

Tariffs Comparison. Source: BBC

In a 2019 piece titled "The India Dividend: New Delhi Remains Washington’s Best Hope in Asia" published in Foreign Affairs journal, authors Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis argued that the Trump Administration should continue the US policy of "strategic altruism" with India that began with US-India nuclear agreement. They asked President Trump to ignore the fact that the US companies and economy have only marginally benefited, if at all, from this policy. They see India as a "superpower in waiting" and urge Washington to focus on the goal of having India as an ally to check China's rise. They see Chinese support for India's arch-rival Pakistan and China’s growing weight in South Asia and beyond as a threat to India. 

India Tops Source Countries For H1B Visa Holders. Source: USCIS

Trump's trade and immigration policies are going to hurt India at a time when its economic growth is declining and job growth is stagnant.  The latest Indian annual budget has offered middle class tax relief to spur growth.  But economists warn it may not be enough for the vast majority of Indians, whose income still falls below taxable limits and who may still be reeling from the impact of the COVID pandemic, which devastated their earnings, according to a report in Aljazeera. “There is a vast base [of people] where recovery has not come back after the pandemic,” says Kaushik Basu, professor of economics at Cornell University. “We see this in data that the agricultural labour base has increased. And agriculture may well be just a parking spot.”

Illegal immigration from India to the US has dramatically increased on Prime Minister Modi's watch. A Pew Research Center report said that as of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, on the list of countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants — 725,000 — living in the U.S.

India has a serious unemployment problem, particularly for the young people entering the job market by the millions each year. This problem is concealed by headline  economic growth figures highlighted by the Modi government. At the same time, India is losing its best and brightest in a massive brain drain. 

President Trump has clearly not taken the advice of India's friends in Washington. He is in no mood for "strategic altruism". Instead, the Trump Administration has signaled that it will treat ties with India as just another transactional relationship. 

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US Deports Indian Illegal Immigrants in Handcuffs and Chains Aboard Military Aircraft

 A US Air Force transport plane landed in India today with 104 illegal Indian immigrants in handcuffs and shackles, according to media reports. Speaking with reporters, a deportee said: “For 40 hours, we were handcuffed, our feet tied with chains and were not allowed to move an inch from our seats. After repeated requests, we were allowed to drag ourselves to the washroom. The crew would open the door of the lavatory and shove us in.”

Illegal Indian Immigrants Deported in Handcuffs and Chains. Source: News18

The inhumane treatment meted out to citizens of India, a US ally, has sparked a lot of anger against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. The critics are citing the example of Colombia, a small South American nation, whose president protested similar treatment of its citizens by the Trump administration. Colombian President Gustavo Petro turned back the US military planes carrying deportees and then sent his own aircraft to transport them back home in Colombia. 

Illegal immigration from India to the US has dramatically increased on Prime Minister Modi's watch. A Pew Research Center report said that as of 2022, India ranked third, after Mexico and El Salvador, on the list of countries with the largest number of undocumented immigrants — 725,000 — living in the U.S.

India has a serious unemployment problem, particularly for the young people entering the job market by the millions each year. This problem is concealed by headline  economic growth figures highlighted by the Modi government. At the same time, India is losing its best and brightest in a massive brain drain. 

"Leave India! It's High Time!!" screams out a recent Reddit post that has gone viral! The poster who claims to be an Indian entrepreneur warns of impending "terrible economic collapse" with a "massive depreciation of the Indian rupee".  

The now-deleted post, written by a user named ‘u/anonymous_batm_an,’ urges high-earning professionals, especially innovators, to leave India for countries with better opportunities and governance, as reported by the Times of India.  It recommends the UAE or Thailand as alternative destinations . The sentiments expressed in the post are already resonating with a large number of Indians.  The non-resident Indians now constitute the world's largest overseas diaspora. Every year, 2.5 million Indians leave their country of birth, making India the nation with the highest annual number of emigrants in the world. 

New Company Registrations in Dubai. Source: Khaleej Times

Indian investors continued to top the list of new non-Emirati companies joining the Dubai Chamber of Commerce during the first nine months of 2024. A total of 12,142 new Indian companies joined the chamber during the period, data showed on Monday, according to the Khaleej Times. Pakistan ranked second on the list with 6,061 new companies joining between Q1-Q3 2024, while Egypt followed with 3,611 new companies registering as members of the chamber. The number of new Syrian companies joining the chamber during the first nine months of the year reached 2,062, placing the country fourth among the top nationalities of new member companies.

India is losing its best and brightest to the West, particularly to the United States, at an increasingly rapid pace. A 2023 study of the 1,000 top scorers in the 2010 entrance exams to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) — a network of prestigious institutions of higher learning based in 23 Indian cities — revealed the scale of the problem. Around 36% migrated abroad, and of the top 100 scorers, 62% left the country, according to a report in the science journal Nature.  Nearly two-thirds of those leaving India are highly educated, having received academic or vocational training. This is the highest for any country, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Example of The Great Indian Brain Drain. Source: Boston Political Review

Brain drain is defined as the loss of precious human capital of a nation. It is a “consequence of an education system designed for ‘selecting’ the best and brightest in an economy that is still too controlled and cannot create opportunities for its best and brightest”, according to Indian economist Shruti Rajagopalan. High-profile examples of India's human capital loss include Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google), Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), Arvind Krishna (IBM) and Ajay Banga (World Bank). 

Foreign-Born STEM Workers in America. Source: American Immigration Council

Growing number of Indian students are going abroad for higher education each year and 90% of them never return home after completing their studies.  In 2022, the number of Indian students leaving the country for higher education reached a six-year high of 770,000. And a 2021 report estimated that around two million Indian students would be studying abroad by 2024. 

Many developing countries are experiencing brain drain. But India is losing its best brightest at a much faster rate than others. Some call it "The Great Indian Brain Drain". This is the reason why Indians in the United States are the best educated and the highest earning group.  In a recently published book titled "The Other One Percent", authors Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh explain this phenomenon. 

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Soaring Illegal Immigration of Indians into the United States

Illegal immigration from India to the United States is soaring. A record 96,917 Indians were detained while attempting to enter the US illegally from October 2022 to September 2023, representing a 50% jump from the corresponding period in the prior year. Vast majority of the arrested Indians came from Prime Minister Modi's state of Gujarat while others came from the state of Punjab. There are about 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US – the third-largest population of illegal immigrants after Mexicans and El Salvadorans – according to a Pew Research Centre report. 

Illegal Immigration to the US From India. Source: Strait Times

The number of Indians attempting to cross into the United States illegally has accelerated in recent years on Prime Minister Modi's watch. These immigrants take the Latin American route to reach the US-Mexico border before making a run for the US. They cross the Darien Gap, a dangerous thick forest region between Colombia and Panama, taking three days to a week while taking huge risks ranging from lack of food and drinking water, wild animals and violent gangs. 

There are multiple drivers of mass illegal migration of Indians to other countries. These include increasing violence under Mr. Modi's Hindutva rule and lack of jobs for thee growing working-age population. Human traffickers are exploiting these conditions to profit from vulnerable groups most impacted by political and economic problems in the country. 

Christians, low caste Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are among the main targets of the far-right Hindu mob attacks across India. In 2023, the Modi government’s discriminatory and divisive policies led to  growing violence against minorities, creating a pervasive environment of fear and a chilling effect on government critics, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2024. 

India's labor force participation rate (LPR) has been declining for several years. Centre For Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data shows that the labor participation rate fell to 39.5% in 2022-23, from an already low 40.1% in 2021-22. This indicates that more than half of India’s working age population is not employed. This is especially the case for women 90% of whom are out of the labor force. India’s LPR is among the lowest in the world. The global average LPR is 60%.

Labor Participation Rate in India. Source: CMIE Via Reuters

The rapid GDP growth claimed by India is not creating enough jobs for its massive young population. The much-hyped "Make in India" initiative of the Modi government is just not working well enough to keep pace with the demand for jobs. Manufacturing’s contribution to India’s GDP has declined from 17% two decades ago to just 13% in 2022, according to the World Bank. India has added only 5 million factory jobs since Mr. Modi was first elected, for a total of 65 million such jobs now, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unable to find jobs in cities, a very large number of Indians are going back to subsistence farming to eke out a meager living.  

Indian economist Ritesh Kumar recently wrote a piece for Nikkei Asia titled "Few are benefiting from India's rapid GDP growth".  His conclusion: What India really needs is a growth trajectory that is inclusive, sustainable and can foster shared prosperity across all segments of the economy rather than benefiting only a privileged few.

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Record Number of Indians Seeking Asylum in US at Mexico Border

In the current fiscal year that started last October, a record 16,290 Indian citizens have been taken into custody by US Border Patrol at the Mexican border. A substantial number of them are Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Dalits who are escaping persecution in the country ruled by the Hindu Nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Genocide Watch has issued "India  Genocide Warning" stating as follows:  "Islamophobia is no longer a fringe sentiment in India. It has become a state-manufactured ideology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made Islamophobia central to its program for harassing India's 192 million Muslims and depriving them of their rights as Indian citizens".

Indian Asylum Seekers at US-Mexico Border. Source: BBC

Experts attribute the record increase in asylum seekers to a a number of factors, including rising discrimination in India, an end to pandemic-era restrictions, a perception that the current US administration is welcoming to asylum seekers and the ramping-up of previously established smuggling networks, according to the BBC.   

Of the roughly 3.5 million undocumented immigrants who entered the country between 2010 and 2017, 65 percent arrived with full permission stamped into their passports, according to new figures compiled by the Center for Migration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank. During that period, more overstayers arrived from India than from any other country, according to the New York Times. 

It's a similar story in the UK where Home Secretary Suella Braverman was recently quoted by the BBC as saying: "I have concerns about having an open borders migration policy with India because I don't think that's what people voted for with Brexit… The largest group of people who overstay are Indian migrants. We even reached an agreement with the Indian government last year to encourage and facilitate better cooperation in this regard. It has not necessarily worked very well."

India has also become the biggest source of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.  In 2014 about 136,000 people came to the U.S. from India, about 128,000 from China and about 123,000 from Mexico, census figures show. As recently as 2005, Mexico sent more than 10 times as many people to the U.S. as China, and more than six times as many as India, according to the WSJ story.

United States Department of Homeland Security estimates that there were 12.1 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States as of 2014. The top countries of origin are:

Mexico = 6.6 million

El Salvador = 700,000

Guatemala = 640,000

India = 430,000

Honduras = 400,000

Philippines = 360,000


The rise of Hindutva forces is tearing India apart along caste and religious lines.  Hindu mobs are lynching Muslims and Dalits. A recent  Pew Research report confirms that the level of hostility against religious minorities in India is "very high", giving India a score of 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh's is 7.5.

Chart Courtesy of Bloomberg

Rising hostility against minorities is driving record numbers of asylum seekers to the United States. India has earned a score of 9.5 on a scale of 0-10 assessed by Pew Research. Genocide Watch attributes it the rise of Narendra Modi in India: "Modi rose to power by inciting Hindus with his time-tested politics of communal polarization. Beginning in 2014, Modi spent his first term as Prime Minister dehumanizing Muslims by passing laws preventing cow slaughter, restricting Muslim immigration, and purportedly countering Islamist terrorism. Modi's second term, beginning in 2019, has seen more brazen attempts by the BJP to turn India into a “Hindu Rashtra"."

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Thousands of Indian Asylum Seekers in US Jails

Over 4,200 Indians have so far been jailed for illegally crossing US-Mexico border this year, according to available data reported by US media. It's a big jump from 3,100 Indians detained in all of 2017.  Most are seeking asylum based on claims of religious and political persecution in their country of origin.

Source: LA Times

Undocumented Indians in US Detention: 

Portland-based newspaper "The Oregonian" found that the single largest group of detainees at Sheridan Federal Prison in Oregon came from India. It reported that there were 50 Indians among the 124 migrants being housed at the prison. The others hailed from Nepal, Armenia, Brazil, Mexico and parts of Central America.

India Fastest Growing Source of Illegals:

India has become the biggest source of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States.  In 2014 about 136,000 people came to the U.S. from India, about 128,000 from China and about 123,000 from Mexico, census figures show. As recently as 2005, Mexico sent more than 10 times as many people to the U.S. as China, and more than six times as many as India, according to the WSJ story.

United States Department of Homeland Security estimates that there were 12.1 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States as of 2014. The top countries of origin are:

Mexico = 6.6 million

El Salvador = 700,000

Guatemala = 640,000

India = 430,000

Honduras = 400,000

Philippines = 360,000

Religious Hostilities in Modi's India:

The rise of Hindutva forces is tearing India apart along caste and religious lines.  Hindu mobs are lynching Muslims and Dalits. A recent  Pew Research report confirms that the level of hostility against religious minorities in India is "very high", giving India a score of 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh's is 7.5.

Chart Courtesy of Bloomberg

Summary:

Rising hostility against minorities in India has earned it a score of 9.5 on a scale of 0-10 assessed by Pew Research. This is manifested in a big jump in the number of Indians seeking asylum in the United States. Over 4,200 Indians have so far been jailed for illegally crossing US-Mexico border this year, according to available data reported by US media. It's a big jump from 3,100 Indians detained in all of 2017.  Most are seeking asylum based on claims of religious and political persecution in their country of origin.

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Story of New York's Little Pakistan

Illegal Immigration From India to US

How to Escape From India?

Deep Divisions Tearing India Apart

India's Share of World's Poor Jumps to 33%

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Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant Escape from India's Caste System

Female Genocide Unfolding in India

Riaz Haq Youtube Channel

VPOS Youtube Channel

Implications of Trump's Muslim Ban, Mexico Wall

Why did President Donald Trump bar entry of citizens of 7 Muslim majority nations (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen) for 90 days? Will it extend to Pakistan and other Muslim majority countries in the future? What message does it send to world's 1.5 billion Muslims, including American Muslims?

Are persecuted Muslim refugees no longer welcome in the United States? Why did Trump choose Holocaust Memorial Day to sign such an order to hurt the people most at risk of similar fate as that of the European Jews during the 2nd World War? Is this an unconstitutional religious test, especially when Trump says he will accept Christians from these countries?

Will Trump's Muslim ban order survive court challenges planned by CAIR and ACLU? Will it encourage attacks on American Muslims in the United States? Will it play into the hands of ISIS that claims the US is at war with Muslims? Will Trump's Muslim ban make America more or less safe? Will it hurt American interests at home and abroad?

Why does President Trump want to have Mexico pay for a border wall? Is Mexico the biggest source of illegal immigrants into the United States? Or is it India? Will the Wall work to stop immigrants determined to come to the United States?

Is Trump willing to risk a trade war with Mexico to extract $15 billion payment? How will this hurt the 2 million US jobs tied to $230 billion US exports to Mexico? Will its impact on Mexican economy bring more illegal immigrants to US from Mexico when such immigration is at all time low?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Ali H. Cemendtaur and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/DYrc5BpjLiA





https://vimeo.com/201559485


Implications of Trump's Muslim Ban, Mexico Wall from Ikolachi on Vimeo.


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Does Donald Trump Know That India, Not Mexico, Sends More Illegals to US?

Does Donald Trump, the anti-immigration Republican presidential candidate, know that India is now the biggest source of illegal immigrants entering the United States?

US visa is the most sought after visa in India. Those who get it celebrate with billboards. Those who don't find human smugglers to smuggle them into the United States. The preferred routes for illegal entry from India are through the Caribbean and Central America.

Many surveys conducted in India over the years indicate that millions of Indians want to leave India to settle abroad. A quick Google search for "Escape from India" produces nearly 100 million results.  Many Indians cite lack of opportunity, poverty and various forms of discrimination as the reasons for wanting to leave India.

The number of unauthorized immigrants born in India grew by about 130,000 from 2009 to 2014, to an estimated 500,000. Many unauthorized immigrants from these nations arrived with legal status and overstayed their visas, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said recently that his agency is “doubling down” on preventing immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world from crossing illegally at the southwest border, according to the Pew Research Report.

From 2009 to 2014, Pew estimates that the number of undocumented Indian immigrants in the U.S. exploded by 43% to a total of around 500,000. During the same period, the number of unauthorized Mexicans fell 8% to 5.85 million, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Looking at the total arrivals including legal and illegal immigrants, India and China are each sending more people to the United States in recent years than any other country.

In 2014 about 136,000 people came to the U.S. from India, about 128,000 from China and about 123,000 from Mexico, census figures show. As recently as 2005, Mexico sent more than 10 times as many people to the U.S. as China, and more than six times as many as India, according to the WSJ story.

Will Donald Trump and his fellow anti-immigration campaigners take note of the changing picture of illegal immigration into the United States?  Will they stop bashing Mexicans and Muslims?

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India: Home to World's Largest Population of Poor, Hungry and Illiterates

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India and China Top Mexico as Sources of Illegal Immigration to USA

India left Mexico behind as the top country sending illegal immigrants into the United States as of 2012, according to several media reports.

A more recent review of 2013 immigration data shows that China replaced India and Mexico as the top country of origin for immigrants to the United States. The 2013 American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, recorded 1,201,000 immigrants. Of those, 125,000 came from Mexico, 129,000 came from India, and 147,000 came from China. The previous year, Mexican immigration (125,000) just topped Chinese immigration (124,000).

Pew Research has found that Indians constitute four per cent of the total illegal immigrants living in the US, a country where the overall unauthorized immigrant population has remained unchanged since 2009.

Mexicans still make up about half of all unauthorized immigrants (52%), though their numbers have been declining in recent years. There were 5.9 million Mexican unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2012, down from 6.4 million in 2009, according to Pew Research Center estimates.

Ranking second to Mexico is El Salvador (675,000 in 2012), followed by Guatemala (525,000), India (450,000), Honduras (350,000), China (300,000) and the Philippines (200,000). But largely because of a marked decline in Mexican unauthorized immigrants since 2009, the shares of unauthorized immigrants from other nations and regions have grown. The sudden reversal of a long trend of growth in the number of Mexican unauthorized immigrants probably results from both a marked decline in new arrivals and an increase in departures to Mexico.

Among the states in America, Indians make up the largest undocumented immigrant group in New Hampshire. While the Indian illegal immigrants comprise second largest population in Indiana with four per cent, the percentages in other states were Michigan (4%), Minnesota (9%), New Jersey (11%), Ohio (11%), Pennsylvania (11%) and Washington (5%), the report said. Indians are the third largest unauthorized immigrants in Alaska (4%), Arizona (2%), Delaware (7%), Illinois (5%), Kansas (5%), Massachusetts (10%), Missouri (9%)and Oregon (2%).

Since the US-Mexico border crackdown on illegal immigration via Arizona and Texas, the Indian human smugglers have changed their trafficking pattern from Guatemala and Mexico land route to Haiti sea route, says a US government report.

Many surveys conducted in India over the years indicate that millions of Indians want to leave India to settle abroad. A quick Google search for "Escape from India" produces nearly 100 million results.  Many Indians cite lack of opportunity, poverty and various forms of discrimination as the reasons for wanting to leave India.

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Illegal Immigration From India Jumps 125 Percent

There are an estimated 270,000 illegal Indian immigrants in the United States, according to 2006 figures from the US Department of Homeland Security. With 125% percent increase from 2000 to 2006, India represents the fastest growing source of illegal immigrants to the United States, reports San Jose Mercury News, a major Silicon Valley newspaper. In absolute numbers, Central and South American nations account for the bulk of the estimated 11.5 million illegals, with India a distant second with 270,000 in 2006.



The vast majority of the estimated 2.5m Indians in the United States are legal immigrants with about a half of them with citizenship status. Highly educated with many in professionals such as doctors and engineers, Indians are a very affluent ethnic group whose median household income is 62% higher than the national average.

The top three geographies with the highest concentrations of Indians in the US are San Francisco Bay Area at number 1, New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area at number 2 and Chicago at number 3.

As the demand for high-tech workers in Silicon Valley has grown, so has the influx of Indians on H-1B visas. At 44%, Indians accounted for the lion's shares of H1B visas in 2005-06, five times the number from the second-place Chinese.

The estimated number of people of Pakistani origin in the United States is about 500,000. The top three geographies are NY/NJ/CT tri-state area, Chicago metropolitan area and Southern California. Pakistani Americans are the sixth largest Asian American ethnic group after Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese communities. The demographics and socio-economic status of Pakistanis in the United States are quite similar to Indians'. Pakistan does not show up in the list of top 10 countries of origin for legal or illegal immigration to the United States.

New York Times estimate of 109,000 Pakistani-born American workers' occupations include salesmen, managers or administrators, drivers, doctors and accountants as the top five categories.