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The elusive search for a better way of life
About 25 persons on the recently grounded donkey flight decided not to return to India, pinning their hopes on the French judicial system on asylum.
Representative image / image - iStock
Suddenly last week the media was flooded with reports of a plane load of Indians detained near Paris on an anonymous tip off as “human trafficking” only to be rejected by authorities in France as more of case pertaining to “illegal immigration” as passengers boarded the aircraft on their own free will.
Now in the last three days after the chartered Romanian airline landed back in Mumbai there is a stony silence, both from the people who undertook their journey with a final destination of Nicaragua and authorities who have started a thorough investigation at the state and central levels.
What is heart wrenching in the whole episode is that of the 303 passengers, there were minors and even infants showing the extent to which things have come to a pass. About 25 persons decided not to return to India, pinning their hopes on the French judicial system on asylum.
And from the scrappy reports it appears that people on this trip could have forked out an equivalent of US$ 80,000 for an ultimate destination in the United States.
In recent times there have been reports of a huge increase in Indians trying to enter the United States illegally with the figure reaching close to 100,000 according to a US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) report between October 2022 and September 2023, or a five fold surge from 2019-2020.
In a country that is trying to come to terms with illegal immigration, India takes the third spot in undocumented persons at close to 750,000.
Travel papers may have been in order in the latest context, especially if countries of final destination do not require formal visas to be issued prior to arrival. And if the past is anything to go by, illegals from India have generally preferred Central America and the Mexican border for entry into the United States.
But even this modus operandi has changed for illegals have been inclined to take their chances of entry into America through the Canadian border as well. The hazardous trek through Central America braving scorching heat and exposure to wild animals has been no less a deterrent to braving the blustery weather of the Canadian-American border.
For instance USCBP said that this September some 8076 Indian citizens were caught trying to sneak into America, and 38 per cent were from the Canada-US border. And an occasional media report on people frozen to death on borders brings about an occasional thought of the extent to which innocent souls would go in their search for a better way of life.
It is high time that a national commission looks into the different aspects of illegal immigration even while granting that the government can do precious little to stop citizens with valid papers from leaving the country, especially at a time when an increasing number of countries opening their doors to Indian passports for something called Visa On Arrival.
But authorities in India cannot be ignorant of those who prey on the gullible for a so-called better way of life by exhorting huge sums of money to “process” a journey fobbed off as some sort of a pleasure trip.
In understanding the organized mass exodus that gather individually in a third country to avoid suspicions at the point of departure, it is necessary to keep in mind that break downs into Punjabis, Gujaratis or “Tamil Speakers” is not the issue; neither does it help come to the root of the problem which is one of concertedly trying to break up a nexus that need not only have an Indian connect. Any federal agency will tell you that for every one illegal caught, ten have already slipped through.
- Currently a Professor of English at SRM University, Sikkim, Dr. Archana Arul also writes on issues of human interest.
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