It is not so much the logistics of deportation as much as its principle that is being questioned in the US too as just the fear of raids by the immigration department has impacted agriculture, construction and the hospitality industry, besides childcare
The continuing wave of mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the USA appears to be planting ideas in some people in India. For instance, the RSS is not only endorsing the US move but is also demanding that India do the same with the undocumented illegal immigrants living here.
The US deportation programme, expensive in that it is being carried out in military aircraft to Latin America and to India, has caused ripples here for the chaining of men deportees on the flight home with their legs in shackles and hands cuffed — a US standard operating procedure. This has carried on despite the subject having been brought up during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Washington visit.
It is not so much the logistics of deportation as much as its principle that is being questioned in the US too as just the fear of raids by the immigration department has impacted agriculture, construction and the hospitality industry, besides childcare. In India, illegal immigration is not a new subject and, in fact, was one of the basic issues on which the BJP campaigned to come to power in the late 1990s as well as from 2014.
No one questions the right of a sovereign country to protect its borders and prevent illegal infiltration. India has been facing this challenge mostly in the east and northeast, especially Assam and Bengal. But no Union government has taken steps like Trump, for whom the forcible and noticeable deportation is a political compulsion. The point is migration from compulsions of finding somewhere to live safely has empathetic overtones to it. Just as Indians migrate to the US and other first world countries seeking opportunity and a decent life and are prepared to do so against the odds, like crossing the dangerous US southern border, there are some that cross over to India from Bangladesh and Myanmar. India does hunt for them in sanctuary cities and is known to have deported many Bangladeshis. But to make this an issue because RSS believes this will have serious consequences on demography, law & order, indigenous culture and security is uncalled for.
Forcefully hunting for illegal immigrants, particularly of one religion, goes against the grain of even the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s espousal of the embracing of pluralism and the empathetic principles of Vasudhaiva Kutumbam (the world is one family) that they lay so much store by. According to an estimate by a world population review, India may have one crore illegal immigrants in a population of around 144 crore people.
