The family arrived at the temple odorly sculpted in western India bearing a special sweet milk and clarified butter. It was a desperate offer for the safety of their son: he had just crossed the United States, just a few days before President Trump took office by promising a fierce repression against illegal immigration.
In their village in Gujarat, the original state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the markers of migration are everywhere. Plates on the buildings of the trumpet donations of the Indians in America. The houses are locked and empty, their owners now in the United States – a lot legally, a lot.
Mass deportation threats to Mr. Trump illegal immigrants have raised the noisy alarms in countries closer to the United States, such as Mexico and Central America. But fear and uncertainty – and the potential for political repercussions – also collapse through India.
India is one of the main sources of illegal immigration to the United States, According to the Pew Research Center. In 2022, more than 700,000 undocumented Indians lived in the United States, estimated the center, making it the third group, behind Mexicans and Hondurans.
Some Indians legally arrive and go beyond their visas. Others cross borders without authorization: in 2023 only, around 90,000 Indians were arrested while trying to illegally enter the United States, according to US government data.
The government of India, which has expanded defense, technology and trade links with the United States, expressed its confidence that it is better positioned than most to resist global calculation with another administration “America First ». Mr. Modi has a link with Mr. Trump, the appellant “my dear friend” because he congratulated him for taking office for the second time.
Nevertheless, there are signs that India tries to keep Mr. Trump on good side by cooperating with his repression on illegal migration.
The Indian media reported last week that the government was working with the new administration to resume 18,000 Indian illegal immigrants who are under the so-called final dismissal orders.
According to these reports, India’s objective is to protect its legal paths for immigration to the United States, such as qualified workers visas, and to avoid punitive rates that Trump threatened to impose on illegal migration. Helping his administration could also spare India to be embarrassed in the advertising of Mr. Trump’s repression.
Indian officials would not confirm the details of reports to the New York Times. But they noted that the deportations of the United States to India was not new – more than 1,000 Indians were dismissed last year – and said they were working with the Trump administration.
“Our position is that we are against illegal migration,” said Randir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the Indian Foreign Ministry. “We are committed to the American authorities on the reduction of illegal immigration, in order to create more ways for the legal migration of India to the United States”
These legal routes – namely, H -1B visas for workers and qualified visas for students – have been the subject of a heated debate among the supporters of Mr. Trump. Elon Musk and other technological magnates say that H-1B visas are necessary to recruit the best talents in the United States. More nationalist voices say that the jobs occupied by these visa holders should go to the Americans.
The State Department said that the Trump administration was working with India to “respond to concerns related to irregular migration”. The new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, held his first bilateral meeting on Tuesday with the Indian Minister of Foreign Affairs, S. Jaishankar – an indication of the growing importance of the American -Indian relationship.
The emphasis on migration is politically sensitive in India.
Mr. Modi, the country’s most powerful leader for decades, presented himself as an engine of economic growth which, according to him, will ultimately make India a developed nation. But its own state of origin, Gujarat, once praised as an economic miracle under its direction, is One of the India The largest sources of illegal migration In the United States, police officials say.
Although Washington turns to India as an alternative to China in global industrial domination, its unequal economy – by certain measures, one of the most unequal in the world – always prevents a large number of Indians to take from enormous risks to go to the United States.
In the Mehsana district in Gujarat, almost all families have a member in the United States, legally or illegally. Some only come back for annual visits to see the aunts and uncles. Mehsana is frequently in the news, with reports on its migrants die while trying to climb a border wall in the United States, reach its banks by boat or make its way on the northern border during the ‘winter.
Migration to the United States has traditionally been a symbol of status among Gujaratis. Families who have no members in the United States have trouble matching their children in weddings, said Jagdish, 55, a worker at the local college of the village of Jasalpur whose son and daughter-in-law are illegally in the United States.
Jagdish, who asked that his last name was not used, said his son had spent five months in Mexico waiting for the border five years ago. Upon entering the United States, he was imprisoned for three months before being released. He now works there in a cafe and his wife joined him last year.
This cost the family more than $ 70,000 to bring them to the United States – a mixture of hard money, savings in my life “and loans, said Jagdish.
“I don’t buy new clothes, I reduced fruit and milk,” he said. “I need to repay the loans.”
Outside the village temple, a husband and a woman who run a metro franchise in the United States, where they lived for two decades, visited once a year. The husband, Rajanikant Patel, tried to reassure himself on Mr. Trump, formulated in the air “no one knows” who characterizes a lot of discussions on the new administration.
“Trump will do what he has to do,” said Mr. Patel. “But Trump needs people to work there. We are workers there. It is a huge country. Who will work and manage it?
The Indians began to move to the United States in large numbers in the 1960s, when India was one of the poorest nations in the world and the American immigration policy is trying.
The attraction is strong even today, India now the fifth world economy. Given its immense inequality, economic growth has not necessarily translated by better services or higher life stallions.
“The quality of life here and it cannot be compared,” said Mr. Patel’s wife, Nila Ben.
Immigration consultants declared that they had seen a decline of visitors as the word spread that it became more difficult to enter the United States, a tightening that started during the Biden administration and that Mr. Trump evolves to increase considerably.
Varun Sharma, director of an immigration consulting firm, said that around half of his potential customers have inquired about illegal tracks in the United States. He politely refuses them, he said.
Many undocumented immigrants now come from the new middle class. In some cases, the Indians who arrive on student visas remain after the expiration date. In other cases, migrants go away first to a third country on a visitor’s visa, then slowly head in the United States by land or at sea.
Vishnu Bhai Patel, a lemon merchant from a neighboring village, said that he hoped that Mr. Trump “shows a certain leniency for families divided like mine – half of the family is here and half there” . He said that he hoped that his daughter, who studies engineering in the United States, could remain after graduating and then invited him to come legally.
“My dream is that she never comes back,” he said.
Mujib Mashal Reports contributed to New Delhi.
