What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot – NBC News

Of interest:

From October 2022 to this September, the 2023 fiscal year, there were 96,917 Indians encountered — apprehended, expelled or denied entry — having entered the U.S. without papers. It marks a fivefold increase from the same period from 2019 to 2020, when there were just 19,883.

Immigration experts say several factors are at play, including an overall growth in global migration since the pandemic, oppression of minority communities in India, smugglers’ use of increasingly sophisticated and in-demand methods of getting people to America, and extreme visa backlogs.

The number of undocumented Indians in the U.S. has been climbing since borders opened post-Covid, with 30,662 encountered in the 2021 fiscal year and 63,927 in the 2022 fiscal year.

Out of the nearly 97,000 encounters this year, 30,010 were at the Canadian border and 41,770 at the Southern border.

“The Southern border has just become a staging ground for migrants from all parts of the world to come to the U.S. most quickly,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and the director of non-partisan research group Migration Policy Institute’s New York office. “Why would you wait for a visitor visa in Delhi if you can make it faster to the Southern border?”

The Canadian border, on the other hand, has large stretches that are virtually unguarded at times, said Gaurav Khanna, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California at San Diego, whose research concentrates on immigration.

While not all routes look the same, a journey from India to the U.S. might take migrants on several legs, all while being passed among various facilitators.

“People will get you to, let’s say, the Middle East, or people will get you to Europe,” Chishti said. “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.”

Long, treacherous journeys often land migrants in limbo, facing overwhelmed immigration systems, he said. CBP told NBC News that families coming to the U.S. illegally will face removal.

“No one should believe the lies of smugglers through these travel agencies. The fact is that individuals and families without a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed,” a CBP spokesperson said.

But when those migrants are coming from across an ocean, experts say, the reality is far more complicated.

“You can easily turn people back to Mexico — that’s their country, ‘make a U-turn,’” Chishti said. “But you can’t deport people to faraway places that easily. Mexico won’t take them. Why would Mexico take an Indian?”

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Source: What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot – NBC News