Big Brother is watching: US records 100-fold rise in Indian immigrants caught at Mexico border

Indian-origin people currently constitute around 6 percent of the foreign-born population in the US

The US has been the most-favoured nation for Indians for long. So much so that between 2012 and 2022, there has been a 100-fold rise in the number of Indian immigrants caught while trying to enter the country illegally.

While in 2012 the US Customs and Border Patrol recorded only 642 encounters where they apprehended unauthorised migrants from India arriving at the US-Mexico border, by 2022, this had gone up to 63,927.

According to the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, there are various factors responsible for this, including the extended backlogs that have created long queues for legal immigration to the US.

The waiting period for processing a visitor’s visa to the US at the Mumbai consulate currently stands at a painstakingly long 700 days. At the New Delhi embassy, it is 610 days.

Growing number of Indian immigrants in the US

The number of Indian immigrants in the US shot up 52.17 percent between 2010 and 2021, shows data from the US Census Bureau. While there were 17.80 lakh India immigrants in the US in 2010, this went up to 27.09 lakh in 2021.

Indian-origin people currently constitute around 6 percent of the foreign-born population of the US. They are the second-largest immigrant group after Mexicans, whose population in the US stands at around 1.07 crore.

“Today, most Indians arrive through employment and family-based pathways. India has the second-largest number of international students enrolled in US higher education institutions, and its nationals receive the majority of employer-sponsored H-1B temporary visas for high-skilled workers,” said a recent report by the Migration Policy Institute.

“These pathways are reflected in characteristics that set Indians apart: four-fifths of Indian immigrant adults have at least a bachelor’s degree and their median household incomes are more than double that of all immigrants and the US-born,” added the report.

Rise of the US as the most favoured destination for Indians

According to the United Nations, the US ranks second in the number of Indian immigrants after the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has around 1.79 crore people from the diaspora. At 25.02 lakh, Saudi Arabia has the third-largest number of Indian immigrants.

Meanwhile, data from the Reserve Bank of India shows that the US actually surpassed the UAE as the top source of remittances to India in 2021. The US’ share in overall remittances to India stood at 23.4 percent in 2021. This is higher than UAE’s share of 18 percent.

Indian immigrants are less likely to be a US citizen

Data shows that on average, fewer Indian immigrants are likely to become naturalised US citizens. In 2021, only 48 percent of Indian immigrants in the US became naturalised citizens, compared to 53 percent of all immigrants. This could be a reflection of the relative recentness of the surge in the arrival of Indian immigrants.

According to data tabled in Parliament by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, as many as 2.25 lakh Indians had renounced their citizenship in 2022.

Compared to others, Indians are much more likely to have arrived in the US since 2000. As much as 44 percent of them arrived in the US after 2010, compared to 28 percent for the overall migrant population.

Other top sources of immigrants to the US

Mexico contributes the largest number of immigrants in the US. However, since 2015, there has been a consistent decline in the number of Mexican immigrants. In 2021, there were 1.06 crore immigrants from Mexico in the US. This is 8.68 percent lower than the 2014 figure of 1.17 crore. And in the last one decade, the number of immigrants from Mexico declined by 8.35 percent.

After Mexico and India, the next-highest immigrant cohort is from China. The number of Chinese immigrants has gone up steadily in the last decade, except for a small dip in 2021. Between 2011 and 2021, the number of Chinese immigrants in the US rose 27.54 percent.

However, among the top five sources for immigrants to the US, immigrants from India saw the largest growth between 2011 and 2021. The growth of immigrants from India stood at 45.91 percent. Immigration from the Philippines and El Salvador, which are the other two countries in the list, went up by 9.31 percent and 12.13 percent, respectively.