India has pledged to work with the United States to identify and repatriate thousands of its citizens residing illegally in the country, reports Bloomberg.
Delhi is willing to take back illegal immigrants to avert a trade war with Washington and allow hundreds of thousands of Indians to continue to work and study in the United States.
“As part of India-US cooperation on migration and mobility, both sides are engaged in a process to deter illegal migration. This is being done to create more avenues for legal migration from India to the US,” said Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
Undocumented migrants
Bloomberg reports the US has identified around 18,000 undocumented Indian migrants for deportation, the majority of them from states like Punjab and Gujarat, known for high levels of migration. The actual number, however, may be considerably higher. A report published last year by the Department of Homeland Security estimated there were 220,000 unauthorised Indian migrants in the US as of 2022.
Indians accounted for just 3 per cent of all illegal crossings encountered by US border officials in 2024. But Indians made up nearly a quarter of all the illegal crossings on the northern border with Canada. This could be because the northern border is more lightly guarded than the southern border with Mexico and Indians have easier travel access to Canada.
H-1B visas and student visas
Still, many more Indians are in America legally. In 2023, Indian nationals accounted for nearly 75 per cent of the 386,000 H-1B visas granted by Washington to skilled foreign workers.
There were also 331,000 Indian students in the US during 2023-24, India’s Business Standard newspaper reported in December, quoting the US Bureau of Consular Affairs. Indians reportedly made up the largest number of foreign students in America.
Other reasons for cooperation
Delhi wants to cooperate with Washington to avert a trade war. Trump has frequently criticised India’s trade policies and high import tariffs, threatening reciprocal measures that could hurt the Indian economy.
Delhi has already begun to cooperate with Washington on the deportation of undocumented immigrants. A chartered flight repatriated 100 Indian nationals in October, adding to the more than 1,100 Indians deported from America to India during the previous 12 months.
Delhi has to cooperate on deportations as failure to do so could affect its labour and mobility agreements with other countries, says Bloomberg.
Facing a job shortage at home, Delhi has signed migration agreements with several countries in recent years, including Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Israel.