The detention of a ‘donkey flight’ – a reference to the illegal transportation of migrants via various stopovers – at Vatry airport, France has become a full blown controversy. What has raised eyebrows at home is the size of the problem. In this case, it was a chartered cargo of 306 souls headed from Fujairah to Managua, in Nicaragua. The Romanian plane, refuelling in France, was detained on a human trafficking tip-off. Most of the flyers had paid Rs 45-60 lakh to ‘donkers’ (agents) to arrange their passage to the US via the Middle-East and through perilous tropical jungles to Texas or Arizona.
Earlier, we had heard of music troupes led by bhangra-pop singer Daler Mehendi making a profession of ferrying immigrants to England posing as musicians – also known as ‘Kabootarbaazi’. But the scale of what is happening now beats the imagination. Interrogation of those on the Fujairah flight revealed as many as 4 similar chartered flights of Indians had already landed in Nicaragua; and another 2 had been scheduled before the modus operandi blew up.
India is supposed to be a great ‘growth’ story. We have beaten everyone including the Chinese, and are clocking over 7% in GDP growth. Then why are so many Indians desperate to flee our shores? Something is not right. Union external affairs minister S Jaishankar conceded in Parliament about 6 months ago that 17.5 lakh Indians had voluntarily given up their citizenship since 2011. He presented it as Indian joining the global workforce and therefore “our diaspora is an asset to the nation.” But he conceded the number is on the rise: In 2022, 2.26 lakh Indians gave up their citizenship voluntarily; in 2021, it was 1.63 lakh, and before that in 2020 it was just 85,000.
High employment, social and political discrimination and lack of opportunities is fuelling an exit stampede. A Ministry of External Affairs report says there are 29 million NRIs and persons of Indian origin (PIOs) residing outside India, world’s largest overseas diaspora. Every year 2.5 million (25 lakh) Indians migrate, the highest annual number of migrants in the world.
Refugees everywhere
The consolation is India is not alone. Waves of migration are everywhere. People fleeing from hunger and unemployment, from conflict zones and from discrimination has become the world’s primary concern. An estimated 10,000 people are crossing into the US everyday illegally from its southern borders. Last year, about 142,000 illegal immigrants were sent back; but the US is still host to as many as 11 million under-the-radar immigrants.
In an election year, US’ porous borders have become a major campaign point. The Republican-dominated House has stalled a $40 billion Ukrainian arms aid package linking it to President Joe Biden initiating more stringent border measures. An AP-NORC poll said nearly half of US adults gave ‘high priority’ to tightening security at the US-Mexico border. In a December Wall Street Journal poll, 13% of voters ranked immigration and the US-Mexico border as their top issue, second only to concerns about the economy.
Clearly Donald Trump’s pitch for summary deportation and the construction of border walls finds favour with 54% of US citizens as against just 24% for Biden’s ‘softer’ policy.
The refugee journeys from Africa and Asia to Europe have been far more frightening. The civil wars in Sudan, Ethiopia and Libya are just some of the conflicts that have uprooted millions internally, millions who are desperately looking for ways to survive. A European Commission report in November 2023 said 1.08 million illegal persons were located in the EU in 2022, up 59 % compared with 2021.
These Mediterranean crossings have proved to be far more perilous than the Mexican mafia. In February last year, 93 people died after their wooden boat from Turkey crashed on the rocks off the coast of Calabria in southern Italy. Thousands more have gone missing as the boats they are stuffed in are not seaworthy and are without safety equipment. The numbers making the crossing have doubled since 2022 – 36,000 in the January-March period of 2023.
Like the US, the immigration issue has exploded giving a strong push to the far-right. In the UK, the Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government has promised to clamp down on asylum seekers after migration to the UK crossed 750,000 last year.
In Italy, far-right politician Georgia Meloni rode to power partly on an anti-migration ticket; and she has promised to build 2 big detention centres in Albania to hold up to 36,000 refugees. Even in liberal Netherlands, in a shock election result in November, far-right populist leader Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV) rode to power on an anti-migrant ticket.
Rich economies need labour
A closer look though shows that the ‘migrant influx’ panic is largely out of place. The US and European Union economies are dependent on migrant labour to perform the lowest, menial jobs; without the migrants’, many sectors may well collapse. Mexicans are the backbone of US’ construction industry; and Sri Lankan Tamils hold up Switzerland’s hospitality sector.
In the US, farms are in crisis as there is a short supply of migrant labour. A Pew Research study by Jeffery S. Passel and Jens Manuel Krogstad in November last year revealed the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S in 2021 remained below its peak of 12.2 million in 2007. It was about the same size as in 2004 and lower than every year from 2005 to 2015.
Finally, in these times of conflict and climate crisis that have triggered large-scale human displacement, what is necessary is to allow free movement across borders so that the unfettered demand and supply of labour keeps economies stable and eases stress on conflict zones.This is what Beatle John Lennon sang to the world 5 decades ago in his number ‘Imagine’, but no one was listened.