NEW DELHI: With increasing reports of deportations of not just Indian students, but other US visa holders, India has “strongly emphasised” that US authorities must “honour” its visas.
After the initial report of 19 Indian students being denied entry to US and de-boarded from Hyderabad international airport, there have been “further cases of denial of entry to Indian students holding valid visas to pursue studies in other US educational institutions,” the Ministry of External Affairs said. The advisory issued on Wednesday evening noted that “some Indian nationals travelling on business/tourism/work visas have also been deported”.
This marks a widening net for deportation of Indian nationals. The initial advisory from MEA on December 23 had been specifically limited to the students of Silicon Valley University at San Jose and Northwestern Polytechnic University (NPU), Fremont, to defer their travel plans till a response came from the US government.
Now the US government has told India that denial of entry to students was “not because of the corresponding institutions being black-listed, but based on the assessment made by the US immigration authorities of individual applicants”.
“According to the US government, the deported persons had presented information to the border patrol agent, which was inconsistent with their visa status,” said the MEA advisory.
This is in line with the earlier statements given out by the two US universities, that had denied they had been blacklisted. Instead, one of them had put the blame on stringent screening of travelers at the border.
The NPU statement had said that the reason was the Paris attacks which left 130 persons dead.