Sunanda K. Datta-Ray | Global migration & India: Crisis will only get worse

The heady extravaganza of the Rs 3,000-crore Ayodhya celebrations helped to distract attention from the disgrace that an American judge heaped on a Sikh couple for forcing a young relative to slave for them.

“The defendants exploited the victim’s trust and his desire to attend school in the United States, and then inflicted physical and mental abuse on him, all so they could keep him working for their profit,” said assistant attorney-general Kristen Clarke.

The horrified court in North Chesterfield, Virginia, heard how the victim was a minor when he was brought to the United States to work as cashier, cook, cleaner and manager of store records for well-to-do cousins who ran a petrol pump. He was subjected to various forms of coercion, including confiscation of his immigration documents, physical abuse, threats of force and other forms of serious harm as well as degrading living conditions to compel him to work long hours for a pittance.

This horrendous story is a small piece of the much larger tragedy of destitute migration. Boasting of a 35-million-strong diaspora, the world’s largest, Indians are proud of sending back the world’s highest annual remittances of $110 billion. Joblessness at home force a phenomenal 2.5 million Indians to migrate every year.

It’s also a matter of pride that Israel is seeking Indian cannon fodder who wish to avoid the risk of daily massacre. When legal channels are closed, Indians go abroad on fake student visas and drive taxis in Australia or slave in Indian shops in the British Midlands or, as in the court report cited, for exploitative relatives in the United States.

It’s to protect themselves from such abuse that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italy’s Prime Minister Gloria Meloni have forged what some might call an unholy alliance. For others, it’s the only way that developed countries can ward off the threat posed by stagnant economies like India’s. Hugging each other at a convention of the political right in Rome, the two Prime Ministers vowed not to let “the Third World” “overwhelm” Europe’s dynamic economies. Instead, they will “focus on joint efforts to tackle illegal immigration and organised crime”.

Just as Mr Sunak has won a narrow vote of approval for his plan to shunt off unwanted illegal migrants to Rwanda, Ms Meloni has on hand a similar scheme to send migrants to Albania. Neither country has a shining human rights record. Critics of the two strategies fear that hapless migrants, legal or illegal, who are unlucky enough to fall into Rwandan or Albanian hands may end up in the country they were at such pains to leave in the first place. But Britain and Italy counter with the argument that their countrymen cannot continue to be penalised for the inefficiency or callousness (or both) of Afro-Asian regimes.

Out of the 745,000 migrants that reached Britain in 2022-23, 52,530 were irregular refugees, representing a 17 per cent increase in this category from the previous year’s figure. Some 85 per cent of these immigrants arrived in small and often leaky boats that braved the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The 105,129 people who tried to enter Italy (down from the 2016 record of 181,436) included 13,386 unaccompanied minors.

Many of these people were fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq, Sudan or Yemen. Others were trying to escape rigorous living conditions in austere war-torn societies like Afghanistan. Some were victims of chronic unemployment in India and Pakistan. Whatever the cause the remedy was the same. Families had pooled together their meagre resources, sold whatever little land they possessed, and handed over the proceeds to unscrupulous traffickers against a promise to guide them to new hope and a happy life far from the misery they had left behind.

The sinister arm of India’s poverty makes itself felt again and again even in the distant North American continent. Mexicans understandably dominate the hordes of refugees clamouring for admission on America’s southern frontier. But against 425,000 Mexicans, there are 202,000 Indians and 114,121 Chinese. If the global powers led by the United States do not move now to end the onslaught on Gaza and settle the Palestinian question with a speed and efficiency that has so far been notably absent in handling this crisis, the world may be plunged into an even more grave conflict involving not just human movement but also nuclear weapons.

If the solution lies in the two-state formula that has been the mantra ever since the Oslo Accords, the first demand will be for enough contiguous land for a viable Palestinian homeland. Second, Palestine will need funds to repair the devastation caused by Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza and systematic encroachments on the West Bank which it calls Judea and Samaria, and obviously covets.

The Palestinians can do nothing unless the administration is rooted firmly in the majority’s political will and is backed by powerful global support that can counter Israel’s persistent obstruction. Failing these conditions, the world can expect more illegal migrants, boat people and refugees than Mr Sunak can pack off to Rwanda or Ms Meloni to Albania. It’s a feature of the Palestinian tragedy that no Arab state seems genuinely interested in solving it.

Even the quiet moves under US Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to secure advantageous settlements for individual Arab countries under the so-called Abrahamic Accords did not scratch the surface of the problem.

Israel’s relentless settlement of Jews in the West Bank has resulted in a colony of 750,000 illegals that can burgeon to over a million. They have robbed Palestinians of the land that is their birthright as effectively as the original “Naqba” (catastrophe) which drove 800,000 refugees out of their homes. Now, another Naqba looms over West Asia.

The open-air prison (as it’s been called) of the Gaza Strip already has one of the world’s highest population densities. The West Bank itself is criss-crossed by roads and security check-posts as well as private Palestinian properties that Jewish settlers have arbitrarily enclosed.

Given this territorial stranglehold, it’s not surprising that rumours should circulate -- probably emanating from Zionist sources – that there is no land left for a second Palestinian state, and that the only solution lies in deporting the already homeless Palestinians. Such a harsh measure will add immeasureably to the distress of the world’s billion homeless whose numbers are going up every year by about 15 million. This will be one grim statistic for which even India can’t take any credit.