Thousands of Indians (from the booming economy of India) are being illegally smuggled across the US/Mexican border each year according to this account from AP in the Brownsville Herald. Hat tip: Gary.
LOS FRESNOS — Police wearing berets and bulletproof vests broke down the door of a Guatemala City apartment in February hunting for illegal drugs. Instead, they found a different kind of illicit shipment: 27 immigrants from India packed into two locked rooms.
The Indians, whose hiding space was furnished only with soiled mattresses, claimed to be on vacation. But authorities quickly concluded they were waiting to be smuggled into the United States via an 11,000-mile pipeline of human cargo — the same network that has transported thousands of undocumented immigrants from India, through Central America and Mexico and over the sandy banks of the Rio Grande during the past two years.
Indians have arrived in droves even as the overall number of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. has dropped dramatically, in large part because of the sluggish American economy. And with fewer Mexicans and Central Americans crossing the border, smugglers are eager for more “high-value cargo” like Indians, some of whom are willing to pay more than $20,000 for the journey.
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Between October 2009 and March 2011, the Border Patrol detained at least 2,600 undocumented immigrants from India, a dramatic rise over the typical 150 to 300 arrests per year.
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Most of the border-jumpers are seeking jobs, even though India’s economy is growing at about 9 percent per year. Once safely inside the U.S., they fan out across the country, often relying on relatives who are already here to arrange jobs and housing.
Indians have flooded into Texas in part because U.S. authorities have cracked down on the traditional ways they used to come here, such as entering through airports with student or work visas. The tougher enforcement has made it harder for immigrants to use visas listing non-existent universities or phantom companies.
The four Central American countries that have given the Washington DC area the greatest number of illegal aliens are some of the jumping off points as the Indians travel across the world to get to the US via drug routes through Mexico.
Also contributing to the spike was a quiet change in travel requirements in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Beginning in 2009, those nations sought to attract investors by allowing visitors from India to enter without visas.
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Smugglers often move their cargo from India to Mexico via intermediate stops such as Hong Kong and Macao and other parts of China, as well as Singapore, Amsterdam, Ecuador, Brazil, Belize and Panama.
The pipeline shuffles Indians north using the same “plazas,” or corridors, preferred by cartels moving drugs into the U.S., Hinojosa said.
If they are not caught they disappear into the United States, if caught they claim they are persecuted back home!
Indians caught by U.S. authorities often claim they fled their homeland because of religious persecution. Then they wait for months in federal detention centers like Port Isabel, in the town of Los Fresnos, about an hour’s drive from the Texas-Mexico border.
On a recent morning at Port Isabel, young Indian men wearing navy blue detention uniforms filled the benches in Immigration Judge Keith Hunsucker’s courtroom. Sixteen of the 32 cases on the docket were Indian immigrants, including Salimbhai Mansiya, from the state of Gujarat, who had been detained more than a month earlier.
Through an interpreter, Mansiya told the judge that he needed more time to find an English speaker who could help him fill out an application for asylum. The judge ordered his case delayed.
The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review received 951 requests for asylum from Indian nationals between October and March — a six-month tally nearly equal to 1,002 asylum requests received from Indians in all of fiscal 2010.
Some seeking asylum can arrange to have their bond paid and are set free. Then they melt into American society and skip subsequent court dates. Immigration courts eventually order them deported, but only in absentia.
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Many of the Indians apprehended are Sikhs, followers of India’s fourth-largest religion, who tell authorities they face persecution back home and want asylum. Applicants need to convince officials that they have a credible fear of persecution in India. If so, the case is referred to an immigration judge.
Such persecution was common in the mid-1980s, when the state battled a Sikh secessionist movement, Kumar [Pramod Kumar an Indian Political Scientist] said. But today the ruling party in Punjab is Akali Dal, a Sikh party, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also Sikh.
“It’s all nonsense,” Kumar said of asylum claims.
There is more, read it all.
To understand more about our flawed and increasingly abused asylum system visit our category Asylum seekers. Note the most recent case of a highly publicized asylum scam, here, when it was learned that the alleged rape “victim” in the DSK case lied magnificently in her asylum application.
Just a little background. Asylum and refugee resettlement are the two halves of the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 (Kennedy/Biden/Carter). Refugees are screened elsewhere in the world and brought to the US, asylum seekers arrive in the US on their own steam and say they are persecuted for one of several reasons—political views, religion, sexual orientation (that’s a biggy now). Here is a definition from the Migration Policy Institute*:
Asylees: According to the US Refugee Act of 1980 and based on the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, any aliens, whether their current immigration status is legal or not, who are physically present in the country or at a port of entry may apply for asylum. An asylum seeker acquires asylee status when his or her application has been processed and approved and asylum is granted. A person granted asylum in the United States is entitled to a social security card, employment authorization, and other assistance.
*Incidentally, the Migration Policy Institute, although neutral sounding, is actually a pro-Open Borders outfit in Washington.
Oh, this is funny, I thought I would check on some numbers and came across this UN report with the blaring headline: ‘Asylum seeker numbers nearly halved in last decade, says UNHCR.’
But, get this, go down to the eighth paragraph and see that the US is the largest recipient of asylum seekers and our numbers are up!