Hey US, focus on immigration mayhem at home, leave South Asia's persecuted minorities to India's CAA

Self-styled global policeman US erupted up in arms as India implemented the Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA, a move that expedites Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said his nation was “concerned”, adding, “We are closely monitoring this law (and) how it will be implemented."

In response, New Delhi pulled no punches and declared it was in no mood to entertain "lectures by those who have a limited understanding of India's pluralistic traditions.”

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Reality check

USA’s criticism of CAA couldn’t be summed up in a better way than how the official spokesperson of the Indian foreign ministry did: “Misplaced, misinformed, and unwarranted.”

As explained by India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, the law provides for offering citizenship to minorities in the three Muslim nations that face religious persecution. CAA doesn’t impact the nationality of any Indian citizen at all.

Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsis, Buddhists, or Jains who fled the three nations due to religious persecution and entered India on or before December 31, 2014, will be given Indian citizenship.

The law only reduces the waiting period for application of citizenship - to qualifying individuals - from 11 years to five. This doesn’t prevent any Muslim, irrespective of their nationality, from applying for Indian citizenship under existing laws. In fact, India’s Home Ministry had said in 2019 that hundreds of Muslims hailing from the three Islamic nations were granted Indian nationality in the period between 2014 and 2019.

India’s liberal immigration policy

Historically, India has welcomed immigrants from its neighbouring nations with open arms. As of 2015, about 5.2 million immigrants live in India, originating from Bangladesh (3.2 million), Pakistan (1.1 million), Nepal (540,000) and Sri Lanka (160,000). Ironically, the top two sources of immigrants in India are Muslim-majority nations.

Tibetans make up another longstanding population, with a strong community of over 85,000 people.

India has signed friendship and cooperation treaties with nations like Bhutan (1949), Nepal (1950) and Myanmar (1951), allowing greater economic integration and people-to-people interaction.

In 2022, when Sri Lankan economy collapsed amid the effects of Covid-19, spiralling debt, foreign exchange limits and food shortages; a spike was seen in the number of Sri Lankans showing up on India’s southern coast in Tamil Nadu state, located approximately 25km away from Sri Lankan shores.

In 2023, it was revealed that above 54,000 people had taken shelter in India following the military coup in Myanmar, taking the total number of immigrants from Myanmar to 74,600.

These developments show India remains a top destination for those escaping persecution or economic miseries at home, allaying concerns that New Delhi is pursuing discriminatory immigration policies.

USA’s own track record

While the US preaches India on CAA, its own immigration policy has been a complete mess. The country’s immigration system is broken. In 2022, around 2.2 million people entered the nation crossing the US-Mexico border. Since March 2020, migrants trying to cross the border have been expelled nearly 2.8 million times using Title 42, a pandemic-inspired measure.

There is largely no consensus within the nation on how to deal with the massive influx of migrants. Several border cities in Texas, including El Paso and Laredo, facing a surge of migrants for processing, have already declared a state of emergency. In 2022, the state began busing migrants to Democrat-led cities around the country to challenge the Biden administration’s border policies. Arizona has also bused migrants out of state.

Rubbing salt to their wounds, migrants are forced to live in tents on sideways, streets amid the crippled housing sector. They are not provided with shelter because federal dollars are used to foot the bill.

Parents are often seen clutching their children tight in cold nights, desperately trying to keep them warm. Immigrants often flock to churches and NGO-sponsored sites for shelter but only women and men with children are given priority, if space is available. Even pregnant women are denied access in extreme conditions.

Speaking of migrants, the condition of those who entered the US legally isn’t good either. A report in February revealed that only about 3 per cent of applicants are expected to get permanent status/green card in fiscal year (FY) 2024.

The number of pending applications has surged to a whopping 34.7 million, a drastic rise from 10 million in 1996.

The Green card lottery system is also marred with challenges, as the cap remains stagnant at about 55,000 despite the increasing demand.

Hurdles are huge in obtaining employment-based green cards as well, with only 8 per cent of the 1.8 million pending applications anticipated to receive approval in the fiscal year 2024. This reveals a persistently growing backlog, which stood at approximately 1.2 million in 2018, and has since surged to 1.8 million as of March 2023.

Gravitas: US green card backlog hits 1.8 million

At this rate, it might take over a century for the applicants in the employment-based category to get their green cards.

Considering its own track record, the US should ideally be the last nation on the planet to preach a fellow democracy on how to deal with migrants. In fact, the US should learn from India how to handle immigration, a country that sits in a troubling neighbourhood, with Pakistan on its West and Myanmar on its East. While India is providing shelter, citizenship to thousands of persecuted immigrants using the CAA, the US has been invoking draconian laws like Title 42 to throw them out in the most inhumane manner.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)