“I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don’t know why he chose to write it, but I’m glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can’t become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American”. Thus spoke US President Ronald Reagan on 19 January 1989, in his farewell speech.

The ugly spectre of American military aircraft bringing back handcuffed and shackled illegal immigrants to countries as far apart as India and Guatemala are a direct repudiation of the liberal ethos of successive US Governments, since President Washington’s time. Significantly, China and Cuba have refused to accept the US deportation flights. Such humiliating treatment of our citizens is definitely in – consistent with our country’s image of a Vishwaguru, and the Government’s claims of a rapidly advancing nation which had opportunities for everyone. The possibility of many more such flights, even if not so well-publicised, is extremely high, as the US has a very large number of illegal Indian immigrants.

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Estimates vary widely between 7,00,000 (Pew Research Centre and Centre for Migration Studies of New York), 3,75,000 (Migration Policy Institute), 2,20,000 (Department of Homeland Security) and 18,000 (migrants identified by the US for deportation). In his recent meeting with President Trump, PM Modi said India would take back its nationals who were in the US illegally, and also crack down on the “human trafficking ecosystem.” However, illegal migration, the pace of which has quickened considerably over the last few years, has been taking place for a long time, and the Government’s claim of having noted its enormity only after the US started deporting illegal immigrants does not ring true. Stories of how the deportees made their journey to the US make for sad reading.

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A typical account reads: X paid Rs 42 lakh to be trafficked through multiple countries: Qatar, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, and Mexico. X said: “We walked for days… crossed mo – untains and nearly drowned. I saw one man die in the Panama jungle…” Most of these........

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