Undocumented Indians have fresh ray of hope in US with Joe Biden’s new policy for immigrants

For illegal Indian aliens in the United States, it could well be the slice of luck they aspire to when they migrate, chasing their American dream, but living life in the shadows.

President Joe Biden’s sweeping new legal protections announced last week for undocumented immigrants living in the US and married to Americans, has come as a bonanza to Indians, who make up the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the world’s most preferred destination for emigres.

The step would make it easier for young immigrants to gain access to work visas, a move that could help them eventually get a green card and protect their legal status in the US.

A finding conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2021 put the number of such Indians at 725,000. They constitute the third largest population of unauthorised immigrants after Mexico and El Salvador, the Washington-based think tank said.

Biden’s move is one of the most wide-ranging presidential actions to protect immigrants in more than a decade.

“It is by any stretch of imagination, a most welcome step, which will lay down the grounds of future immigration policy in many parts of the world,” said S Irudaya Rajan, Chairman International Institute of Migration and Development, Kerala.

Rajan said that there are many foreigners who live in this country – in Goa and other places – and India rarely questions them. “The US is now returning the favour,” he told this reporter. Rajan is one of India’s foremost experts on migration.

Noted The New York Times: “Under the new policy, some 500,000 undocumented spouses will be shielded from deportation and given a pathway to citizenship and the ability to work legally in the United States.”

As of 2021, the US’s 10.5 million unauthorised immigrants represented about 3% of the total U.S. population and 22% of the foreign-born population, the Pew Research Center noted.

There is yet another category of immigrants. Latest data released by USA’s Customs and Border Protection (UCBP) said that from November 2022 to September 2023, a record number of Indians 96,917 were arrested while crossing illegally into the USA.