Trump can learn from Gulf sheikhs how to manage illegal immigrants

Unlike Donald Trump — or for that matter, his predecessors — Gulf rulers were humane in their treatment of the boat people who landed on their shores

The commotion over illegal immigrants from India living in the United States is a breeze in a teacup. It is not a proverbial storm, as sections of public opinion seeking sensation are making it out to be. That explains why US President Donald Trump did not get into any lengthy discussion about these Indians when he spoke to reporters in Washington after his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 27. 

Few issues make Trump voluble as much as illegal migration to his country. Reporters tried to draw him out on Indians who have breached the laws by their stateside presence the day after Trump forced a weak Colombia to cave in to his demands for “unrestricted acceptance” of compatriot unlawful aliens. The White House said, “he expects all other nations of the world to fully cooperate in accepting the deportation of their citizens illegally present in the United States.” It was fodder for sensation-hungry media, but Trump refused to bite the bait. Think-tank Pew Research Center estimated last year that there are 725,000 undocumented Indians in the US. 

Those in India, who assume that this is a high number, have forgotten that in the 1970s and 1980s boatloads of poor Indians used to be unloaded every day on Gulf shores. They arrived, seeking jobs created by the oil boom after the events of the 1973 Arab-Israel ‘Yom Kippur’ War.

They alighted on a strange land without any documents and with meagre possessions, often no more than a cloth bag, without even any change of clothes because their small, crowded boats could carry no luggage. The slightly better-off seekers of El Dorado arrived by planes and then destroyed their passports once they left the airport on the advice of agents so that they could not be deported anywhere if they were caught.

For 10 years, I reported on them as a journalist in West Asia and occasionally doubled as a community worker offering them comfort on behalf of Indian associations and relief agencies. What is now happening in the US with undocumented Indians is nothing compared to the struggles of their fellow nationals who risked everything to set sail for the Gulf seeking a better life. 

Unlike those Indians, life in the US is easy for illegal ‘aliens’, whose total number no one has any idea of. Speculations range from 13 to 21 million. A majority of these illegals are from South America and the Caribbean. On Washington’s 18th Street, dotted with ethnic restaurants ranging from Ethiopian and Brazilian to Mediterranean and Mexican, everything that undocumented people need to live a normal life with pretences of legality is available for a price. Social security cards, driving licences, offers of accommodations, and so on. For jobs, it has become a custom to go every morning and stand in front of the local 7-Eleven convenience store to be picked up by casual employers. Like on the east coast, there are similar streets and 7-Eleven storefronts in south central US, especially in prosperous Texas and on the west coast in California. An underground, countrywide network to support and nourish undocumented ‘aliens’ thrives across the US.

Unlike Trump — or for that matter, his predecessors — Gulf rulers were humane in their treatment of the boat people who landed on their shores. They realised that there were jobs to be had in their sheikhdoms and their nascent governments did not have any streamlined system for recruiting foreigners. Gulf rulers, therefore, declared amnesty for illegal migrants from time-to-time and made them legal residents of their countries.

This is what the US Congress has often wanted to do because there is demand from California to Connecticut for undocumented workers in jobs that Americans will not do. Illegal migration could not have been sustained otherwise. With Trump in the saddle, there is unlikely to be any concessions to those who entered the US without the necessary papers. He has mid-term Congressional elections coming up in November 2026, and the ongoing deportations will be vote-getters.

The US could learn from the Gulf states how to manage the unlawful inflow of foreigners. This is no longer the huge problem that it was when Gulf countries were emerging as nations in the post-colonial era. The six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries still offer lucrative jobs to foreigners who are brought in legally, both in the blue-collar and white-collar sectors.

India now has elaborate labour agreements and a streamlined recruitment system for sending people to the Gulf countries. Since the Covid-19 pandemic receded, India has sent 1.19 million blue collar workers to the GCC, according to statistics tabled in Parliament two months ago. There are no figures for overseas migration by Indians who have higher education. That is the way to go with a hot-button issue. 

(K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.