Illegal immigration to India
[13] Persons in India without either a valid Indian citizenship or a visa are considered by the central government as illegal and unlawful immigrants.
[14] According to Foreigners (Amendment) Order, 2015 persons belonging to minority communities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians who were compelled to seek shelter in India due to religious persecution or fear of religious persecution and entered into India on or before 31 December 2014 with or without valid documents including passport or other travel document are granted exemption from the application of provisions of the Foreigners Act, 1946.
[16] Preventing the entry of illegal migrants into India is important as they impose pressure on citizens and pose a security threat, especially in sensitive areas such as Jammu and West Bengal.
Illegal immigrants are denied impediment to expulsion if they do not fall within the host country's legal definition of a lawful refugee.
The government of India has recognised immigrants from Tibet and Sri Lanka as refugees in the past, providing free education and some identification to the former.
[29] According to a report by the Afghan embassy in Delhi, refugees from Afghanistan, estimated at around 30,000 families, have, over the past two and a half decades, fled from their home towns due to large-scale conflicts, seeking safety in India's capital city.
Many outsiders call Delhi home, but the Afghan people claim a special relationship with India and its capital, due to the ancient and modern history between both nations.
This led to protests from state government of Assam, ruled by Congress, and consequent retraction of this statement, saying that the numbers are unreliable.
More recently, Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State for Home Affairs in the NDA government has put the figure at around 20 million.
During the war, at least 10 million Bangladeshis (80% of whom were Hindus) have crossed into India illegally to seek refuge from widespread rape and genocide.
[29] In recent years, Rohingya people have been increasingly seeking refuge in India, facing longstanding state-persecution in Myanmar.
[42][43] According to the Union Government, there were 10565 Rohingya families in India as of 2015; Samaddar et al. extrapolated to arrive at a figure of over a million immigrants.
[46] A bench of Sharad Bobde, A. S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian passed an interim order in favor of the government; government-arguments about India being not bound to follow international conventions, she has not explicitly ratified and Art.
[46][c][47] In 2005, a Supreme Court bench ruled Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act (IMDT) as unconstitutional while,[48] with reference to the Sinha Report,[49] maintained that the impact of the "aggression" represented by large-scale illegal migration from Bangladesh had made the life of the people of Assam and Tripura "wholly insecure and the panic generated thereby had created fear psychosis" in other north-eastern States.
[55] Rohingya adds economic pressure on Indian populace; due to their militant activities, they pose a security threat, especially in sensitive areas such as Jammu and West Bengal.
[17][18] In 2017,the Central Government filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that "Some Rohingyas sympathizing with many militant group's ideologies may be active in Jammu, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mewat and can be a potential threat to internal security.
The first BJP government came into power in 1998 and subsequently ordered the construction of the Indo-Bangladesh barrier to stop migrants and illegal trade along the border.
A lawyer named Ashwini Upadhyay filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the "Supreme Court of India" (SC) to identify and deport these.
In a response to this PIL, Delhi Police told the SC in July 2019 that nearly 500 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants had been deported in the preceding 28 months.
Following the Kerala Police unearthing, the international footprint of this operation, both the Intelligence Bureau and National Investigation Agency (NIA) have started probing.
[70] Kerala State Intelligence officials said they found that a large section of migrant labourers claiming to be from West Bengal or even Assam were actually from Bangladesh.
[71] Anti-national activities have been reported; the latest in which in August 2016, a native of West Bengal was arrested for insulting the national flag and he was later found to be an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh.
There is said to be a major racket at the borders of West Bengal and Assam with Bangladesh which provides illegal migrants with identity cards.
[76] All major political parties in Tripura favour the replication of National Register of Citizens of India (NRC) in their state too, although with some riders.
UP DGP Headquarters has prepared for an NRC for UP requires identification of new settlements around the railway stations, bus stands, roadsides and slum clusters where Bangladeshi and other foreign nationals could be illegally residing.
[12] Illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingyas are found in several cities of Uttar Pradesh (UP) by changing their identity and name, making it difficult to get an idea of their background.
A large number of illegal Bangladeshis resided under a fake identity in ashrams and rented houses in Mathura, Vrindavan, Govardhan and other places for several years without a passport or other valid documents.
They illegally crossed the border into India, acquire the fake identity, open bank accounts and used to send money from relatives back in their country.
[80][81] After the 2001 census, the anxiety somewhat reduced when the growth rates were found to have returned to near-normal levels, particularly in West Bengal, thus negating the fear that there was an unabated influx of migrants,[82][83] although some concern remains.
