Indians Merely 2% Of Total Illegal Immigrants In US

Punjabi speakers, the research paper says, remain the largest pool (66%) of Indian immigrants applying for asylum followed by Hindi (14%), English (8%) and Gujarati (7%).

- Prashant Jha

WASHINGTON: Indians constituted merely two per cent of the total number of illegal immigrants in the US, and the absolute number of illegal Indian immigrants in America dropped from 560,000 in 2015 to 220,000 in 2022, according to the last publicly available data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). While official data for 2023 isn't available, this means that the proportion of illegal Indian immigrants as a part of the larger Indian population in America dropped from 16.6% in 2015 to 6.9% in 2022.

Even as the stock of illegal Indian migrants in the US dipped, their flow has increased in recent years. The number of illegal border apprehensions of Indians jumped from 1,000 in 2020 to 43,000 in 2023. The number of asylum applications from Indians surged from 5,000 in 2021 to 51,000 in 2023. There was a shift in entry of these illegal migrants from exclusively the US's southwestern border with Mexico to its northern border with Canada. And Punjabi-speakers constituted the largest proportion of illegal immigrants.

These are the key findings of a new paper, authored by political scientist Devesh Kapur and PhD scholar Abby Budiman, published by the Johns Hopkins University on Monday.