Dilemma Of Desperate Deportées

When you leave a country, you leave much behind. Pardeep and Vijay Saini from Punjab, aged 22 and 19, smuggled themselves into the wheel-bay of a British Airways flight to Heathrow.

- C P SURENDRAN

When the plane reached an altitude of around 40,000 feet, the temperature around them would have plummeted to -40°C. About 10 hours later, as the plane was about to land, the wheel-bay opened and Vijay landed in England head first, dead on arrival. Pardeep was unconscious and taken to a hospital. By the time he recovered, he was both an illegal immigrant and a hero. He was about to be deported. Humanitarian groups intervened. Last heard, he was settled in Wembley, a family man. The Sainis' great escape from India took place in October 1996.

Cut to the present. Last Saturday, a third planeload of illegal immigrants apprehended in the US landed in Amritsar. There will be thousands more, forced to return to the land they fled for a better quality of life. The Sainis were lower middle class. The illegal immigrants returning from the US are mostly landed middle class: each would have spent up to ₹50 lakh to middlemen for taking the 'dunki' (donkey) route and settling abroad.

The donkey route is how the aspirants fly to visa-free countries such as Ecuador or Serbia, followed by overland journeys across multiple borders, including crossings through deserts, jungles or sea routes. Many migrants travel through Central America to reach the US via Mexico, or attempt entry into Europe through Turkey and the Balkans.