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MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BUSINESS
By M H AHSAN
Easy clearance. It’s the cushiest way to make the great getaway. The alleged role of lawmakers reveals yet another backdoor route in the multi-billion-dollar illegal immigration business.
The Hyderabad police has just launched a hunt for Anuradha Patel. Suspected to be from Ahmedabad, she is the woman who, masquerading as the wife of a Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) MLA, got a false passport made with the express idea of travelling to the US. An unsuspecting Andhra Pradesh chief minister is believed to have recommended grant of visa to the US consulate for the legislator and his wife. The MLA, Kasipeta Lingaiah, is now behind bars.
But Anuradha is not the only Gujarat resident seeking to fly out of India through Hyderabad. Earlier this month, one Vidhi Patel of Kheda was arrested at the immigration counters at Hyderabad airport, trying to pose as the Telugu wife of a techie based in the US. Vidhi was nabbed because she could not speak a word in Telugu or describe anything about Hyderabad. Also arrested was an employee of the state government’s protocol department who was trying to facilitate Vidhi’s movement through the immigration counters.
An estimated 300 people are smuggled out of Hyderabad every year, a large number of them of Gujarat origin, say police officials. After immigration officials got tough in Mumbai post 9/11, a significant chunk of the illegal human smuggling trade has shifted to the Deccan. Not surprising because Hyderabad has had a flourishing human export business for the last three decades — the stories of women and minors being smuggled to Gulf countries are legion. For travellers from Gujarat, a large Gujarati population in the city (both Hindu and Muslim) gives them a sense of comfort. Those seeking to fly to North American and European destinations are willing to pay up to Rs 40 lakh.
More importantly, the entire gamut of officialdom is ‘‘very cooperative’’. It all begins at the passport office. These are in poor shape all over the country, but in Hyderabad denizens have renamed it is as ‘horror house’. The office’s gates are kept closed, even as long queues of genuine passport seekers form outside the compound. But inside, agents and touts rule the roost and can get a passport made in a jiffy, even if it is through fraudulent means. This also implies cooperation from the local police who have to verify your antecedents and address.
With the number of persons seeking to emigrate increasing — and price not being a constraint for many — a need has been felt in recent years for agents who can take the job on a turnkey basis. That is, agents who can deliver end-to-end services: starting from making a false passport, securing a visa, and seeing off the emigrant at the airport. Agents realised that making a passport is the easier part of the job, but how to ensure visas to developed countries? Here unscrupulous public representatives have come in handy: they have realised that their elevated status can help them secure visas easily.
How many public representatives in Andhra are involved in the trade is not known. However, A Narendra and K Chandrasekhara Rao (both Union ministers till lately) are seriously accusing each other of being the kingpin of the human trade racket. Even as visastamped passports of two MPs of TRS have been found with Narendra, documents floating around suggest that many party MLAs may have lent their positions for misuse.
Dreams die hard. As the 73 men from Punjab, who were recently duped by employment agents selling visions of the US, found out. Instead of the Promised Land, they ended up in a gurdwara in Tehran after making a 1,500-mile journey on foot. The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness reports that some of them were so badly frostbitten that their toes had to be amputated.
But no horror story, it seems, is scary enough to hold the intrepid waves of desis from making the dash to phoren lands. And while l’affaire Babubhai Katara has been making headlines, it’s clearly only the tip of a hugely flourishing racket.
The ministry of overseas Indian affairs estimates that between 50,000 and one lakh people are smuggled out of the country every year, mostly from Punjab, Andhra, UP, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala. According to Interpol’s organised crime branch study titled Project Marco Polo, Indians are among the largest number of illegal immigrants coming into Western Europe. Many of them use Russia and other East European countries as a transit route. According to Russian Federation’s ministry of interior, there are over 300,000 transit immigrants from India as well as other South Asian countries currently holed up in Russia.
The growing illegal influx from India is causing serious concern in the UN as well. So much so that a full-fledged study on the ‘‘nature and extent’’ of illegal migration from Punjab to Europe is being commissioned now, says United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) representative Gary Lewis.
It’s a well-organised racket run by a network of touts, travel agents and recruiting agents, many of whom allegedly have access to PAs of MPs and top government officials. ‘‘Some emigration officials may also be involved — an operation on this scale would be impossible otherwise,’’ says a senior home ministry official, adding that surveillance has been stepped up on suspected personnel deployed at ports and airports after the Katara case.
There are about 1,800 registered travel agents and 4,700 recruiting agents in India. The number of bogus agents is much higher. ‘‘It is these agents who are mostly involved in human trafficking,’’ says Subhas Goyal, president of the Indian Tour Operators Association. In Punjab, a hotbed of illegal migration, police registered 594 cases against travel agents in 2005. In 2006, the figure rose to 751, and this year, 159 cases had already been registered till March.
The illegal network abroad stretches all along the transit routes in the form of sub-agents and conduits. And once an immigrant reaches his dream destination, there’s usually a friend or relative to help him merge into the new country. The most common method of getting a new identity is to ‘misplace’ one’s original travel documents and then apply for fresh papers.
"It is like a parallel economy,’’ says UNODC’s Gary Lewis, commenting on the big business of human trafficking. There are no fixed rates: customers are charged anything from Rs 8 lakh to Rs 40 lakh depending upon destination, kind of service and mode of transport. For example, some are first sent to Gulf countries through valid papers, en route to their final destinations in the US, Australia, South Africa, Canada and Europe. Illegal passage to these destinations costs a packet while the Gulf rate is much lower. However, travelling on a diplomatic passport is considered to be the safest and hence attracts a higher premium, since it usually ensures easy clearance at immigration counters.
How easy is it to fudge a diplomatic passport? Senior passport officials say the new machine-printed ones are tougher to manipulate than the old handwritten ones, some of which are still in circulation. However, Fake Inc seems to be keeping one step ahead. Recent raids in Mumbai and Punjab unearthed not just fake passports and visas but even emigration clearance stamps. ‘‘The fake ones just had a few dots missing,’’ says protectorgeneral of emigration B Panda. ‘‘And unless they are minutely examined they could well pass off as originals.’’
Deception is the name of the game and human traffickers thrive on it. It’s their human cargo that often ends up losing it all. A recent case involves a small farmer from Khela village in Ludhiana. He paid Rs 8 lakh to a travel agent for safe passage to Spain, only to end up in a Moroccan jail sans passport, money and food. Two of his copassengers died on the way due to starvation and illness. The hapless farmer finally returned to India after a tortuous journey lasting eight months.
Minister for overseas Indian affairs Vayalar Ravi says the problem isn’t only confined to illegal immigrants. ‘‘We have come across many cases where people with valid papers have also faced torture and harassment at the hands of unscrupulous agents. Recently we rescued a woman named Leema Arockia who was sent to Kuwait by a Mumbai-based agent called the National Tours and Travels for a home nurse job. But after landing in Kuwait she was forced to work as a housemaid. Our ministry intervened to bring her back to India. Similarly, there are many cases which are not reported.’’
Part of the problem is the low rate of prosecution — only nine cases in 2004, eight in 2005 and 21 in 2006. Conviction for human trafficking attracts a maximum of two years’ jail and a penalty of Rs 2,000. Ravi says there’s a proposal to amend the emigration Act 1983 for increasing the jail term to 10 years and penalty to Rs 1 lakh.
If some Indians are headed West, India still remains the land of opportunity for many in the neighbourhood. A hot potato politically, the influx issue is usually the subject of heated debate. But the official word is that the influx from Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka is declining.
“There’s no definite data, but conservative estimates peg the number at 10,000-20,000 annually. Bulk of the influx is from Bangladesh,’’ says a senior MHA official. ‘‘This is much lower than the numbers two years back, thanks largely to constant vigil at the border and regular monitoring of illegal migrants by all states.’’ According to a senior Delhi police official, two lakh Bangla nationals live in the NCR zone alone. ‘‘Many own ration cards, work as petty traders, fish and vegetable vendors, but some have also taken to crime.’’
Former CBI director U S Mishra points out that given our large porous borders, checking the influx poses a constant challenge for security forces. What makes the task even tougher is the fact that some immigrants simply take the legal route to enter the country and then stay back.
Unlike outbound traffic though, it’s not a big business for touts. According to a senior BSF official who was deployed on the Tripura border for three years, there are agents who are active in bringing people from outside and facilitating their stay here. ‘‘They also charge a fee for their service. But in most cases, the migrants are from poor families. Many of them get caught and are repatriated. But many more simply disappear after entering on tourist visas. They travel to far-flung areas like Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Delhi and UP and try to eke out a living for themselves. And since they do not look like foreigners they mingle easily with the crowd.’’
It’s a $32 billion global industry that smuggles millions of people — most of them women and girls — across international borders every year. That’s how big the problem of illegal human trafficking is. Recognised by UN as a global issue today, almost no country is immune to it. According to a 2006 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report (Trafficking In Persons: Global Patterns), there are 127 countries where human trafficking originates, along with 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries.
And yet, few countries are even willing to acknowledge that the problem affects them, thus hampering global efforts at combating it. While UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa admits worldwide estimates are difficult to pinpoint, he says the number could run into millions. A US state department report estimates that 6,00,000-8,00,000 people may be illegally smuggled across borders annually (about 17,500 end up in the US alone). The majority are victims of sexual exploitation and as many as 50% are minors.
Human trafficking is also on the rise in Africa and South Asia. Experts say about half of all victims are children, many of whom are sold by their own families. Unicef estimates that West and Central Africa alone account for about 200,000 children trafficked annually, while 250,000 women and children come from southeast Asia. Russia is a major source of women trafficked globally. The ILO estimates that 20% of the five million illegal immigrants in Russia are victims of forced labour. Russia is also a hub for child sex tourism and a significant destination and transit country for persons smuggled into neighbouring countries, the Gulf, Europe, Asia, and North America. However, global trends indicate that Asia tops the list in child trafficking.
The UK is one of the favourite destination countries for illegal migration, including from India, especially Punjab. The country has stepped up enforcement efforts to detect and prevent illegal migration, says Kitty Tawakley, deputy head of communications at the British High Commission in India. “Efforts are also on to raise awareness about the problem, particularly in Punjab, and promote legal routes for migration.’’
A well-organised business, human trafficking is estimated to be worth $10 billion in immediate profits alone,
apart from linkages with money laundering and drug trafficking. UNODC suggests a multi-layered attack on this organised cartel: Demolishing markets that generate profit for traffickers; addressing the demand for cheap labour; dealing with poverty and lack of opportunities that create a willing pool of potential victims, and targeting intermediaries.
Weak laws and poor international cooperation make things easier for traffickers. Prosecutions leading to convictions have been few, with the Netherlands, US and Ukraine leading the list. The US has seen convictions in such cases rise by a whopping 109% in five years (2001-2005), according to a 2005 department of justice report.
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