Immigration and Emigration policies

Immigration and Emigration policies
This is a history of immigration policy in Britain, Canada, Australia, US and EU (focusing on Indians) + Overview of Indias emigration policy.
Britain: Evolution of restrictive Immigration Policies
The Second World War marks a crucial watershed in the history of the 'formation of Indian diaspora, particularly in the developed world. The largest number of Indian migrants in this period went to the UK. Why?

* experiences of war, partition and independence provided the initial motivation for the postwar exodus

* nexus of kinship and friendship enabled many to tap the economic opportunities that were becoming available more and more in the labour markets abroad.


Lifting of restriction in the New World and Antipodes
Prior to the-Second World War- anti-Asian sentiment was the characteristic of immigration policy in North America, Canada and Australia.
Canada:

* An Order of 1947 allowed landing for non-immigrants who had served in the Armed Forces and were honourably discharged, provided they were not persons of Asiatic origin.

* After the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited Canada, Indo-Canadians were granted the right to vote.

* The explicitly racist provisions in the lmmigration Act were changed, lest Canada's image abroad as a humane and peace-loving country got tarnished.

* In 1962, new regulations to the Act were introduced, prohibiting the use of race, colour, and national origin as criteria for the selection of immigrants.

* It facilitated increasing immigration of the skilled, educated and qualified Indians.
Australia: too gave up its 'white Australian policy' in the 1960s, attracting talent of the non-white Indians
US:

* lndian immigration was mainly characterized by the presence of illiterate labourers- those working on the Pacific coast lumber mills, docks etc.

* a few educated Indians too, who were political refugees or students. For example, amongst the students who were organizing lndians against the British rule in lndia were the son of the Maharaja of Baroda at Harvard and the son of Rabindranath Tagore at Illinois. In fact, Tagore had himself visited the U.S. and praised America for its international leadership. But he later denounced the Asian exclusions and refused to return to the US because of 'utter lack of freedom' there.

* After WWII, things changed. Roosevelt himself, as President of the US, said, 'Statutory discrimination against lndians now serves no useful purpose and [is] incongruous and inconsistent with the dignity of both our peoples'.

* 1946 US lmmigration Act- which ended almost 30 years of exclusion of lndians by setting an annual number of 100 as their national quota. [for Chinese, barriers lifted in 1943]

* Objective: to ameliorate the growing antagonism of lndians towards American troops that were still stationed in lndia after the War had ended.

* Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited US in October 1949- lndian immigration changed from unskilled workers to highly skilled and the professional Indians.

* In the three decades that followed, lndians acquired the status of being amongst the highest-educated, highly-professional and highest-earning model minority ethnic groups in the US.
The umbilical cord of colonial legacy that lndians had long nurtured with Britain was thus eventually snapped, first when Canada and subsequently the US in the 'New World' became the final destination of the migrating lndian professional masses through the 1960s and 1970s, there being a scramble for them amongst the other developed countries, ironically including the Great Britain too. The largely unskilled and semiskilled migrants too found a new destination in the newly developing oil-rich countries of the gulf in West Asia, and a large number of lndians went there as temporary construction workers, followed by some professionals as well.
EU:
TCNs= Third Country Nationals= workers from outside the Union
1999- Amsterdam Treaty promised to promote the free-movement and employment rights of TCNs.
-centralized European institutions (like European Commission and the Council of Ministers) were given clear mandate to enact policies directly affecting the migration of non-EU nationals
-The treaty extended the TEC anti-discrimination clause to encompass all forms of discrimination on account of racial or ethnic origin, religion, age, sex, disability, or sexual orientation.
However, despite such treaties, harmonization and homogenization of immigration policies affecting the entry and stay of TCNs across countries of the EU are yet to take place, although many countries like Germany, France, Denmark, and the Netherlands etc. are already in the fray to attract Indian talent.
Emigration policy in India
Sending countries like lndia have from time to time adopted policies designed to counter the exploitation of their citizens abroad and/or the draining of their valuable human resources that takes place through growing emigration.
These can be grouped into four broad issue based policy types:
Restrictive (to restrict emigration), compensatory(to compensate for the loss due to emigration), restorative (to encourage reverse migration) and developmental(bridging the development gap between the developing home country and the developed destination country)

Conclusion:

* No well-defined immigration rule or law per se in India, either for the skilled or the unskilled.

* the Overseas lndian Citizenship (OIC) =the dual citizenship conferred to the lndian diaspora by the lndian government in 2006 is an important landmark in redefining the contours of immigration policy in the new millennium - not merely for lndia but for an "interconnected' world as well.

* For the lndian diaspora in the Gulf - those who send large remittances back home but can never hope to become naturalized citizens of those countries because of restrictive regimes there, the lndian government announced at the fourth Pravasi Bhartiya Divas which took place in 2006 that their demand for voting rights to be exercised from abroad was under serious consideration
UN Report of the Global Commission on lnternational Migration 2005: concluded

* The international community has failed to capitalize on the opportunities and meet the challenges associated with migration and therefore new approaches are required to correct the situation

* if the bendits of international migration are to be maximized and its adverse consequences minimized, then migration policies should be based On shared objectives

* the traditional distinction between skilled and unskilled workers is in certain respects an unhelpful one, as it fails to do justice to the complexity of international migration. While they may have different levels of educational achievement, all of them could be legitimately described as essential workers
References:
IGNOU notes
Wikipedia
Name: Sweety Gupta