After US, New Zealand tightens visa rules, belying PM’s boast of ‘increased respect for Indian passport’

Last month, on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said, “The strength and respect of Indian passport have increased all over the world. The world now stands with those who have an Indian passport," he said.

The Prime Minister had said that every country in the world now accepts India and looks forward towards it believing that it has the capacity to take all along.

However, the ground reality seems to be different, with New Zealand joining the US in tightening norms for granting entry to Indians.

In a swift move, the New Zealand government has changed the provision of the visa. Earlier the waiting time was one to two months, but now a minimum of 8-9 month takes for the same task.

Even as the time frame has been increased, the NZ authorities have adopted a tougher stance on the partnership visa category, insisting that the applicants must had lived together (live-in partner) for being eligible. While a couple does not need to be married in order to be reunited on a partnership visa in New Zealand, partners must prove they have lived together for 12 months.

It would be wrong to assume that the government bureaucrats, especially the visa-issuing officials, would be unaware of Indian cultural and marriage norms and ethos.

The situation has turned alarming: Indians residing in New Zealand residents are reportedly suffering from mental health issues and some are returning to India due to lengthy delays in partnership visa processing.

In another significant development, NZ has differentiated between skilled and unskilled workers in the matter of parents from India visiting their sons. Applicants will no longer have the option to apply based on their settlement funds or a guaranteed lifetime income. The income levels that sponsors need to meet has been increased.

The current median income is NZD $53,040. From 2020 the sponsor will need to earn NZD $106,080 before tax to sponsor 1 parent and NZD $159,120 to sponsor 2 parents. This obviously implied that parents of non-skilled workers getting lesser salary wouldn’t be able to visit NZ.

Meanwhile, the US has tightened H1B visa norms amid a significant peak drop in the number of US visas being issued to such an extent that some Indian software engineers are evidently trying their luck to enter the land of opportunity via illegal routes in Mexico and Hungary.

A couple of weeks back, Mexican immigration authorities deported 311 Indians – 310 men and one woman – which is the largest ever deportation in the Mexican history of the trans-Atlantic deportation by air.

A majority of the deported Indians, in the 18-35 age group, were caught over a period of several months in the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Baja California, Veracruz, Chiapas, Sonora, Mexico City, Durango, and Tabasco. The Mexican authorities alleged that these Indians had illegally reached the country over the last few months to enter the United States.

India has been urging the US to be more liberal in issuing H1B visas to engineers and IT professionals but to no avail.

Owing to this, tech companies headquartered in the US are facing a dearth of talented software engineers since the H1B visa norms were tightened.

This may have led Indian techies to take dangerous routes usually taken by undocumented immigrants to reach the US. The most popular route to enter the US illegally for Indians in Mexico is to hitch rides and reach the western city of Guadalajara.

The other popular spot for Indians to enter the US illegally is Budapest in Hungary. US officials recently uncovered a fraudulent scheme that has allowed foreign nationals to enter the US under false identities, via using vulnerabilities in Hungary's passport system.

According to Pew Research, at the US-Mexico border, there have been more apprehensions of non-Mexicans than Mexicans every year since fiscal 2016.

"Non-Mexicans accounted for 62 per cent of apprehensions at the southwest border in fiscal 2018, marking the third consecutive year in which they outnumbered Mexicans," said the report.