On February 5th 2025, a U.S. military plane landed in Amritsar to repatriate roughly 100 Indian nationals who had illegally entered the United States.
This flight is the latest sign that India, which was classified as a non-cooperative country in deportation procedures as recently as November by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is paying close attention to immigration issues in the U.S.-India relationship.
In addition to the latest deportation flight, which brings the total India has accepted from the United States to four since 2024, India has also pledged to repatriate 18,000 of its citizens who have been illegally residing in the United States.
Illegal immigration is not the only issue simmering in this realm of U.S.-India relations. As 2024 drew to a close, a sharp divide among leading Republicans over the H-1B visa program —a legal framework enabling highly skilled immigrants to work in the United States and potentially pursue naturalization – erupted on social media. What began as a critique of immigration policy quickly escalated into a broader, racially charged debate over the prevalence of Indian immigrants entering the U.S. through the H-1B visa program.
Some within Trump’s inner circle, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have defended high-skilled visa programs that Indians use in large numbers, and President-elect Trump himself also weighed in, reaffirming his support for these visas as a vital component of immigration policy. Nevertheless, these instances highlight the increasingly complex role immigration plays in the U.S.-India bilateral relationship.
India has long viewed the diaspora as a strategic asset, an economic boon, and politically beneficial but distinct from India itself. As Aparna Pande wrote in her 2017 book From Chanakya to Modi: The Evolution of India’s Foreign Policy, Indian leaders have a history of celebrating the diaspora’s achievements as a source of national pride. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously described the history of Indian emigration as a “romance.” Beyond symbolic value, the diaspora has delivered tangible benefits: in 2023 alone, India received $120 billion in remittances, representing over 3% of the country’s GDP.
Perhaps because the diaspora was originally seen as a soft power and economic tool, Indian policy initially drew a clear line between India and its diaspora in order to head off any potential complications with host governments. Indian officials in the mid-2oth century encouraged Indians abroad to strive to integrate into their adopted countries rather than attempting to maintain dual allegiances. This stance became so entrenched that children born to Indian nationals abroad are not automatically granted Indian citizenship and are prohibited from holding dual citizenship.
While Indian migration to the U.S. was relatively low for the first half of the 2oth century, the number of Indian immigrants arriving to the U.S. began to exponentially increase around 1980. Today, Indian nationals are the second largest foreign born group residing in the U.S., second only to Mexican nationals.
Since the early 2000s, two primary factors have shaped how Indian immigration influences U.S.-India relations. The first is the method by which Indian immigrants arrive in the United States. While the Indian American diaspora is far from monolithic, it is predominantly affluent and highly educated, largely due to the widespread use of employment-based immigration pathways. In contrast to the 17% of all legal permanent residents in the U.S. who immigrate via employment-based routes, 37% of Indian immigrants have utilized this pathway.
This dynamic prompted Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar to remark at an international forum last summer that the H-1B visa has done more to transform U.S.-India relations than the end of the Cold War. The significance of these pathways has also spurred the formation of an organized Indian lobby in American politics, a marked shift from India’s earlier policy of discouraging its diaspora from engaging in distinctly Indian political issues. Reflecting this shift, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised Indian concerns over H-1B legislation during a private meeting with President Obama, and the Indian government has already commented publicly on the current H-1B controversy.
The dynamics of Indian migration are also closely tied to changes in who is immigrating from India. As legal pathways become more difficult for Indians to access due to the per-country cap on green cards that disproportionately impact Indians, many are opting for irregular migration channels, such as crossing the northern and southern land borders to claim asylum.
This shift has led to a range of challenges for both India and the United States. Unlike earlier waves of Indian immigration, a significant proportion of irregular migrants now originate from Punjab. According to one estimate, while 8% of Indian-Americans speak Punjabi, it is the primary language of 32% of recently arrived Indian migrants involved in immigration court proceedings.
Many of these migrants are Sikhs seeking asylum on grounds of political, social, or religious persecution in India. This trend directly undermines the Indian government’s long-standing goal of leveraging its diaspora to project a positive and apolitical image of the country. In response, the Indian government has begun to acknowledge and push back against this growing phenomenon.
This wave of irregular Indian migration comes at an especially challenging time. In the U.S., opposition to irregular immigration has become a prominent domestic political issue. The situation places the Trump administration in a delicate position—balancing the need to address illegal border crossings with the risk of embarrassing a key ally. Although Indian nationals account for only a small percentage of irregular immigration overall, they are now the largest group of nationals recorded in irregular immigrant encounters in the U.S.-Canada border and account for over 25% of these encounters since October 2024.
These border crossings are unfolding against the backdrop of a diplomatic dispute between India and Canada, sparked by Canada’s 2023 accusation that India assassinated a Sikh separatist figure living on Canadian soil. Meanwhile, the U.S. is quietly grappling with its own tensions with India over the Sikh diaspora, including what it alleges is a similar Indian-backed assassination plot towards a Sikh separatist that was to take place on U.S. soil. Indian officials, on the other hand, have voiced frustration over what they perceive as inadequate U.S. action against political violence targeting Hindu Indian Americans, allegedly carried out by supporters of Sikh separatism.
To ensure immigration remains a positive force in U.S.-India relations both countries must take proactive steps to mitigate mounting political tensions. India can cooperate more fully with the ongoing U.S. investigation into the assassination plot. Similarly, the U.S. can allocate additional resources to tracking and addressing hate crimes against Hindu Indian Americans, demonstrating a commitment to bringing offenders to justice and alleviating Indian concerns about perceived American indifference to their security.
Beyond security concerns, both countries can take meaningful steps to address cultural anxieties surrounding immigration. In the long term, India would benefit from re-engaging with its diaspora in a more politically neutral manner. Meanwhile the U.S. should consider raising the 7% per-country green card caps, which effectively act as de-facto discrimination against Indian nationals.
By taking these mutual steps, India and the U.S. can ensure that immigration remains a bridge strengthening their relationship rather than a divide that strains it.