By Sumarbin Umdor
There are different types of immigrants coming to our state and they can be characterised as legal and illegal, skilled and unskilled, permanent and temporary immigrants and various permutation of the above characteristics. Which of the above do we see as a danger to the interest of the indigenous population and whose entry and movements do we want to regulate and control? Surely we are not against the skilled immigrants who enter the state legally and bring in expertise and provide valuable services to us. Then we have the legal unskilled immigrants who come from other regions in the country to fill in the temporary shortage in labour market in certain sectors of the economy. The movements of these immigrants can be monitored through an effective work permit system and other labour policies.
To me the influx debate should be focused squarely on the issue of illegal immigrants who sneak into the state from across the border and from Assam. How do we control these immigrants once they enter the state? In countries with this problem, substantial numbers of illegal immigrants are found to be employed in few sectors of the economy. For example, illegal immigrants are mostly employed in agriculture, gardening and restaurants in USA, as carers and house cleaners in Israel and as bar hostesses in Japan. Another important point regarding the movement of illegal immigrants is their tendency to concentrate in areas with large population of former migrants from same community. Such sectors and areas can be identified in the state and action taken to evict the illegal immigrants or even those who are working in the state with proper work permit. Strong action will deter future illegal entry to the state.
There are those who argue that the scale of the immigration in the state is not as grave as the tribal population at 86.1 per cent in 2011 has actually increased (it was 85.9 percent in 2001). This point of the tribal population being in majority in the state is a red herring as it is in no way connected to the issue of illegal immigration. There is enough evidence to establish the continuous flow of illegal immigrants from neighbouring country which is fuelling population growth in the region leading to significant alteration in the demographic profile of Assam and Tripura. This year the UN has described the movement from Bangladeshi to India as the ‘single largest bilateral stock of international migrants’ in the eastern hemisphere and also in the developing world. It reported that in 2013 India was home to 3.2 million Bangladeshi residents who have settled in the country. Only last year, the Union Minister of State for Home admitted of the gravity of the problem when he said that over 1.4 million Bangladeshi having illegally cross over to India within the last decade alone. Before this in 2001, the Group of Ministers on National Security had pointed out that we have about ’15 million Bangladeshis, 2.2 million Nepalese…..living in India and that this has brought demographic changes in the border belts of West Bengal, several districts in Bihar, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya. Even states like Delhi, Maharashtra and Rajasthan have been affected by this’. Many independent studies have also reported on the large scale illegal immigrations to the region. For a microscopic community like ours sharing a 443 Km long international boundary with Bangladesh it will be unwise to ignore these facts and take solace in census report of high percentage tribal population.
The handling of the ILP issue by the government leaves much to be desired. In the first place the government should have appointed an expert panel to provide it with some estimates of the magnitude and distribution of illegal immigration in the state and also to suggest policy measures to control this problem. The report of such an expert panel should have then been placed for discussion and consideration as this would have guided the discussion on well-reasoned facts based information and not on emotion. Even now, the proposal to introduce tenancy law does no good in making the government appear serious in handling the issue as generally a tenancy law is more to do with regulating rent and prevention of wrongful eviction of tenants-the legal ones. Sometime back there was a news item in ST in which it was reported that there about 52 existing laws and policies that the state and ADCs have enacted to regulate/control influx of immigrants. I remember reading somewhere that ‘laws are like scarecrows. Once the birds realise they are harmless, they shit on them’. May be this is what is wrong with us. We are quick to make laws and policies but fail miserably in implementing them. (The author teaches Economics in NEHU)