Boostrapping India : ID.03 - Expelling illegal immigrants out of India
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Proposed administrative procedure
ID.03   -   Procedures   to   stop/expel   illegal   immigrantion

Pre-requiste readings :
  • ID.01 : Creating National ID System
  • RLPP : Procedure to recall officers


      Contents

    1. Problem of Illegal Immigration
    2. Solution?
    3. Stopping illegal immigrants
    4. Indian employers hiring illegal immigrants
    5. Expelling existing illegal immigrants
    6. ID.03 : Procedure to stop/expel illegal immigrants
    7. Advantages of ID.03
    8. Draft of the act to create procedure ID.03

    Problem of Illegal Immigration

    There are some 1 - 1.5 crores (i.e. 10-15 million) illegal immigrants in India. Mostly they are from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal. Of these, immigrants from Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka DO NOT pose any threat against security and integrity of India. We ONLY need to "regulate" the immigrantion from these countries i.e. keep proper records about their entry/exits, their addresses, assets etc.

    But immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh pose a danger to security and even integrity of India. As per estimates, there some over 1 crore (10 million) Bangladeshies in India. While most are just economic immigrants, a large number of them are habitual criminals with terrorist links. Worse, they are concentrated within small areas of North East states. In some states like Asam, they are over 15% of total population, and in Tripura, their population perhaps exceeds 25%. In some border districts of West Bangal, the Bangladeshi immigrants now almost form a majority.

    It is clear that presence of such a large number of illegal immigrants is a burden on Indian economy and society. But how is it a threat to security and integrity? It is quite possible, that once the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh reach a certain threshold in North Eastern states, they will start a secessionist insurgency against the Indian State, and try to accede the regions with Bangladesh. It is also likely that the secessionists will get full support from government/military of Bangladesh as well as several countries such as Pakistan, Suadi Arabia and some Western countries. Now the land area connecting West Bengal and North East states (so called chicken neck area) is only a few miles wide track of land. So moving a large number of soldiers/ammunition will become difficult if Bangladeshi govt/military becomes openly supports the secessionists and takes hostile actions against Indian Army.

    In Kashmir terrorists are small in number, just a few thousand. And so our soldiers can keep the situation under control. But in North East, the number of Bangladeshi immigrants is in lakhs and lakhs, and may soon reach above 1 cr. Now most of the immigrants will NOT get openly involved in any violent insurgency. But even if 5% or even 1% of them take arms, it is very possible that a large number of remaining Bangladeshies will provide full logistic/covert support to the violent ones. So compared to Kashmir, there will be MORE violent insurgents and many many more local support providers. IOW, if Bangladeshies in North East start a secession movements, the problem will become several times worse than Kashmir.

    So presence of a large number of Bangladeshi immigrants in India, and perticularly in North East states presents a burden on economy and a threat to security/integrity of India.


    Solution?

    The solution I have proposed has three parts
    1. stopping more illegal immigrants from coming into India using 1)ID systems and 2)laws to punish employers who hire illegals.

    2. imprisoning an illegal immigrant, and then expelling him from India after a court trial

    3. in case it becomes difficult for the court to decide if a suspect is Bangladeshi or Indian, but there is some doubt that he is indeed a Bangladeshi, then ensure that suspected illegal immigrant or perhaps a citizen cannot stay in North East state or a border district, but may stay in rest of India.

    3rd option is NOT an option I really like. I would like to have a procedure that makes it possible to expel almost ALL illegal immigrants from ALL parts of India. But due to 2-3 decades of TOTAL negligence of our Ministers, officers and intellectuals, there are lakhs and crores of illegal immigrants in India, who had been living for several years/decades. To that, add the fact that we still DO NOT have an ID system which will enable a court to decide objectively if a sucpected immigrant is immigrant or a local. In such case, it will be next to impossible for the court to firmly decide if a suspected immigrant is illegal immigrant or a local.

    So say the officer in-charge of expelling illegal immigrants presents a person, suspected of being an illegal immigrant, before the court. And there are some "not fully verifiable" evidences that show that the accused is indeed an illegal immigrants, and some "not fully verifiable" evidences to show that he is a local. Now what option do the courts have?
    1. If the court decides to give maximal benefit of doubt, almost all illegal immigrants will end up staying in India. Such procedure is useless.
    2. If the court decides to give minimal benefit of doubt, then we will end up imprisoning/expelling a large number of actual citizens. I would call it as "friendly fire", it is unethical, but unavoidable. Now is there a way to reduce this "friendly fire"?
    There are two reasons why we need to expel illegal immigrants from India --- first they are burden on economy and second their presence in large number in North East States and West Bengal Bangladesh border is a threat to integrity of India.

    Now I propose a "way out" that reduces "friendly fire", and reduces threat to integrity but not the burden on economy. The "way out" is to provide THREE options to the court
    1. If the court strongly decide that accused is a local citizen, they can declare him as a citizen.

    2. If the court strongly decide that accused is indeed an illegal immigrant, the officer will imprison/expel him.

    3. If the court see some "not fully verifiable" on both sides, the accused can stay in India as citizen, but NOT live in North East states or border areas.

    So the 3rd option has a minus point that several illegal immigrants will be able to stay in India, and will thus continue to be a burden on Indian economy as well as society. But plus point is that it drastically reduces "friendly fires" (i.e. actual citizens getting marked as illegals and then getting imprisoned and expelled out of India) and ensures that illegal immigrants' concetration in North East will become very low, and thus the threat of secessionist movement becomes zero. Hence, I see a case for this third option.


    Stopping illegal immigrants

    Currently say there are 1cr illegal Bangladeshies and Pakistanies in India. The existing illegal immigrants will give birth to say 2-3 lakh children, who are also illegal immigrants, and need to be expelled. To that, add 2 lakh to 3 lakh additional illegal immigrants arriving in India. So overall, the population of illegal immigrants is increasing by 4 to 6 lakhs per year.

    So if we stop the flow of new illegal immigrants, that alone reduces the problem by say half. And reducing the flow of illegal is EASIER than expelling existing ones. And in any case, stopping illegal employees from coming into India is a pre-requiste, as unless we stop the entry, the expulsion has no meaning --- the illegal immigration who has been expelled can just walk back into India again.

    So stopping illegal immigrants from entering into India is a pre-requiste.

    The procedure     ID.01 enables the citizens to stop illegal immigrants to a considerable extent.

    How?

    Once everyone is registered in ID.01, a new entry is created ONLY for those who are new born. And entry is created ONLY if BOTH parents (or atleast one parent) is registered in the system. When resources become available, the system will also note DNA code, and so the new entry's DNA will be matched against parents' DNAs to further ensure that new entry is indeed their child. So an adult immigrant will be simply unable to enter into India and get registration into the system, and get a valid ID.

    Now as more and more transactions become "ID required" type transactions, it would become nearly impossible for an illegal immigrant, who will be ID-less to work. This will demotivate them to enter into India.


    Indian employers hiring illegal immigrants

    In addition, I propose a procedure that would empower the courts to fine organized employers who deliberately hire illegal immigrants. This will de-motivate the employers from giving shelters to illegal immigrants and thus further reduce illegal immigration. I have described this procedure later.

    Now in defence of employers, I can correctly say that as of today, employers have NO means to verify if a person is legal/illegal. Now, some employers may be KNOWINGLY hiring illegal. But nevertheless, citizenry has no right to punish an employer, as long as means of verifying legality are provided.

    So essentially my proposed procedure, which provided ways and means to citizenry to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants, can be enacted ONLY after procedure ID.01 is enacted. Once ID.01 is enacted, employers can be required to verify legality before providing employement.


    Expelling existing illegal immigrants

    This is the most difficult step. As per estimates given by Home Mistry, there are some 1 cr illegal immigrants in India. Now the officers-in-charge of expelling them will NOT be able to trace out ALL of them, but say they trace out some 80%-90% i.e. 80-90 lakhs. But in many cases, the officers may also end up accusing wrong persons. So say officers will accuse some 90-110 lakhs persons of being illegal immigrants, of which say 80-90 lakhs are actually illegal immigrants and 10-20 lakhs are bonafide citizens.

    Now each accused deserves a fair OPEN trial before he is acquitted or imprisoned/expelled. Basically, this would mean 1-1.2cr (10-12 million) trials. Can our existing legal system dispose so many trials within say 1 year or even 3-5 years? or even 20 years? NO. Say one court takes 2.5 to 3 days to decide the fate of a case. Then one court can decide at most 100 cases in a year. So to dispose 1.2cr cases in 1 year, we would need 1,20,00,000/100 = 1,20,000 i.e. 1.2 lakh courts. If we want to dispose the cases within 3 years, then also we need 40000 courts, SPECIALLY for this task. Now we may not need so may trials, as once the courts start imprisoning the illegal immigrants, many illegal immigrants would return back to their countries. But still, we will need at least 5000 to 10000 courts SPECIFICALLY for this task. Now as of today i.e. Mar-2004, we have only 14000 courts in India, who are supposed handle almost ALL types of cases. And they already have a backlog of 3.3 cr cases. Suffices to say, that existing courts cannot take the load of dealing with the task of imprisoning/expelling illegal immigration.

    In addition, existing legal system, which is based on judge system, is plaugued with judge-lawyer nexus problem. Say a judge is made in-charge of deciding status of an accused. Then within 3-4 months, he will develop nexuses with the local lawyers and brokers. So it is quite possible that almost all immigrants will escape using such nexuses.

    The ONLY known solution to this nexus problem is the Jury System. In addition, Jury System also simplifies the task of creating 10000 to 25000 courts SPECIALLY doing the tasks of screeing the citizenships of accused.

    So all in all, to stop/expel illegal immigrants out of India, or to at least reduce their concentration in North Eastern and border areas, within a time span of say 3-5 years, we need an administrative procedures
    1. to stop existing inflow of illegal immigrants
    2. create a staff of officers who can arrest individuals who are likely to be illegal immigrants
    3. A Jury Trial to acquit the person, imprison/expel him or restrict him to districts except NE/borders.
    The above steps will reduce the problem of illegal immigration.


     ID.03 : Procedure to stop/expel illegal immigrants

    Following are the procedures I propose :
    1. The PM will appoint a Home Minister (as today)

    2. The Home Minister will appoint an SIO (State Immigration Officer) for every State for expelling illegal immigrants.

    3. The citizens of the State can replace the SIO using RLPP. Basically, RLPP is a fast, nexusless and inexpensive procedure by which citizens can replace/recall an officer. For details of this procedure, please click here.

    4. In states except North East states and border districts, SIO will appoint a DIO (District Immigration Officer), whom citizens may replace using RLPP. In case of North East states and border districts, SIO will directly manage the duties.

    5. The SIO/DIO will hire staff to trace the illegal immigrants. The citizen may expel any staff member using a Jury Trial if the need be.

    6. If SIO/DIO of his staff suspects that a person is an illegal immigrant, they will take the necessary details of the accused (photograph, finger prints, blood profile, retina scan, DNA prints etc) and then present him before a Jury.

    7. The SIO/DIO and accused can present evidences before a Jury of 12 randomly chosen citizens from the entire state (in case of NE states and border districts) or the district (in case of other district).

    8. The Jurors will examine the evidences, witnesses and arguments for at least 2 days. The trial will end 1 day after over 6 Jurors declare that they have heard sufficient arguments/evidences to decide the case.

    9. After after examining the evidences, and deliberations, each Juror will give one of the three verdicts
      1. The accused is a bonafide citizen of India, and should be horably acquitted
      2. It is not possible decide the citizenship of accused from the given facts
      3. The accused is an illegal immigrant, and should be imprisoned for X years, and then expelled from India. (The maximum imprisonment can be 3 years)
      4. If the Juror refuses to disclose the choice, it will be assumed as (2).
    10. If over 8 out 12 Jurors decide that the person is citizen of India, the accused will be a free man. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors decide that he is illegal immigrant, the accused will be imprisoned from the months approved by over 8 Jurors, and then expelled out of India. In any other case, he can stay in India except in North East states and border districts.

    11. If an employer's turn-over is larger than certain amount, as decided by the Home Minister, and is hiring the person as employee or contractor, he will be required to inform the ID of the employee/contractor to SIO/DIO. If employee is illegal, then eighter his ID's serial number is fictitious, or he is using someone else's ID#. In any case, SIO/DIO will be able to detect it soon, and take action.

    12. If en employer is hiring employees without reporting IDs to SIO/DIO, the SIO/DIO may present evidences before the Jury, and the Jurors may decide the fine based on number of illegal immigrants they think he had hired in past 1 year. The fine will be maximum of Rs 500,000 and upto 3 years of imprisonment.


    Advantages of ID.03

    The procedure will ensure that citizens of India can expel illegal immigrants residing in India and will be also able to punish employers who are hiring illegal employees and thus reduce economic motives for illegal immigration.


    Draft of the act to create procedure ID.03

    I have drafted the text for the law needed to enact ID.03. To see the draft, please click here.

    The citizens will have to pass the draft in the Parliament to enact this procedure.

         Now citizens can ask MPs to pass this Act. But IMO, it will be wiser for citizens to first enact procedure LM.03, and then use LM.03 to pass this ID.03 draft WITHOUT any help from MPs. To know about procedure LM.03, please click here.


    If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.




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