‘Donkey route’ to U.S. drawing Indian migrants
JALANDHAR, India — Billboards crowd the small lanes of this northern Indian city, calling out to those who dream of a different future. A sign in the Punjabi language beckons: “Let’s Go To America.”
An immigration agent, driving on an overpass amid the sea of billboards, reflected on the city’s brisk migrant business. “Most of these agents would have tried sending clients through an illegal route to the U.S.,” said the Punjabi agent, adding he himself had sent 60 such clients along routes that hopscotch through various countries before arriving in Mexico or Canada, where the migrants walk across the U.S. border.
Indians have come to make up the third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2021 estimates, which put the number of such Indians at 725,000. India is the only country in the top five outside Latin America, and since 2011, the number of undocumented Indians in the United States has grown by 70%, the fastest growth of all nationalities. Figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show the number of undocumented Indian immigrants increased the fastest between 2020 and 2023.
The immigrants are often from middle-class families. They frequently sell their land to pay for the journey — which families say can run $40,000 to $100,000 per person — hoping working in America will triple their wages, produce a secure future for their children and yield a higher value in the marriage market for their sons.
These migrants are “not the desperately poor” and often come from the most prosperous states in India, said Devesh Kapur, a South Asian studies professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on the Indian diaspora. But faced with a shortage of attractive jobs and a struggling agricultural sector, they find the wealth they have in India is not enough to transform their lives, and this creates “a culture of migration,” he said.
The migrants pass along a chain of countries chosen because of easy visa requirements, according to interviews with more than a dozen families and their agents in three states in western India. In each place, agents provide the migrants with their next plane ticket as they move closer to Latin America or Canada. From there, depending on how much they pay, they walk or are transported to the U.S. border. If asked questions, they are told to say they don’t feel safe in India.
The trek — along what’s called the “donkey route,” after the Punjabi idiom dunki, which refers to hopping — can involve up to a dozen countries and take over a year.
“The danger of the route is not worth it,” said L.K. Yadav, a senior police official in Punjab who set up a team to investigate donkey cases. The country’s youth, he said, have been “misguided with distorted facts” about the journey.
Gursewak Singh, 28, said he spent nine months last year waiting in a New Delhi hotel, then one month in a Dubai hotel and, finally, one month in the Istanbul airport, with hundreds of other Indians waiting for their agents’ directions. “We were like birds in a cage. The airport lobby area became like a village meeting place,” he said. Then, Gursewak recounted, his bag, with his passport, was stolen in the airport.
It was a costly setback. To pay for the journey, he said, he had sold an acre of farmland for $30,000 and raised $6,000 more by mortgaging two other acres and borrowing money from relatives.
On a recent day back home in India’s Haryana state, he opened Snapchat on his phone. It was filled with images of friends who have reached the United States, dancing at the Mexican border while their families back home set off fireworks and cut a cake in the shape of an American flag. “I feel, let me go, too,” he said.
Gursewak’s route, through Dubai and Istanbul, is a common one. Other routes go through Hanoi and Cairo.
These days, speed is of the essence. Former President Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric about immigration and promises to crack down on it has been noticed by some Indians.
“People are now saying to get out quickly, before Trump comes back,” said the Punjabi agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss illegal activities.