REFUGEES & ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

REFUGEES & ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

Subject: Polity

Context: Last week, the Supreme Court appeared to accept the Centre’s contention that the Rohingya people in India are illegal immigrants, most of whom are in a detention camp in Jammu, and others in Delhi. It said they should be deported according to procedures under the Foreigners Act, 1946.

Concept:

• Under the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol, the word refugee pertains to any person who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return owing to well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
• Stateless persons may also be refugees in this sense, where country of origin (citizenship) is understood as ‘country of former habitual residence’.
• Under the Citizenship Act an “illegal migrant” is defined as a foreigner who has entered into India—

(i) Without a valid passport or other travel documents and such other document or authority as may be prescribed by or under any law in that behalf; or

(ii) with a valid passport or other travel documents and such other document or authority as may be prescribed by or under any law in that behalf but remains therein beyond the permitted period of time.

• An illegal migrant is excluded from the acquisition of citizenship through birth, registration, or naturalization. There is no program to grant citizenship to illegal migrants or their children.

India & UN convention

• India has welcomed refugees in the past, and on date, nearly 300,000 people here are categorised as refugees.
• But India is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees and the subsequent 1967 Protocol.
• Nor does India have a refugee policy or a refugee law of its own.
• The closest India has come to a refugee policy in recent years is the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which discriminates between refugees on the basis of religion in offering them Indian citizenship.