Homes represent a place where you feel safe from all the world’s insanities and problems. Home gives a sense of comfort that your workplace or any other place simply doesn’t. But for many millions of people around the globe, this sense of comfort and security that a home brings was not found when a deadly pandemic took over the world in March of 2020. In India, lakhs of migrant workers who travel or shifted from their hometowns to other cities or industrial hubs in search of better jobs were stranded due to Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown which was imposed. To study the effect of Covid-19 lockdown on migrants we will look at two broad categories- Internal migration, migration within a country, and International Migration, migration from one country to another.
Internal Migration
According to the World Bank, approximately 40 million internal migrants in India were affected due to the restrictions levied by the government on travel due to COVID-19. Indians who moved to new cities and places in search of employment and opportunities were unable to go back to their hometowns once the lockdown was imposed as the government stopped all forms of public transport, cheapest in the country and the only form of transport that these poor migrants workers can afford, to restrict the follow of the virus from one place to other. This created a massive problem as the migrants who had no money, due to businesses and industries being shut, had to sustain themselves. They were eager to go back to at least feel the comfort of being in their own homes.
Sacred about what comes next and how they are going to survive this lockdown, thousands of migrant workers in India resort to life-threatening and truly unimaginable ways to get back home. Many of them started walking back home, literally, with no resources left to use at their adopted homes. Without any proper measurement to prevent them from catching the deadly virus they were also seen as a potential agent for carrying this disease with them. All this chaos created a huge problem in the fight against COVID-19.
These tactics employed by migrant workers forced the government to find a way to get them home safely without further spreading the virus. So in mid-May, the government announced plans to get migrant workers home via special shramik trains. The announcement sparked the migrant workers to flock to the station near them. And around 2500 people gathered in Bandra station terminus on the 20th of May, ignoring the social distancing and mask mandate implemented by the government. This miscommunication put the migrant, who saw this as their golden chance to get home, in danger. A week later the government arranged transport facilities which helped around 91 lakh migrant workers to get back home. But according to the Stranded Workers Action Network (SWAN) migrants were confused as to how to register themselves for these travel arrangements. When it came to monetary relief for these workers when they got home, the government announced rupees 1.7 lakh crore relief fund in addition to subsidized food supplies. Though these relief measures might have come a bit too late, they helped the migrant worker population in India in their fight for survival and the country’s fight against COVID-19.
International Migration-
While internal migration deals with people moving inside a country in search of better opportunities, international migration is concerned with people moving from one country to another in search of job options and a better life. Before COVID-19 hit the world, millions and millions of people moved around the world for a whole host of reasons, from attaining quality education to fleeing war-torn regions all over the world to more peaceful countries. But these migrants put strains on any countries resources thus making any country unwilling to allow large scale immigration. The COVID-19 pandemic stretched these resources thin, prompting many countries to either stop its immigration processes entirely or take a very hard look at its policies regarding this issue.
In the USA, the country where the COVID-19 pandemic hit the hardest and where the recent government policies are targeted towards curtailing down the rate of immigration to the US, migrants at the border were told to revert to their native countries. The current administration also issued an executive order which laid down the policy to force the international students to leave the US. This policy was seen in the context of the July 22, 2020, Presidential proclamation that blocked the entry of foreign-born professionals and directed them to leave the country as soon as possible. On July 2, 2020, the US administration announced that international students “operating entirely online may not take huge online courses load and remain in the United States.” What this meant was that students enrolled in universities and schools which are conducting online semesters due to COVID-19 are instructed to either leave the country or to enroll in a university or school taking in-person classes. This decision by the administration sent shockwaves through the education community in the USA. Many of whom were already struggling financially due to the lockdown and were dependent on the tuition fees of international students.
So in response to this policy, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sued the Administration in the federal court of Boston. They argued that the policy announced by the current administration was politically motivated and was without any regard for the health and safety of its students. The universities also sought a temporary restraining order against this policy.
And this instance presents a larger picture where countries are trying to do away with their migrant communities to better serve and protect the native population during these tumultuous times
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