It was a foggy winter morning. At about 3 a.m., an alert Border Security Force (BSF) patrol guarding the Indo-Bangladesh border somewhere in Bengal heard some noises coming from the end of the border fence. The voices seemed to be moving towards them.

The patrol lay in wait and challenged them when they came closer. The voices soon turned into desperate cries for mercy. On closer look, it was revealed that the voices belonged to a Bangladeshi family headed home for Eid. They said that they had come to India a couple of years ago by paying a bribe to a tout who brought them close to the border and directed them to a gap in the fence to cross over. They further disclosed that before crossing the border they were in possession of Indian identity documents.

Working as domestic help and daily wage earners somewhere in North India, they were brought to the border by the police after they were rounded up. They would have, in any case, returned after a couple of months using the similar method. Interestingly, they revealed that whenever they wanted to return to Bangladesh, they would go to the police. This helped them to return without having to pay for their fare.

Recently, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) president, Amit Shah, referred to such illegal immigrants as ‘termites’. Irrespective of his intentions, it has to be accepted that illegal immigration of Bangladeshis is a problem that needs to be seriously addressed.

Thousands of Bangladeshi nationals have migrated illegally and settled in various parts of India. Different estimates put the figures of these illegal settlers between 15 to 20 million. These illegal settlers are generally from lower strata of society and have almost monopolised the low-end informal employment market of domestic helps and daily wage earners in cities and towns.

Several factors like population pressure, lack of employment opportunities and inundation of almost one-third of land during monsoon, forces Bangladeshis to come to India in search of livelihood. And what makes it easier for them to immigrate is India’s inability to prevent them from coming - a poor reflection on the standards of border guarding arrangements. Easy availability of identity papers further makes it difficult to detect and deport them.

The priority accorded to Indo–Bangladesh borders by the government has always been low compared to western borders. This is because of the influx of terrorists from Pakistan to foment militancy in Punjab and Kashmir. As such allocation of resources, troops and modernisation of border guarding systems on Indo-Bangladesh borders have been comparatively much less.