ABSTRACT
In the contemporary world, Indian migration (mostly high-skilled and family reunification immigration) has always been an integral part of the American and European immigration systems. These high-income countries often admit mostly high-skilled Indian workers by offering long-term social and economic benefits, including access to citizenship and work to attract these professional workers (Ruhs and Anderson, 2010). According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), India is one of the two top sources of origin countries (apart from the Philippines) of highly skilled migrants that provide critical contribution to the destination countries’ economic growth and development (OECD, 2011). In the United Kingdom, for example, India was the top migrant-sending country in 2013 by country of birth (almost 10 per cent of all foreign-born in the United Kingdom came from India).1 India also ranked second in the total share of foreign-born in the United States only behind Mexico (Migration Policy Institute, 2013). Among Indian professionals, 70 per cent of those who left India in 2014 moved to one of the following highincome countries, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United Kingdom and the United States (Murthy, 2015). These particular demographic trends and distributions signify both strong presence and contribution and their growing preference to migrate to high-income countries for better socio-economic opportunities.
