Life Abroad: I’ve Been Deported Twice, Blacklisted Once

I’ve been deported from a country twice and blacklisted once.

The 1st deportation hit me like a brick. The company I moved halfway around the world to work at in India decided to cut my entire department and not in a gentle way. They tried to let me go without a severance package but I pushed back. In turn, to penalise me, they instantly called Immigration to inform them they let me go. I was quickly served a letter to leave India in 7 days.

I had already paid non-refundable tuition fees for my daughter’s IB. Flew our cats in. And paid for our apartment. I found a new job in Bangalore quickly so I only had to re-apply for a new work visa outside the country, then fly back in.

The 2nd deportation wasn’t for anything criminal or nefarious. It was a LITTLE over a fixable issue with my legal Indian work visa. But A LOT over my weekly column in a national newspaper and a piece I wrote about said visa woes. It was an honest article … that embarrassed the Indian government and triggered the wrong men in power.

Had I been Indian, I might have been arrested but they couldn’t do that to me without making BIGGER headlines. So they deported me. To drive home their point, they also evicted (blacklisted) me for five years.

Luckily my daughter had graduated and was off to uni in the UK. I didn’t have it so lucky. I lost my company, our cats, the life I had built, and lots of money (mine and the investors in my new startup company).

The blacklisting was corrupt “off the books” PUNISHMENT to teach me a lesson, which it 100% did. Out of sight / out of mind was India’s tactic, and it worked.

I think about that a lot lately, specifically FEAR OF DEPORTATION.

What’s going on with millions of asylum seekers and immigrants in the USA today is dark, putting my native homeland on the WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY. The fear and anxiety those people are living under is sadly palpable. I had options but most families, single moms, LGBTQ individuals, young men fleeing war, and everyone else often do not.

The U.S. was once a beacon of hope, now it’s a nightmarish aggressor, strategically inflicting pain on people in need of refuge.