The immigrants are often from middle-class families. They frequently sell their land to pay for the journey — which families say can run $40,000 to $100,000 per person — hoping that working in America will triple their wages, produce a secure future for their children and yield a higher value in the marriage market for their sons.
These migrants are “not the desperately poor” and often come from the most prosperous states in India, said Devesh Kapur, a South Asian studies professor at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on the Indian diaspora. But faced with a shortage of attractive jobs and a struggling agricultural sector, they find that the wealth they have in India is not enough to transform their lives, and this creates “a culture of migration,” he said.
Source: Indians now third-largest group of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. – The Washington Post