Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › India

Louis De Raedt v. Union of India

Supreme Court of India · India · 1991-07-11 · National court

Citation: (1991) 3 SCC 554
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided against the migrant side

Question

Do foreigners who have lived in India for decades have a right to stay?

What the court decided

No. A foreigner’s right to life and liberty is protected, but the right to reside and settle is reserved to citizens; the power to expel is unlimited by the Constitution.

In plain language

Foreign missionaries who had lived in India since before independence were told to leave. The Supreme Court said foreigners have no right to stay, though their lives and liberty are protected.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Misionaris asing yang tinggal di India sejak sebelum kemerdekaan disuruh pergi. MA menyatakan orang asing tidak berhak tinggal, meski hidup dan kebebasannya dilindungi.

Pertanyaan: Apakah orang asing yang sudah puluhan tahun tinggal di India berhak tetap tinggal?

What happened afterwards

  • 1991-07-11: Expulsion upheld.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/in-de-raedt-1991/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.