2. Non availability of Secondary Data

Hardly any secondary data is available. Chart 1 taken from High Level Committee Report of December 2001 by Government of India gives a broad picture of Indian migration to Latin America. Besides desk survey of published literature, news items, articles and books, extensive use was made of internet to ferret out whatever information could be gleaned. Internet searches were of some help but in most cases such leads did not fructify into concrete information. In some cases marriage websites were tried with the cooperation of my Lady Secretary, but somewhat unsuccessfully. Indian Restaurants, Gurdwaras and even mosques were tried with hardly any useful leads. Only limited success was forthcoming. It was a help that earlier migrants used 'Singh' as their surname which made scanning of records including telephone directories somewhat easy.

3. Indian Embassies

Contact was also made with the Indian Embassies. Some help was forthcoming, but the Embassies have their limitations. Embassies generally do not go out proactively to look for "Persons of Indian Origin" as defined by the Government of India but tend to confine themselves to those who either visit the Embassies or those who invite the officials for some purpose - commercial or social. In these countries most of the Sikh migrants have got totally assimilated and hence the Embassies do not have detailed information on PIO's. It would be noticed that the Government of India's High Level Committee, with large resources at their command, have not been able to get as much detailed information as my study would indicate.

4. Overseas Visit and Field Interviews

While most of immigrants and their siblings were willing to be interviewed, some migrants were not agreeable to meet the author but these were generally a smaller number. With illegal immigrants such an attitude was understandable and expected. Annexed is a copy of the Interview Format which was intended to be used. But almost always the interviews had to be conducted in very informal setting and with serious time limitation - formal interview set up was totally missing. Immigrants were more interested in social tete-a-tat as they had not met a turbaned Sikh from Punjab for a long time. In each country time available was a meagre 3-7 days and in many countries, visiting places other than the capital meant spending considerable time on internal travel. A book on Panama's important immigrants and another on India-Mexico had some interesting references on Punjabis and Sikhs. Some newspaper clippings were collected during field visits.