Algorithmic Governance and India's Constitutional Duty toward Outbound Students Facing Foreign AI Visa and Surveillance Decisions
This paper argues that India must establish a new "Sending-State Algorithmic Protection Doctrine" to fulfill its constitutional duty of protecting outbound students from foreign algorithmic visa and surveillance harms, addressing a critical gap in current scholarship and responding to empirical evidence of widespread distrust in existing legal frameworks.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine a world where your ability to travel, study, or work in another country depends not on a human officer reviewing your application, but on a computer program making a split-second decision. This is the reality of modern borders, where artificial intelligence systems scan social media posts, analyze application patterns, and assign risk scores to millions of people. For decades, international law has focused on the rights of people within a country's borders, but a new question is emerging: what happens when a foreign computer system makes a mistake that ruins a citizen's life, and their own government does nothing about it? This is the territory explored by legal scholars examining the relationship between India, its students studying abroad, and the automated visa systems of nations like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The core issue is whether a country has a duty to protect its citizens from the invisible, algorithmic errors of foreign governments, even when those errors happen outside its own territory.
Two researchers, Dr. Jakey Khan and Dr. Jayashri Rajbangshi, have investigated this gap in the law, focusing on a specific case that highlights the problem. In March 2025, a young Indian woman named Ranjani Srinivasan, who was pursuing a PhD at Columbia University in New York, had her student visa suddenly revoked by the US State Department. The decision was made by a new automated screening program called "Catch and Revoke," which uses artificial intelligence to scan social media for any signs of affiliation with banned organizations. Faced with the threat of detention and unable to challenge the decision because the computer offered no explanation or hearing, Srinivasan was forced to leave the United States immediately. When asked to intervene, the Indian government responded with a diplomatic note stating that the visa revocation was a sovereign right of the United States and that India would not interfere. The researchers argue that this silence was a failure of duty. They suggest that under India's own Constitution, the government has an obligation to protect the freedom and liberty of its citizens, even when those citizens are abroad and facing harm from foreign machines.
The paper builds its argument on a legal foundation established decades ago by the Indian Supreme Court, which ruled that the right to travel is a fundamental part of personal liberty. This right cannot be restricted by any process that is unfair, unreasonable, or arbitrary. The researchers propose that this protection should extend beyond India's borders. They introduce a new concept called the "Sending-State Algorithmic Protection Doctrine," which argues that when a foreign government uses an automated system that harms Indian nationals, India has a constitutional duty to assess the risk, document the harm, and take diplomatic action. The study does not claim that India can force other countries to change their laws, but rather that India cannot simply stand by and watch its citizens suffer from unfair, opaque computer decisions without trying to help.
To test how serious this problem is, the authors developed a scoring system to measure the danger posed by different foreign AI visa tools. They analyzed four major systems used by Western nations. The most dangerous was the US "Catch and Revoke" program, which received a near-perfect danger score because it revokes visas instantly without notice, offers no way to appeal, and chills free speech by monitoring social media. The researchers found that of the 327 documented cases of visa revocations under this program, about half involved Indian nationals. The second most dangerous system was Canada's "Chinook" software, which processes visa applications in bulk. In August 2025, this system rejected 74 percent of study permit applications from Indians, compared to only 24 percent from Chinese applicants, a disparity that suggests the algorithm treats people differently based on their nationality. The UK and the European Union also use similar automated tools, though with slightly more procedural safeguards, they still pose significant risks to the rights of Indian travelers.
The researchers did not stop at legal theory; they also looked at what people actually think about this issue. They surveyed more than 1,200 digitally literate Indians, a group that closely resembles the population of students who travel abroad. The results were striking. A majority of respondents, 56 percent, said they had no confidence that current laws could protect them from AI-driven violations of their rights. Even more telling, 82 percent of those surveyed expressed a strong desire for a dedicated regulatory system to handle these issues. This data suggests that the public is aware of the danger and feels that the current legal framework is insufficient. The researchers argue that this widespread lack of trust and the clear demand for action represent a concrete governance failure, not just a theoretical gap in the law.
The paper also places this issue in a broader historical context, suggesting that the current silence of sending nations like India is a remnant of colonial attitudes. In the past, colonized nations were expected to accept the terms set by powerful destination countries without question. The researchers argue that by treating foreign algorithmic decisions as untouchable "sovereign rights," India is inadvertently continuing this old pattern of deference. They propose that this attitude needs to change, not by challenging the sovereignty of other nations, but by fulfilling India's own constitutional duty to its people. The authors suggest practical steps to fix this, such as creating a specialized government department to track these algorithmic harms, requiring foreign countries to disclose how their visa algorithms work as part of trade agreements, and building a database to monitor the risk scores of different foreign systems.
Ultimately, this research suggests that the era of the "human" border officer is ending, replaced by invisible code that can destroy a person's life without a second thought. The paper concludes that India, and potentially other nations sending citizens abroad, must evolve its legal and diplomatic strategies to match this new reality. By using existing constitutional principles to create a framework for protection, governments can ensure that their citizens are not left defenseless when a foreign computer makes a mistake. The study emphasizes that this is not about creating new laws from scratch, but about applying the old, established promise of fairness and liberty to the new, digital world of automated borders. The silence of the past is a choice, and the authors argue that the Constitution provides the tools to break that silence and offer real protection to the next generation of global travelers.
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