IRIN Special Report on population exodus

Foreign embassies in Pakistan are reportedly overburdened by an ever-increasing number of visa applications from Pakistanis wishing to leave the country. The US has seen a tripling of applications for non-immigrant visas over the one-year period ending October 2000, while the UK’s Pakistan visa operation has grown to become the largest of its worldwide operations. In the busiest months of June and July, embassies are bracing themselves for an even greater onslaught. The Pakistanis who are leaving are winding up on shores and cities around the world, favourite destinations being Canada, Australia, the UK and the US. While this exodus is in large part composed of the country’s most-valued individuals, such as doctors, lawyers and IT professionals, a new phenomena is emerging. Lower socioeconomic sectors of Pakistan are moving abroad in increasing numbers. The US Consul General in Islamabad, David Donahue, maintains that patterns of migration are changing: “We are seeing a rural population apply, whereas previously it had been an educated class.” In a country where the average salary is US $340 a year, the desire to work abroad is, perhaps, inevitable. The US Embassy is not alone with its long lines of daily visa applicants. Canada, reportedly the favourite destination for Pakistani would-be emigrants, has witnessed a 40 percent increase in immigrant visa applications in the first quarter of this year, compared to last year. The UK recorded an 11 percent hike - what its visa chief called “a big jump for primary migration”. Last year, the UK had a 32 percent rise in applications in its Islamabad office for non-settlement visas. Colin Mulcahy, head of the UK visa section, termed it a “significant rise”. “The year before it was 10 percent. The worldwide average is about 7 percent. New Delhi, one of the busiest offices, reported 12 percent and we were worried,” he said. This phenomenon is backed up by a Gallup Pakistan survey in November, which found that 62 percent or more than two-thirds of Pakistan’s adult population would like to go abroad to work. The survey also found that half of those wishing to work overseas did not wish to return home. A similar survey carried out in 1984 found only 17 percent of Pakistanis eager to settle abroad. Analysts at Gallup linked the rising immigration syndrome to two causes - a declining hope in the country’s economic future, and the new technologies of globalisation which have facilitated travel and constant telecom links. As such, small communities of Pakistanis and Muslims have developed abroad, allowing immigration to take place without “cutting ties with the motherland and its culture”. However Pervez Hoodbhoy, a social commentator and professor of physics at Quaid-i-Azim University in Islamabad, believes the current exodus is a symptom of a much more complex phenomenon. “If a society is moving upwards, then there is a feeling of optimism, of progress - better education, greater wealth, less inequality, greater adherence to rule of law, development of viable institutions. These are all gauges by which one measures national health,” Hoodbhoy maintained. On this scale, he said, Pakistan was “unhealthy”. “Here is a country which is simply unable to educate its people or control its growth rate. This is unsustainable. It is going to burst at the seams,” he warned. While a desire for better opportunities in education remains a key factor in accelerating migration from Pakistan, experts point to a number of equally alarming reasons including the growth in Islamic fundamentalism. “People are very scared of this country going to the fundamentalists,” Hoodbhoy said. “The question is, what does one do when your education system has failed to provide for the majority of your people and thereby created a vacuum which can only be filled by the religious parties and their institutions and madrassahs?” he questioned. He described it as an 11th-century system operating in the 21st century, “teaching young people who to hate and how to get their heads”. Despite the Musharraf government’s determination to prevent what it calls extremist groups from wielding too much influence in Pakistan, sectarian violence and religious tensions, particularly between Shi’ah and Sunni Muslims, continue to plague the country. The Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Overseas Pakistanis [IOP] in Lahore, Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, told IRIN that Pakistan’s most pressing social problems were caused by the skewed distribution of resources in the country. Although the middle class is growing, wealth has remained largely in the control of the nation’s elite. Agitation caused by the unfulfilled promise of rising expectations is fuelled by sophisticated media, which extend a glimpse of a better life to every village, he said. “Educated Pakistanis say they get fairer treatment overseas - a level playing field for their talent to be used and rewarded accordingly. In Pakistan, the system is based on favours, and this syndrome is getting worse,” he said. Mehboob said good governance had been deteriorating not only within business but in the day-to-day lives of Pakistanis, creating very real inequalities and deepening disillusionment. “Use for example the process of getting a driving licence. If you know someone, you simply pay them,” he said. Meanwhile, the presence in Pakistan of a military government in power has frightened many Pakistanis abroad who would otherwise have “no intention of staying”. “We [the US] have the impression that some people who left may be wary about returning to Pakistan. There is a lot of hearsay and anecdotal reports. They are uncertain about a country that is in transition, with a new government every two years,” Donahue said. Education lies at the heart of the country’s rising exodus, a fact that some in the government appear to acknowledge. In April, the Federal Minister of Science and Technology, Professor Ataur Rahman, announced an ambitious plan to woo back IT professionals, including offering places to 250 Pakistani PhDs and providing them with appropriate working facilities. He spoke of raising salaries of scientists and engineers by up to 800 percent and establishing several new IT universities throughout the country. These, he hoped, would be staffed by Pakistanis abroad who would be willing to return given the new incentives. While India has been hailed as a model for its success in producing large numbers of highly qualified software developers well versed in international standards, Pakistan has also met with similar achievements. These have been recognised by foreign governments who over recent years have offered increasing numbers of fast-track visas to those who qualify under special programmes for IT experts. Germany has gone to great length to encourage IT specialists to look to its shores. It has set up a dedicated web site in English so that CVs can be submitted easily and free of charge, and then forwarded to interested companies which finance the immigration of those they select. Thousands are applying from Pakistan, attracted by salaries that can be 10 times higher than those at home. The Science and Technology Minister plans to do something about it. “We are starting major education programmes across Pakistan. We are trying to bring back our brightest people from abroad. The only difference between us and developed countries like the UK is education. There is no dearth of talent and skilled people here,” Ataur Rahman explained. At the level of secondary education, the situation is equally bleak. While Pakistan operates its own state school examination system, it is regarded as poor, and its recognition overseas is largely nonexistent. However, the British school examinations system, the General Certificate of Education or, GCE, is internationally recognised as a high-quality academic qualification at the secondary level. Consequently its popularity in Pakistan is growing. “It is absolutely true that the number of schools for whom we examine GCEs has doubled in the first four to five years due to the desire to get an internationally recognised qualification,” according to director of the British Council in Islamabad, Peter Ellwood. Of those working in the private schools, the desire to get a “24-carat acceptance” to universities in the US, Australia or the UK is great, he said. However, he added that the penetration of GCEs was “peripheral” - it was reaching the educated middle class attending private schools. The fact remains that the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) that is spent on education by the 70 countries, including Pakistan, which make up the Organisation of Islamic Conference [OIC] is less than that spent by the UK or Japan alone. Universities in particular are hard hit by this budgetary hole and, as a result, the majority of them are “inadequate” Ataur Rahman acknowledged. Young Pakistanis are all too familiar with this phenomenon. A recent exhibition of 19 UK universities held in the capital Islamabad attracted around 3,000 hopefuls in one day. All these students were eager to fulfill the application criteria and be accepted onto a course, guaranteeing them better prospects than what they would be provided with back home. Among the packed exhibition hall at the Marriott Hotel was 30 year-old Afshan Bangash, a woman and already a law graduate of Punjab University. “The quality of education in the UK is so much higher. As students, we were not given this sort of standard, and our degrees are not recognised internationally. I studied law, but I only learnt the concepts; it was very shallow,” she told IRIN, determined to find a way to meet the US $11,000 tuition fee she said was initially required. Another hopeful was 23 year-old Imran Ahmad. Despite having a masters in marketing, he wanted to specialise in advertising, but Pakistan held no options available to him. “There is no institute that teaches advertising. I also want to do a PhD, but there are no specialised fields available,” he said. Around 3,500 Pakistani students are currently studying for higher and further education degrees in the UK, with the number expected to rise to nearly 6,000 by 2005. An additional incentive is that overseas students have the added benefit of being able to work in the UK while studying, without the need of a work permit. Hoodbhoy, himself a university professor, maintains that the quality of education in Pakistan has deteriorated to the point that most graduates would simply be unable to qualify for university entrance. “A small fraction of those who graduate, maybe one percent, would - and they come largely from Aga Khan University in Karachi, a medical training facility. There no one stays behind. The quality is very high. Graduates take the medical practitioners’ exam, do well and get jobs in the US. Hardly any come back,” he said. Meanwhile, quality-of-life indicators - literacy rates, especially among women, human rights, and universal access to heath care - point to Pakistan as a country with serious deficiencies. Current estimates predict that Pakistan’s population, currently over 140 million, will double within 25 years, putting unprecedented pressure on the country’s already stretched resources. For whatever reasons, migration abroad is increasing. The US has noted that the patterns of migration have changed compared to 10 years ago. “In the 1980s, we saw a large number of middle class [people] emigrating legally. People took advantage then of amnesty and other immigration programmes and are now bringing over their families. These newer immigrants are often people working in the service sector as taxi drivers or in ‘seven-elevens’ [convenience stores],” according to US Consul General David Donahue. In addition, lower socioeconomic groups were increasingly applying for migration today. “We are seeing a rural population apply, whereas previously it had been an educated class,” he said. While acknowledging the negative impact of the population exodus from Pakistan, the IOP said some weight had to be given to the argument put forward by a former Vice-President of the World Bank, Shahid Burki. He maintained that migration could also be viewed as having positive implications. Mehboob quoted the former World Bank head as saying: “Wherever our citizens move to, they will strengthen the Pakistani economy.”