40% of Pakistanis want to leave their country: Guess where they want to go

According to a November 14 report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Pakistan has climbed to fifth place among countries with the highest number of illegal immigrants in Europe. According to the IOM, as much as 40 per cent of Pakistanis wish to leave their country.

So Europe is faced with the potential influx of no less than 100 million Pakistanis, who may wish to make their way to the Old Continent. Up until 2022 Pakistan was not even amongst the top 10 countries in regard to illegal immigration to Europe. In less than two years, it has climbed to the top five — and rising.

The IOM report cites “economic challenges, political instability, unemployment, inflation, terrorism, and limited educational opportunities” as key reasons for the mass exodus from Pakistan to the West. But this may be a rather partial and superficial explanation of the phenomenon.

What fuels immigration from countries like Pakistan to Europe is not just a desire for a better living. Illegal immigration is one of the biggest illegal businesses in the world today. On top of that it is also the vehicle of orchestrated Islamist expansionism.

With the participation of corrupt officials, human smuggling has become the largest generator of revenue in large parts of Pakistan. Illegal immigration is also a multi-billion business in the West, where governments and international organisations feed taxpayers’ money to the NGOs that facilitate and complement the smugglers.

There is also a paradox to be noted here: Many of those Pakistanis who wish to flee their homeland because of alleged hardships or lack of liberties, often also wish to export their hard-line views and religious fanaticism to the countries where they are accepted as so-called refugees.

The case of the Dawat-e-Islami organisation is very characteristic. Founded in Pakistan in 1981, the Sunni Islamist group has taken advantage of the current wave of illegal immigration from Pakistan to the West to become an international player pushing forward a militant agenda.

Dawat-e-Islami runs religious schools and Islamic institutes with many hundreds of campuses worldwide, as well as a global television and news network. At the same time, it holds massive religious and political gatherings in both South Asian and Western countries.

But the organisation’s footprint is not always peaceful. In a recent article at the Middle East Forum, journalist and political analyst Uzay Bulut has drawn attention to the links between Dawat-e-Islami and a series of jihadist murders and attacks around the world — from Pakistan and India to Scotland and the Paris Charlie Hebdo stabbings.

So Pakistanis go West, though without always intending to adapt to Western values. And they do it en masse. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) every year 300,000 people, most of them males of young age (60 per cent of Pakistanis are below 30 years old), leave the country by illegal means, traveling through routes involving Dubai, Turkey, Egypt, and Libya.

Pakistan itself does not appear willing to halt this trend. It has not signed the 1949 ILO Migration for Employment Convention, the 1975 Migrant Workers Convention, the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees, or the Palermo protocol on migrant smuggling, human trafficking and other transnational crimes.

Pakistan also seems indifferent to the loss of people who perish trying to flee the country. In June 2023 after a fishing boat capsized and sank about 50 miles from Pylos, Greece, costing the lives of more than 300 Pakistanis, the HRCP asked the state of Pakistan to take responsibility “for its part” in the tragedy.

As for the EU, it stands by watching, putting no real pressure on Pakistan or other countries which are involved in sending illegal immigrants to Europe. On the contrary, it sets rules preventing first entry countries like Italy, Greece or Spain from defending their borders.

Pakistan’s population is about half of that of the EU. Europeans are getting older and dying out, while Pakistanis are young and on their way here. It is not that difficult to see where this is going.