Emigration in search of safety, greener pasture and a lifestyle that seemingly ensures protected future to the people less fortunate in their own country has always been the main motivational factor for people to abandon their ancestral homes and prefer to live in an alien world.
This phenomenon has its roots in the nature of a man who is basically a wanderer and a fighter who seeks protection as long as he lives. Conquering caves, cornfields, forests and animal hunting grounds has been his needs. Overpowering the weak and expanding the area of land under his control or, as the situation demands, submission of the entire self to the powerful in return for a peaceful and protected life has been his strategy to survive difficult moments.
The historic background and reasons for leaving one's own place of living and settling down on new lands, affluence for the self and the family, has always been the motivating factor behind this human behaviour.
With the passage of time different regions of the world progressed, innovation and scientific advancements, industrialisation, newness in commerce and trade, warfare techniques and rise in the use of nuclear technology for the betterment of life, as well as for the destruction of life, made the difference. One world progressed and the other suffered at the hands of the progressing world.
Today's world is divided in three portions: the affluent nations, the nations struggling to catch up with the affluent world, and the third that is dependent upon the food, housing and shelter that the two others dole them out.
The third category of the people is deficient in food supply, malnutrition and hunger is rampant, lack housing facilities, education, and unemployment and suffers from job scarcity and non-productive industrial sector. Coupled with this situation there is vast fertile land, unexplored mineral wealth, hard working and cheap labour force that lay unutilised and goes waste as the time passes on. But the developed world is not oblivious of this wealth. They would exploit it at a relevant moment.
Derogatorily called the "third world" or "under developed world" is thickly populated, its rate of population growth is the highest among the countries listed with the United Nations, its maternal mortality and infant mortality is the highest, lack of potable water, sanitation and means of communications are frighteningly high. Drought is rampant.
These unfortunate parts of the world have been the battlegrounds, slave-hunting places and suppliers of cheap labour force to the advanced world. People with superior arms and ammunitions, deceits and political manoeuvring techniques colonised the weak and established their stronghold on their natural wealth. They subjugated them to their superiority and forced them to live as empty-headed people.
The superior world exploited the mineral wealth of their colonised areas and invested the earnings back in their countries. They developed their industrial base, educational institutions, established scientific research organisations, refined armouries, amassed nuclear weapons, saved their natural wealth and introduced genetically manoeuvred crops to increase yield.
The superior world after exploiting and consuming the wealth of the under developed world has become a place enviable for the people who have yet to attain a level of comfortable and sustainable living.
Many people from the African and South Asian countries in search of better living leave their homes to settle in selected locations in Europe and in the United States of America.
These emigrants are mostly young and unaware of the hardships they are likely to face in a foreign land. The cultural shock apart, racial discrimination, xenophobia, religious discrimination and linguistic differences are some of the first greeting gestures an immigrant faces.
Depending upon the kind of job one would seek in a foreign land, there is resentment from the local people from the same trade, who fear losing their employment to the skilled and cheaper labour from abroad. This fear and resentment of the locals is not confined to one country or to a particular trade but is found widespread among the skilled local labour force that is comparatively expensive.
While the immigrants are busy in earning for their families, their children are faced with another kind of situation in educational institutions. Despite being born in the country of their settlement, they are discriminated, segregated and looked down upon as untouchable. The feelings that keep the local and the immigrants at a distance seems to have pervaded deep into the socio-political systems of these countries where people go as immigrants. It is lifelong struggle that is to be faced with courage if one has to live in an alien country.
Before leaving the country one is told to get assimilated into the society one is intending to live in. This advice seems easy but fails the test when put into action. The alien society does not easily accept a foreigner for fear of losing its privacy, contamination of their communal system and loss of employment.
Those societies, which are still religious, to some extent, would not like the presence of an alien around their religious institutions. Similarly, the aliens themselves try to keep away from the festivities that have religious tinge, for fear of contamination of their own religious restrictions.
The problems of those who are not skilled labour and belong to educated and technically qualified and trained people are no different from their unskilled and less trained labour relatives. The educated immigrants get good jobs but on lesser pay as compared to the pay a local would receive for the same job at the same establishment. It is usually the package, which guarantees the minimum salary, and other allowances, already guaranteed under the law of the land. More than the legally allowable wages is always the discretion of the employer who is definitely a local. This discrimination is frustrating and, at times, forces the educated immigrant to return to his homeland.
But back home, Pakistan, there are other problems such as compatible employment, job security, education and health care for the children and ageing parents, proper housing facility with less botheration with water supply, functioning of sewer system, law and order, religious and lingual discrimination and above all falling price of the currency that gives rise to inflation and exorbitant increase in prices of daily use articles.
The legal immigrants have; however, some chances to adapt to new environ but what about the illegal immigrants.
The illegal immigrants are usually those who fear political repression, religious persecution and are afflicted by extreme poverty in their parent countries.
Many European countries where these immigrants reach through illegal means have stringent immigration laws. Despite these laws people make efforts to sneak into these countries and try to find shelter for themselves.
The illegal immigrants do not move out from place to place without the connivance of the locals, who transport them, protect them, provide them employment and place to live. But in lieu of these facilities these exploited immigrants part away with half of their earnings, which goes to those who shelter them. The net savings are always meagre.
At a recent international seminar on immigration to Europe from South Asia and the Muslim World two prominent speakers, Vice Chancellor of the University of Karachi Pirzada Qasim Raza Siddiqui and European Union Ambassador Ilkka Uusitalo spoke on the phenomenon of immigration. The points of view presented by Vice Chancellor Siddiqi and Ambassador Uusitalo were in different direction on the question of illegal immigrants. The EU Ambassador said that EU-Pakistan re-admission policy, which promises for the return of the illegal immigrants from Europe, is likely to take shape in the near future.
But he came out openly and said that Pakistan had done little in controlling the illegal immigration and there had been no visible action against the perpetrators of this crime.
He said that unless some concrete actions were taken, to expect EU to do everything was a remote possibility.
Vice-Chancellor Siddiqu was of the opinion that liberalisation and rationalisation of immigration policy by the European countries was needed. The asylum seekers and others who leave their countries for fear of insecure future need attention.
The pros and cons of illegal immigration may be many but the human aspect seems to be missing from the rules of European countries that govern illegal immigration and try to regulate flow of people in accordance with the set pattern that suits a particular European country.
But what is needed to accept that the countries, which have prospered on the resources of other countries, should give due consideration to the deprived people of the country from where resources were taken out and used.
One who steels resources from other countries to build one's own country is equally at fault as one who crosses one's own borders to enter into another country in search of better opportunities and a life that promises secured and protected future for his family.
Comments
Comments are closed.