Alarming: In just 6 Months, 9,185 Pakistanis applied to a European country for asylum?

Feature: Increasing Number of Pakistani Asylum Seekers in Germany - Is Asylum just Political Altruism?‏

According to a news report published by The Express Tribune, data from the German interior ministry showed that 9,185 Pakistanis applied for asylum from January to July 2016, making them the eighth largest group of asylum applicants in Germany. While looking at Pakistani population figures, a number of 10,000 is not surprising, it is a sharp 300 percent increase from 2015 when the number of asylum seekers was 2546.

Express Tribune claims to obtain a report leaked by the German government which says that Berlin turned away some 13,000 people including 529 Pakistanis at its land borders from January to July 2016 for having invalid documents. Apart from this, at least 117 Pakistanis were deported though only 34 were sent back to Pakistan.
While anti-refugee parties are adamantly forcing the German Chancellor to halt her open door immigration policy,  Angela Merkel has ruled out the reversal of her policy despite a fierce backlash from her own allies.

Anti-refugee parties, be it Pegida, AFD or NDP are openly using Nazi slogans but curiously the western electronic media is no longer highlighting it. In their frenzy against the refugees, Nazi nationalists are overlooking the fact that the refugees are crucial for the survival of Germany which has one of the lowest birth rates in the world despite an expenditure of billions of dollars on family subsidies and old age benefits.

The rising imbalance between its old and young populations is threatening Germany's economic survival. What most Germans need to understand is that Merkel's humanitarian refugee policy is not mere political altruism. It is backed up by extensive research and linked to a pragmatic investment in Germany's socio-economic future. 

It is time that Merkel and other European leaders also discard their humanitarian rhetoric and phrases like refugee burden and migrant crisis and tell their people about the debilitating impending population crisis in Europe.  The mass arrival of refugees is certainly changing the cultural landscape of Europe, but this change is inevitable and cannot be reversed. It is time that Europe like Canada learn to celebrate its diversity for its own economic veal.

While the Express Tribune has not analysed the reasons for the spike in asylum cases in Germany, it is an open secret  that corruption, bad governance, and the deteriorating conditions of law and order are forcing more and more educated Pakistani youth to seek immigration and refuge in the western world. Consequently, the South Asian region itself is rapidly moving towards brain drain which will ultimately aggravate its problems. But as one of my colleagues once remarked, "Brain drain is better than brain in the drain."

Amid the boisterousness of the clash of civilizations, anti-refugee campaigns, frequent foreign NATO military expeditions and interventions and EU protectionist policies aggravating poverty, Europe itself is pushing the Third World towards a situation where people are being forced to cross the Mediterranean in unsafe vessels to seek asylum with them.

Media Bites Editorial - Tazeen Hasan

Published on September 08, 2016

September 08, 2016