News Desk
The waters off the Spanish Canary Islands became a graveyard once again this January, as a boat carrying desperate migrants capsized. Among the 50 who perished, 44 were Pakistanis—men and women who had wagered everything on a perilous escape from home, only to meet a cruel fate at sea. They are not alone. Thousands more are risking their lives, fleeing a country that offers them no future, only to face deportation, detention, or death.
This is not just a migration crisis. It is a damning indictment of a state that has failed its people so utterly that they would rather take their chances with human traffickers than stay.
Pakistan is hemorrhaging its citizens. The country’s economic collapse, rampant unemployment, and political instability have fueled a mass exodus. The latest figures paint a grim picture: in 2024 alone, over 13.5 million Pakistanis emigrated, many through illegal channels. More than a third of Pakistan’s population, according to research by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, wants to leave. The irony is stark – while Pakistan expels Afghan refugees by the hundreds of thousands, its own citizens are fleeing in record numbers, only to be turned away at foreign borders.
For those who survive the journey, the ordeal is far from over. Deportations of Pakistanis from countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, China, and even African nations are soaring. In January alone, 220 were forcibly sent back. Some, upon landing in Karachi, were arrested, humiliated, and left without a future. The world’s borders are tightening against them. Thailand, a common transit point, has cracked down on forged Pakistani travel documents, warning of permanent blacklisting for violators. Pakistanis abroad are increasingly seen as burdens, their labor unwanted, their documents scrutinized, and their visas denied.
Where desperation rises, traffickers thrive. The business of smuggling Pakistanis across dangerous routes, from Libya to Italy, from Iran to Greece, has grown into a shadow industry. Despite government crackdowns, the networks remain intact, fueled by the state’s own inability to provide economic security. Even after the Greece boat disaster of 2024, which saw hundreds of Pakistanis drown, the government’s response has been limited to bureaucratic reshuffling.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar’s claim that 458 human traffickers have been convicted means little when the root causes remain untouched. Corrupt officials in the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) have been removed, but trafficking persists because the demand for escape remains insatiable.
Traffickers are not the cause of Pakistan’s migration crisis—they are its symptom. The real culprits sit in government offices, overseeing an economic catastrophe that leaves millions jobless, hopeless, and willing to risk everything for a chance at survival.
While its citizens drown at sea, Pakistan’s leaders remain preoccupied elsewhere. Rather than addressing the country’s failing economy and rampant joblessness, Islamabad has prioritized the forced deportation of Afghan refugees—more than 527,000 have been expelled since September 2023. Families who had lived in Pakistan for decades have been uprooted, their homes destroyed. The state’s focus is clear: push the problems out rather than solve them.
Meanwhile, Pakistanis continue to flee, many now driven not just by economic despair but also by the creeping impact of climate change. Projections suggest that by 2050, two million Pakistanis could be displaced due to environmental disasters. Where will they go when even economic migrants are being turned away at every border?
Pakistan’s migration crisis is not an accident. It is the result of a country that has systematically failed to provide for its people. This is what happens when a nation refuses to create jobs, stifles education, and drives away its best and brightest. Until Pakistan acknowledges its role in this catastrophe—until it stops treating migration as an enforcement problem rather than a symptom of state failure—the bodies will continue to wash up on foreign shores.
The question remains: How many more deaths will it take before Pakistan takes responsibility for the despair it has sown?
