Less immigration but no big exodus

http://www.7days.ae
Tuesday 8 Sep, 2009

Emigration to Gulf states from South Asia is down, but there is no large-scale return of migrants, a study pub-lished yesterday showed.

The Migration Policy Inst-itute (MPI) study for the BBC World Service, found that “migrants have been laid off at high rates throughout the world, including construction workers from India in Dubai and other Gulf states”.

The study added that statistics on Indian migrant return were difficult to get, however, anecdotally, “experts say that there is no large-scale return migration... due to the crisis”.

“Counter to the widely held public perception, immigrants overwhelmingly are choosing to stay put in their adopted countries rather than return home despite very high unemployment and lack of jobs,” the research said.

MPI found that three Asian countries had seen their remittances grow in 2008 to 2009 - Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

However, around ten per cent of Bangladeshi migrants had been sent home from contracts in the Gulf, while many Filipino men on Middle Eastern construction projects had also returned home before the end of their contracts.

“South and East Asia have been spared the worst of the crisis and - although remittances are expected to slow somewhat in 2009 - they continue growing,” MPI said.
“Compared to the same period last year, remittances are growing at a rate of 23 per cent to Pakistan (faster than during the past three years), 16 per cent to Bangladesh (still down substantially from 2008), and three per cent to the Philippines (also down substantially from last year),” the institute added.