Pakistan and Britain The immigration superhighway: Economist

IT IS midnight outside Mecca, and a crowd has gathered to pay homage. Their devotion is intense, but not religious: the “Mecca” in question is a bingo hall in Bradford, and the god being worshipped by a group of young, white Bradfordians appears to be alcohol. Nearby, in one of the city’s Pakistani neighbourhoods, pubs have shut for lack of custom. Only a few streets away, it seems a continent apart.

One reason why shop signs on the streets of Bradford are still written in Urdu, half a century after the first Pakistanis came to Britain, is that population flows between the two countries remain large (see chart). Each year 250,000 Pakistanis come to Britain to visit, work or marry, and some 350,000 British citizens journey in the opposite direction, mainly to visit family. Links are reinforced by ingrained marriage customs: six of ten ethnic Pakistanis in Britain pick a spouse from Pakistan.

Those busy borders have been a boon in various ways. British universities rake in around £10,000 ($15,000) per person from their share of the 10,000 or so Pakistanis admitted each year on student visas, and businesses sponsor a couple of thousand Pakistani workers a year to plug gaps in the labour market. But the easy comings and goings between Britain and “the most dangerous place in the world”, as President Barack Obama recently dubbed Pakistan’s western regions, is causing concern. On April 8th British police arrested 12 men on suspicion of involvement in what officers say was a “very, very big” terrorist plot. Ten were Pakistani citizens on student visas.

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