The Invisible Corridor: Skilled Pakistani Emigration To The United States And United Kingdom, 2019–2022

Abstract

Pakistan registered 625,876 emigrants in 2019, 225,213 in 2020, 288,280 in 2021, and 832,339 in 2022. Such a high profile cycle caused a great deal of political discussion. It was alleged by the politicians that Pakistan was experiencing a brain drain never experienced before especially in the United States (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK). No scientific investigation has put that argument to the test. This paper does. It is based only on the data of three sources, including the Pakistan Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment (BEOE), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) remittance records, and the Pakistan Migration Reports 2020 and 2022. The analysis is based on three research questions. The paper involves the brain drain theory (Bhagwati, 1976; Docquier and Rapoport, 2012) and brain circulation (Tung, 2008; Kone and Ozden, 2017), health-worker migration (Skeldon, 2009; Raghuram, 2009), and COVID-19 migration scholarship (Bakalova et al., 2021; de Lange, 2020; Salik, 2020; Muhammad, 2021). Four findings emerge. To begin with, BEOE data may not be able to quantify USA/UK-bound professional emigration. H-1B visas, NHS Skilled Worker routes, and student-to-work transitions do not[1] require registration of BEOE. Beoe figures of these destinations are structural lower bound, rather than a total figure. Second, the USA and UK, despite comprising no more than 0.5% of the total number of BEOE-registered emigrants, sent 30.9% of the total amount of remittances flowing into Pakistan in FY2019 and 24.3% in FY2022. This ratio can be explained by large, established, high-income professional diasporas. Third, nurse emigration rose 425% from 337 in 2019 to 1,768 in 2022. This follows directly UK NHS recruitment policy post Brexit. Fourth, the 2022 outburst of 832,339 total emigrants is not indicative of new professional exodus. The highest skilled and qualified workers were on a flat rate of 4.1%-4.7% of the outflows in all the four years. The wave was a cyclical recovery of the low-skilled labour mobility, not a brain drain. The paper ends up with a summary of four policy recommendations with specific reference to the UK and US corridors.