Punjabi Sikhs flee for better opportunities

CHANDIGARH, India — Every morning, turbaned Sikh youths wanting to fly away from home at any cost line up outside New Delhi’s foreign embassies.

Several embassies have signs in the Punjabi language. Others have staff who speak the native language of India’s northern state of Punjab, which accounts for the highest number of immigrants from India.

To cater to the growing Punjab market, the Canadian High Commission is opening a consulate in Chandigarh today. Prime Minister Jean Chretien is scheduled to attend today’s opening ceremony.

More than 60 percent of India’s 100,000 permanent immigrants each year are from northwest India, especially Punjab.

Known for their grit, hard work and perseverance, many youths from rural Punjab share a single dream — to leave India for greener pastures. To capitalize on this yearning, travel agents have opened shops all across the state.

They advertise in local newspapers offering “guaranteed visas and safe travel.” Sometimes, they organize fake wedding invitations so people can be sent overseas.

So great is the desire to go to a better place and seek their fortune that the migrants sometimes agree to become human cargo. Many have crossed into Western Europe in frozen-food trucks, sometimes paying with their lives.

On Christmas Eve 1996, a 60-foot wooden boat carrying Indians — mostly young people from Punjab — as well as Pakistanis and Sri Lankans, sank on the high seas in the Mediterranean Sea near Malta, killing nearly 350 people. The boat was overloaded.

Survivors said they paid up to $8,000 each for the voyage.

When authorities finally cracked down on questionable travel agents, celebrities became involved in the issue to publicize the human trafficking to the West, particularly North America.

Illegal immigration is both quick and easy.

During much of the 1980s, Punjab experienced a Sikh separatist uprising, during which both militant groups and the Indian government were accused of human rights abuses. Many Sikh youths used the opportunity to travel abroad for international conferences, then disappeared to request political asylum.

When the rebellion faded in the 1990s, people began using sporting events to leave the country.

In August, five women from a cricket club in Punjab disappeared a day after they arrived in England for a tournament. There have been several other instances when club-level hockey and soccer players have “vanished” on reaching the United States or Canada.

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