Go West

The buzz is there for all to see. Newspapers are full of its ads, billboards display it eagerly and migration is the content of conversation. Slick interiors of migration offices are pointers to this industry’s makeover from the shoddy to the swanky.

A group of people patiently await their turn. There is Simranjeet, a bank executive whose sights are set on Canada. Sukhwinder Singh is a brawny farmer from Sanwan village with dreams of Australia. There’s an engineer who feels his future lies in New Zealand and shy Sunmeet Kahlon from Nawanshehar wants to study in Belfast.

Exit merchants

‘‘THE number of hopefuls is growing by the year,’’ says Kuldip Singh, owner of Sunrise Immigration and founder president of Association of Professional Immigration Consultancies (APIC), a body set up by industry heavyweights three years ago. ‘‘The demand for migration has gone up almost five fold in the past eight years,’’ says Singh. In 1995, Singh used to process 200 applications. The number has risen to 1,000 and is still growing.

The organisation was founded seven years ago—once immigration became a ‘respectable business’. And the corporatisation? Well, you could say it started with Lt Col B S Sandhu (retd) who emigrated to Canada in 1988 and was surprised to see the number of illegal immigrants who’d paid hefty sums to get there. The businessman in him sniffed an opportunity. Five years on he set up Worldwide Immigration Consultancy Services (WWICS) in Chandigarh. Today it has 55 offices across the country and 15 overseas, all manned by a mix of MBAs and retired Army officers.

Business is booming. It’s evident from the speed with which these companies are fanning across India. Can-Asia Immigration has grown from one office in 1998 to 40 this year, Canam boasts 27 centres, Can4UR has nearly two dozen while Sunrise has progressed from one office in 1993 to 15. It now has designs on Hyderabad.

Migrant stories

MANY of these success stories are being scripted by emigrants themselves. Take the case of Anuraj Sandhu, owner of Canam Consultants. An alumnus of Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh, he emigrated to Canada about a decade ago. ‘‘I realised the tremendous options Canada held for Indians.’’ It was a straight case of demand in Canada matched by supply at home. And Anuraj decided to cash in on it. ‘‘It’s simple. We help our client in processing his application for emigration besides advising him on ways to bolster his chances by acquiring new skills.’’

The NRI tag that most agency owners flaunt is an added advantage. It helps them prise open the legal system abroad. Navi Batth, senior director of Can-Asia Immigration Consultancy Service Limited and a Canadian citizen says her frequent overseas trips help her understand the demand better.

Cold Canada remains the hottest destination, followed by New Zealand and Australia. ‘‘These countries have clear-cut immigration policies and still require people,’’ says Kuldeep.

Thanks to the buzz, even newcomers want a foot in this industry. ‘‘Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali together are home to at least 300 agencies, both legal and illegal,’’ says Kuldip whose APIC still has only seven members. ‘‘The rest don’t pass our stringent requirements, which include registration with the Government of India,’’ he says.

The intense competition has brought down the processing fees. Most companies charge anywhere between Rs 60,000 and Rs 1 lakh, depending on the country. ‘‘But the gestation period is quite long and can stretch up to a couple of years,’’ cautions Anuraj.

Changing profile

THE decade has also seen a sea change in the client profile. ‘‘Earlier, we would receive people from villages or less affluent sections of society. But now, even well-heeled businessmen and professionals want to try their luck abroad,’’ says Anuraj, who is surprised at the response he has got from places as far as Patna.

It’s not just the client profile that has changed. The agencies too are reinventing themselves to keep pace with the times. From just emigration to resettlement and now education, most of them are trying hard to straddle multiple worlds.

English, remixed

MIGRATION has now spawned another mini-industry: English language institutes. ‘‘Polished English is essential for anyone wanting to go abroad,’’ says Anuraj Sandhu of Canam.

Be it Banga or Batala, every town has such learning centres—many of them double as finishing schools for NRI brides-to-be. Says Gurpreet Badhera of Better Learning: ‘‘When we started three years ago, we had only two classes with 15 students each. Now we have seven classes with 25 students each.’’

Savinder Singh Dhillon, CEO, British Institute of Learning (BIL), says over two dozen such schools have cropped up in Jalandhar during the last three years. ‘‘We run two courses, one for English and the other for personality development.’’ The latter is the one that all wannabe NRI brides want to enroll in.

Ramneet Kaur, a student, blushes as she tells you how the lessons in etiquette, table manners, and ‘ladylike’ demeanour have given her the sophistication needed to impress prospective NRI grooms.

The story is not any different in Ludhiana. Institutes run by retired Army officers or enterprising teachers, all promise to teach ‘fluent English in 45 days’.

They come complete with fancy names—Better Thinking Learning Systems, English Accent Development Institute, Gee’s Finishing School.

Says Major H P Singh (retd) of English Accent: ‘‘Rural folks know the way English is spoken on BBC and that’s the way they want to speak it.”

Studied Move

EDUCATION abroad is the new buzzword in the corridors of migration. ‘‘That is the easiest way to gain a foothold abroad besides ensuring a rosy future,’’ says Anuraj whose education wing has 67 centres.

Whether it’s Belfast, Cyprus, Switzerland or South Africa, there’s always a college that these agencies can find to fit your bill.

Vivek Sharma of Can4UR says it all depends on your purchasing power and a Class XII certificate. ‘‘There are courses where you can earn while you learn,’’ he says, waxing eloquent over a hotel management certificate course in Switzerland that comes for only Rs 5.6 lakh. ‘‘You start earning after six months and recover your fees,’’ he beams. ‘‘Another advantage is that you don’t need a high score in IELTS. Even a score of less than 5 will do,’’ he hands out another bait.

The current favourite is Master of Information Technology (MIT) that gives you enough points to stay on in Australia. ‘‘It sets you back by Rs 10 lakh, and all you need is a bachelor degree and a six-month course in computers,’’ Vivek hard-sells.

The catch is that you have to pay the entire sum, including the hostel fees, in advance besides showing a healthy bank balance.

This caveat may deter city slickers but not the rural folks who are grabbing these courses. ‘‘Most of our clients are from villages,’’ admits Sharma. ‘‘The city-bred youth surf the net and get admission on their own.’’ The proof lies in the countryside. A young man from a village near Phagwara is studying art appreciation in London. His younger brother is doing graduation from a university in Belfast. Their aim is one: to gain permanent residence abroad.

The agencies themselves recommend this method. ‘‘It brings you at par with others in an alien country right from the word go unlike the past when you had to slog it out,’’ says Anuraj, who advises villagers to educate their children well to brighten their chances of immigration.

Now WWICS is encashing this fear of starting life afresh by offering a ‘resettlement’ scheme. ‘‘It’s our USP,’’ says Col Sandhu, who claims WWICS offices in Canada provide for everything to a new emigre — right from housing to a job. ‘‘There is no denying the element of struggle but we try to make the passage easy.’’

But it’s not smooth passage for all, especially in rural Punjab.

Punjabi by nature

THE Malta boat tragedy is history. So are the countless horror tales of illegal immigrants, flashed regularly by the media. America is the only reality. One for which they are ready to risk their lives. Legal immigration may be moving into Punjab, but in the hinterland illegal agents still flourish.

No one knows it better than Sukhdeep Singh of Pajaura village, who is back home after two near-death experiences while trying to reach England. You would think twice bitten, he would be at least once shy, but he’s back on his feet, ready to take the route the next velvet-tongued agent tells him to.

‘‘It’s the wanderlust, it’s in our blood,’’ Parkash Singh, the NRI MLA from Nawanshehar, tries to rationalise this madness. ‘‘Punjabis have always travelled far and wide,’’ he says, telling you how a hundred year ago, 2000 of the 2050 Indians in the North American continent were from Punjab.

The go-West madness is born out of compulsion. Joginder Singh, a Leicester-based tycoon, who traces his roots to Kaleran village near Nawanshehar, knows it. ‘‘With landholding shrinking and employment a mirage, the youth have no option.’’

Jaswinder Lal of Khamachon village in Nawanshahr district, who has made three aborted bids to reach England, traces some more convoluted routes drawn up by intrepid agents. ‘‘I was sent to Malaysia from where I was to get a visa for Nigeria,’’ says Jaswinder. ‘‘On my way back, I was to get down at England.’’

The plan crashed at Malaysia itself and Lal returned home poorer by Rs 3.5 lakh, of which he had taken Rs 1 lakh on loan.

A well-entrenched travel agent says Russia is fast becoming a transit point for reaching European countries. ‘‘We send people to Russia on a tourist visa, and then on to Bulgaria or Yugoslavia from where they sneak into Austria and then Italy.”

Reaching Australia or New Zealand is a tad easier, for all it needs is a tourist visa to Fiji. The visitors choose a flight that involves a night stay at a hotel in Australia or New Zealand. They never surface in the morning. Greece is yet another most-wanted destination. And reaching it is easy once you set foot in Turkey.

But it’s a passage through hell. The strategies change according to the conditions on ground. And there is no certainty. Hope sustains them, desperation guides them.

In the end, desperation gets the upper hand. As Joginder Singh, the school dropout-turned-tycoon, puts it: ‘‘Had I remained in Punjab, I would have starved.’’