Migration
Most Pakistani migrants are employed in the north of Italy, around Milan; they earn roughly US$700 per month in wages. Even those who entered the country illegally obtain jobs and employment permission fairly easily, due to labour shortages in Italy caused by the ageing population and shrinking workforce.
The sheer number of applicants for new passports has placed a severe strain on the Pakistani embassy. A long queue stretches outside the door all week long, with an average of sixty applications per day and a peak of 120 on Mondays. Typically, one must have some proof of citizenship, such as an identity card, in order to obtain a new passport; applicants lacking any such proof must undergo interviews in which embassy officials quiz them on basic facts about Pakistan to determine if they are actually citizens of the country. In one case, a young applicant who claimed to be from Swat did not even know the name of the Wāli of Swat, but the embassy issued him a new passport anyway on the strength of his uncle's assurances that the youth was indeed a Pakistani citizen. The Pakistani ambassador to Italy often interviews the applicants personally and renders immediate decisions; however, other staff members of the embassy, even typists and drivers, have had to help in processing the flood of applications. Pakistanis initially praised the services of the embassy, comparing them favourably to Pakistani embassies in other countries where it was common for the staff to demand bribes. However, the high workload caused increasing backlogs, which by 2007 meant that 20,000 Pakistani migrants lost the chance to regularise their status and obtain work permits; migrants described the embassy's attitude as "unreasonable" and even threatened to set themselves on fire in protest.
Read more about this topic: Pakistanis In Italy