Tahir's Fabric Business

Tahir left Pakistan in 2007 because he was facing dangerous living conditions. He hired a middleman to help him leave the country, and was promised that he would be taken to Canada. Although he paid for that passage, he never reached Canada. Tahir instead ended up in Ireland. He decided to stay, as he also felt safe there. He applied for asylum at the airport and was placed in an accommodation centre, where he lived for two years.

Of those two years, Tahir said, “In the hostel there are lot of people who had been there for eight or ten years. They told me ‘you better think to go back.’ One day IOM came to visit in the hostel. They told me if you think about going back, contact me. Then I contacted IOM and asked if it is okay to come back.”

IOM assisted Tahir in purchasing a plane ticket and arranging his travel documents. He also applied for the reintegration grant, which he used to open a textile business with a friend. He had studied and worked in this industry before leaving Pakistan, so he decided to carry on with the profession. The business is working so far, and although it makes “a very small profit,” Tahir can see himself continuing to expand it in the next few years. He says, “People from outside this area come here. If your work is good then people come back again, but if it is not good, they go to another shop.”

He is happy to have returned to Pakistan, and is not thinking about immigrating again. Tahir explains, “I decided when I was over there. It is easy to return here but very hard to go over there.”