 "Migration")
Raj Kumar Hirani's "Dunki", starring Shah Rukh Khan, Taapsee Pannu, Vicky Kaushal, and Boman Irani, will be hitting cinemas on December 22, ahead of Christmas celebrations. Shah Rukh Khan has described the story as "A journey that will take you through a madcap ride of friendship, the comedy and tragedy that life is and a nostalgia for home and family." However, many may not know that the Punjabi phrase "dunki" or donkey flight actually refers to an illegal method used for immigration into countries like the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Here is a closer look into what "Dunki" or "Donkey Flight" is and what it entails.
What is the meaning of Dunki?
Dunki is the Punjabi idiom that means to "hop from place to place", according to the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). It is a colloquial term for "donkey flights" or the "donkey flights method", which is a dangerous illegal immigration technique involving crossing a country's borders through a backdoor route via multiple stops in other countries.
How does the donkey flight method or dunki work?
The desire for a higher quality of life has given rise to an industry driven by "agents" who charge exorbitant fees to help smuggle people to the country of their choice. Some agents may even run legitimate businesses while offering this dangerous option.
The agents can offer various services, from fake papers to help through otherwise legal migration processes to smuggling people through ship containers.
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The donkey flight method, or dunki, involves immigrants applying for a tourist visa for European Union Schengen countries, where they can move freely between 26 bordering nations. After reaching the EU zone, "consultants" help illegal entry into the UK by issuing fake documents or hiding in trunks of vehicles crossing borders.
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Which countries are most targeted using the Dunki method?
While donkey flight can be used to enter any country, the US, Canada, and the UK are some of the most popular destinations undertaken by Indian immigrants.
According to the US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), Indians are the fifth largest source of illegal migrants entering the US from the southwest border. 96,917 Indians were caught illegally crossing borders into the US between October 2022 and September 2023. Of this, 30,010 were caught at the Canada border and 41,770 at the Mexico border.
According to a report by The Times of India, citing USCBP, between February 2019 and March 2023, as many as 149,000 Indians were detained for attempting to enter the US illegally. Of this, most of those detained were from Gujarat and Punjab.
Risks involved in the dunki method
Dunki comes with tremendous risks, including the risk of capture, imprisonment, and deportation. When facilitated by an agent, the system is highly exploitative. Many sell off their assets, including ancestral land, to pay these agents. Agents may also withhold people's passports or other important documents to extort more money and assets. Moreover, smuggled migrants are also more vulnerable to becoming victims of other crimes during the smuggling process.
The terrains of the places through which immigrants may have to travel pose a range of risks, including harsh weather conditions, rugged terrains, and access to basic resources like food and water.
It must be noted that migrant smuggling is not the same as human trafficking. However, these crimes may sometimes interlink, adding another layer of risk for those engaging in illegal immigration.
Why do Indians choose the Dunki immigration route?
The dunki method seems to be the most popular method of illegal immigration in Punjab, where the term also originates from. According to a report by the Financial Express, however, it has also expanded to Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Gujarat.
According to media reports, and as SRK's latest release may depict, people are driven by the promise of a better life that includes higher incomes, more opportunities, and a higher standard of living. The popular term "American dream", which promises the possibility of upward mobility and success for everyone, has also driven vast migration to the US. All of this together also creates an allure of more freedom and equality for individuals and families.
Post-independence, many families that migrated to more developed nations found better social, economic, and sometimes even political conditions than their Indian counterparts. This may have built the desire to migrate to the West.
The number of illegal and legal immigrants from these two states in the US, UK, and Canada has increased so much that Punjabi became the third-largest spoken language in the Parliament of Canada in 2015.
