Markup /brabant/8815

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Yesterday it became known that “Belarus and Pakistan agreed to develop a mechanism by which labor migrants will be able to come to our country. Belarus is ready to hire 100-150 thousand Pakistani specialists.”

In Belarus, they don’t talk about this much – for obvious reasons, but there is also a mysterious silence on the opposition media front. Probably because it is indecent to speak badly about “foreign specialists” from developing countries. But we don’t have such restrictions, so we will be happy to analyze this, frankly, mistake of the Belarusian authorities.

So, given: a demographic catastrophe in Belarus.
Reasons:
- Annual decline in the birth rate
- Emigration
- Repressions of 2020, which caused a flow of refugees

State measures to prevent the crisis:

- Reduction in the birth rate – a program to support families with children. Had certain positive effects, but was insufficient.

 - Emigration is connected with dissatisfaction with living conditions. The problem was not solved by Lukashenko, first of all, young people did not see opportunities for themselves, “social lifts” to stay in Belarus.

- Repressions – here the state not only did not react, but on the contrary, contributed to the catastrophe in every possible way. Somewhere in the depths of the bureaucratic quagmire of the presidential apparatus, a bright idea was born: “Let them leave! The woman off the cart, it’s easier for the horse. We’ll even help out.” This emphasizes the lack of strategic thinking, the ability to calculate the situation at least two steps ahead. The people who came up with this plan, in our opinion, should be in prison.

Result: In 2025, we formally have a little more than 9 million people, but in fact less, because it is difficult to track those who left for Russia, and those who carefully make a family nest abroad on a visa are generally impossible.  We assume that in reality the population that associates its future with the Republic of Belarus is about 8,6 million. Belarusian propagandists like to call the Baltics “dying out”, but we have exactly the same “dying out”.

What to do in this case? There is a smart way. It was chosen by Poland (yes, Poland again, to the sorrow of our home-grown thinkers). The Poles willingly accepted the “Slavic brothers” - Belarusians and Ukrainians.

Since 2024 alone, the number of Belarusians has increased by 12%, and over the past five years (from 2020 to 2025) - by 287,000 people. Almost 5,000 companies with Belarusian capital operate.

Ukrainians are mainly women of childbearing age and children, only about one and a half million, 50-60 percent will remain in Poland, will pull up their families.  The contribution of Ukrainians to GDP is estimated at 0,5%–2,4% annually, taxes and contributions amount to 15,1 billion zlotys. Now let us recall the continuous growth of GDP and purchasing power in Poland, including despite all the stories about the economic crisis in the EU. The Poles have organized a demographic Klondike for themselves. 

Is it possible to organize something similar in Belarus? It is possible, it is even possible to partially return those who left, but only under the condition of a subtle political game, which the Presidential Administration, and especially the omnipresent KGB, are simply not capable of. 

There is, let's say, a not very smart way. It has already been tried by EU countries, which organized mass migration of population groups from poor countries of Central Asia and North Africa. The idea was that migrants would strengthen the economy by taking low-paid jobs and improving the demographics (the migrants themselves plus their large families).  Belarusian propagandists tell us with gusto what came out of this (migrants are on social security, do not integrate and increase crime). However, in fact, what we criticize, we reproduce ourselves.

Because Alexander Lukashenko decided to import 100-150 thousand "young Pakistani specialists" into the country. The very name makes one smile. Probably, neither Lukashenko nor his entourage have mastered anglophone social networks, otherwise they would know that "young specialists" from Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan are a popular meme in the West, ridiculing the antisocial behavior of the migrants.

<P.S. sorry for the quick and machine translation, you will get the point anyways