Unfortunately, there is no more land left in Punjab to cultivate further. This has created a problem of unemployment that makes youth restless and susceptible to drugs
I don't think this is the real reason so much as crass materialism which makes people sell their land to look richer than they actually are and find a convenient government-subsidized cache of heroin to blow it on. Your analysis specifically runs contra to the experience many "bhaiyya" workers have who actually till the land while their Jatt landlords sit and sip cha.
New world Western countries have adopted the same approach. In the 1900s, it was "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". Why is it now "Give me your doctors, scientists, and information technology engineers yearning for a Honda Civic"?
Because each nation-state is looking for what's in its own best benefit. You have the very unfortunate consequences of immigration in European nations where ghettoization occurs between mass populations that immigrated and the formerly natives, creating cultural divides that prevent unity. For that matter, in the 1900s the model of assimilation was much more rigid than the loose model we have today.
The issue of assimilation is a red herring. Due to globalization, differences between cultures are becoming ever smaller and assimilation almost always happens within 2-3 generations.
No it's not. Tell that to the Turks in Germany. The rise of right-wing parties in Europe right now is precisely because of a hyper-liberal attitude in the early Cold War era of "let's let in all these folks from the former colonies."
Your father may have had opportunities other people in the pind didn't
We were probably the poorest people in the pind land-wise, but I suppose that led my father to grow up in a culture that prided education. We were Jatt too, had undeniable advantages over Dalits. I don't deny that most Punjabis I know work in labor and that most of my Dad's Desi coworkers from South India and Delhi came from elites, but my point is again, so what? The state is not concerned with what's fair for workers from another country. It's concerned with what's good for its own well-being, and immigration is not a catchall that leads to continued positive benefits. That's not necessarily a xenophobic analysis as much as a practical one.
Obviously, utopian ideals will hold, as does the reality that many people will find ways to hop the borders and move around anyway. But I don't think that detracts from genuine concerns the state may have with completely open borders, and that applies to all states, not just wealthy racist Western ones.