ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Amjad Ali has spent two years trying to get to Europe illegally, and he says nothing — not money, danger or jail — will keep him from trying again.

Ali was one of 24 Pakistanis caught in September as they tried to cross the Iran-Turkey border with fake passports, hoping to reach Western Europe and land jobs so they could send money home to their families.

He was thrown in an Iranian jail, beaten repeatedly and deported after 25 days. Ali, 30, said the Pakistani human trafficker won't refund his $11,000 but guarantees he'll get his customer to Europe at no additional cost — eventually.

Ali will keep trying, he said from the eastern city of Lahore: "This is all I am living for."

There are thousands like Ali, particularly in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Immigration control has tightened drastically since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, making it even harder to get a visa legally. And that means more business for criminal gangs.

Officials said thousands of citizens are flooding into the European Union illegally each month. Many are poor farmers who sell everything to buy forged documents, with no guarantee they will get through.

In desperately poor Bangladesh, 250,000 people leave the country each year to seek jobs abroad, many illegally. Some take circuitous routes into Europe. In January, 24 dozen Bangladeshis were stranded in the West African country of Mauritania, where they had been sent by smugglers with promises of jobs in Europe.

Many Africans, too, are determined to make it to Europe.

In 1999, Nnamdi Okere, 40, of Nigeria, paid desert guides to take him across the Sahara in a rickety truck. Five of his 20 traveling companions died and were buried in the sand.

He reached Morocco and spent a year living on the streets and working to pay boatmen to sneak him into Spain.

When he arrived in Spain, he paid $3,000 for a fake marriage document with a Spanish woman and obtained residency papers but was denounced by a fellow Nigerian immigrant after a quarrel and deported in July 2004.

"I came back with nothing except the clothes on my back after all the risks and suffering," Okere said from Lagos. He insisted he will go abroad again as soon as he can, but this time he'll try South Korea, where he hears there are jobs.

"The European countries are very hostile to outsiders, especially we Africans," he said.

Migrants from developing countries face stiffer competition for jobs now that the European Union has broadened its labor pool by taking in 10 more states, most of them former communist countries.

However, scare headlines about an invasion of low-wage workers from the east have proved groundless. Perhaps the most dramatic change is in Hungary, where doctors are heading west for wages up to 16 times higher, leaving Hungarian hospitals struggling.

"The entire health-care system in Hungary could collapse because of the mass emigration of Hungarian doctors," said Geza Gyenes, general secretary of the Chamber of Hungarian Doctors.

At Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, which deals with immigration, Tasadduque Hussain said authorities try their best but there is only so much they can do.

"We have a large population and not enough jobs," Hussain said.

As long as rich countries offer opportunities, "people will go there for jobs. Immigration will go on one way or the other."

Associated Press reporters Asif Shahzad and Sadaqat Jan in Pakistan, Dilip Ganguly in Sri Lanka, Parveen Ahmed in Bangladesh, Dulue Mbachu in Nigeria, Sarah el-Deeb in Egypt, Ashok Sharma in India and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw contributed to this report.