5 Million Foreigners Living in Pakistan Illegally

About 5 million migrants are living in Pakistan without any legal authorization as estimated by Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior. This alarmingly high number of illegal immigrants in Pakistan is due to the decades long disturbed situation in the region.

The Interior Ministry, who briefed the National Assembly of Pakistan on Friday, revealed that the enormous number of these illegal immigrants has been residing in all over the country for more than 3 decades.

Most of illegal immigrants are from the boarding countries, as approximately 2.5 million Afghans, 2 million Bangladeshi, and about 5 hundred thousands people from other counties such as Iraq, Iran, and Myanmar are living in Pakistan illegally.

The Home Ministry told NA that the reason behind the rising number of immigrants was the partition war, which was fought in 1971, consequently a great number of ethnic Bengalis remained in Pakistan, and many of them arrived through Karachi via illicit ways at that time.

Whereas, the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq played another role to boost the number of illegal immigrants in the country because the large number of Afghanis compelled to migrate towards Pakistan in search of livelihoods while war in Afghanistan.

Ministry also said that the international community and amnesty international’s pressure, forced Pakistani Government to accommodate more war refugees alongside Pak-Afghan areas, and it was another source of illegal immigrants.
However, the Department claimed that the Pakistani Government has taken number of precautions to stop the illegal immigration and human traffic.

The Government’s development on Anti-Trafficking Units at provincial police headquartered and establishment of Integrated Border Management System (IBMS) with the biometric program help the related authorities to reduce and apprehend the illegal migration.

Meanwhile, the Interior ministry asserted that the Government has toughen its immigration processes, as recently it launched the Machine Readable Passports (MRP) along with forming more check-posts at entry point of the country.
According to the ministry the government enforced Prevention and Control of Human Trafficking Ordinance (PACHTO) in 2002 to prevent human trafficking and illegal migration towards the country.

The Interior office also informed the upper house that Government has warned many people, who have multiple CNICs and Passports, as they should surrender their multiple CNICs or Passports, otherwise the legal action will be taken against them.

Tags: Afghan, Bengali, Illegal immigrants, Immigration, Pakistan, Pakistan Interior Ministry