Immigration To Pakistan - Illegal Aliens

Illegal Aliens

Following the September 11 attacks, Pakistan ordered all the provincial governments to take action against illegal aliens who entered the country after 2001, but decided to offer registration only to those immigrants who entered the country before December 2001. The National Alien Registration Authority (NARA) started registering illegal immigrants in the country in January 2006. According to NARA, there were an estimated 1.8 million illegal aliens in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi in 2007. Others believe that there may be about 3.35 million illegal immigrants in Pakistan. As of January 2010, the number of illegal aliens in Karachi is estimated to be between 1.6 and 2 million people. Thousands of nationals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzistan, Azerbaijan, are illegally living in Karachi. This includes thousands of Muslim students from Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia studying in the Pakistani madrasah while thousands of women from Bangladesh and Burma are working as maids and prostitutes there; most of them are illegal immigrants.

According to some sources, thousands of radicals of Arab origin who entered the country illegally to fight in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, and later against the US-led invasion in October 2001, still remain in the country.

Although the presence of illegal aliens in Pakistan is against the law, the Government of Pakistan did not make a serious effort to deport them until January 2010 when Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik asked illegal immigrants living in the country to either leave or register themselves with the department concerned, as a major crackdown would soon initiated against them. This action was taken following the recent bomb attack and targeted killings of political activists in the city, against foreign militants operating in Pakistan.

According to NARA, there are foreign nationals from over 76 countries, mostly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, India and Burma illegally living and working in the country as laborers involved in construction businesses and others which require unskilled manpower, whilst most of the illegal immigrants are those who intend to use Pakistan as a transit countrt in order to immigrate to Western countries.