Pakistan government has decided to withdraw the order suspending the passports of Pakistanis seeking asylum abroad.
A high-level meeting which the Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar presided over decided this today. Directions in this regard will be issued soon.
Earlier the Interior Minatory in a bid to bolster national security decided to block the passports of Pakistani nationals seeking asylum abroad. The National Identity Card of such Pakistanis was also to be suspended. The Ministry also decides not to issue Pakistani passports to those citizens granted asylum abroad.
The earlier decision of the interior ministry raised objections including what alternate policy does this government ha to address the unemployment in Pakistan and to support those planning to go abroad. The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports earlier issued a directive last month stating any Pakistani who seeks asylum in another country will be denied from granting him his country’s passport. This order was issued under the guidance of Federal Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi. It was circulated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other relevant authorities. This decision was taken while the PMLN was ruling this country and that had been a strong opponent of such acts in the past. Both Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Mr. Ishaq Dar in the past were denied Pakistani passports to which they strongly objected.
The PMLN despite the stated situation strongly criticized the denial of this right to Mr. Sharif and also penned a letter to the then Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry, asking him to take notice of this denial of issuing a passport to Nawaz.According to the reported data, nearly 12 million Pakistanis left Pakistan since 1990 onward. The majority of such people have been asylum seekers. They have been earning and supporting their families in Pakistan. Though this doesn’t justify prompting Pakistanis to seek asylum, the government’s decision is likely to compel such Pakistanis not to return to their home country. It will promote the concept of marriages in countries such as Pakistanis are living to avoid seeking asylum.
Pakistan’s reported unemployment rate is 6.5%, ranking 24th in the world according to World of Statistics data. It presents a picture of the country’s economic landscape. 31 percent of the Pakistani youth is unemployed in Pakistan. The unemployment rate of a country represents the share of people without a job in the country’s labor force. A high unemployment rate usually indicates economic troubles.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) forecasts Pakistan’s unemployment up by 1.5 million since 2021. According to the ILO estimates, in 2023, Pakistan’s employment ratio was expected to reach 5.6 million. The government uses the foreign loans in settling the deficits instead of spending on the production This distress of economy is the reason behind the flight of both skilled and unskilled labor from Pakistan.
In recent times, Pakistan has witnessed a significant trend in emigration as millions of its citizens actively seek opportunities abroad. In 2020, nearly 6.3 million Pakistani immigrants were residing abroad, making Pakistan one of the top ten immigrant populations globally and now this number has to nearly 11 million. In the year 2023, 862,625 people migrated from Pakistan and this number in in 2022 was 832,339. It suggests a 3.6 percent increase from the previous year. Another crucial avenue of migration is educational mobility, which has recently seen a substantial surge in the number of Pakistani students studying abroad. These students often opt for Western nations, primarily to pursue permanent residency. Prominent destinations include the UK, Australia, the US, Canada, and Germany, among others.
Recently, China, Malaysia, Japan, and South Korea. The most significant growth in 2022/23, reaching 10,164 students, with roughly 16 percent growth, indicates a growing interest in US education among Pakistani students in recent years. In the case of Australia, a significant change occurred in 2022-23 when the number of student visas granted in 2022 surged by around threefold compared to 2021, indicating a resurgence in international student mobility. The number of asylum seekers different European countries was 19436 in 2023 and in 2022 this number reached to nearly 34000.
According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Pakistan has the 6th largest diaspora in the world. In 2021, overseas Pakistanis sent record remittances with growth at 26 percent and levels reaching 33 billion USD in 2021. A large number of Pakistanis are living even in African countries such as South Africa. Nearly 100,000 Pakistanis are living just in South Africa. The majority of them live in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban Grahamstown, and Pietermaritzburg.
Many expatriates run spaza shops, and cellphone stores; and Johannesburg’s Fordsburg is said to be among the best places in the country to find Pakistani cuisine. The influx of people arriving from Pakistan has increased significantly in the last 10 years. A vast majority of Pakistanis in South Africa made themselves eligible for nationalities after asylum.
Individuals who feel compelled to block their national identity strongly opposed this decision and were reported saying they would prefer to get their nationality cancelled than to take Pakistani passport and get back.
(By Rana Kashif)
