100,000 Pakistanis Deported Globally Last 2 Years

[george]

100,000 Pakistanis deported globally

ISLAMABAD: -- A total of 104,075 Pakistani illegal immigrants were deported, mainly from the Middle East, the Gulf, Europe and the United States, in last two years, a news report said this morning.

The daily Times quoted unnamed government and U.N. officials as saying that these figures do not include camel jockeys repatriated from Middle East and those who were off-loaded from planes by authorities in the host countries.

They said these deportations had taken place for various reasons, including loss or expiry of documents, rejection of asylum, possession of fake documents, being black-listed, commission of a criminal offences or illegal border crossing.

High unemployment, low wages and poverty force many Pakistanis, especially youths, to attempt to go abroad. Many become targets of human traffickers.

However, Junior Interior Minister Dr Shahzad Waseem told the newspaper that illegal immigration was declining because of the government's preventive measures, including introduction of machine-readable passports, electronic installations at entry and exit points, updating of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) rules and the establishment of a special cell at the Interior Ministry.

Because of government's initiatives, the minister said Pakistan, placed in tier-3 by the U.S. in its annual report on human trafficking in 2001, was promoted to tier-2 in the latest report.

"The government does not discourage immigration, but is for safe and legal migration," an unnamed senior official said.

According to Pakistan's passport department, the number of applicants is "consistently" increasing at a faster rate than previous years, and the regional offices were issuing around 5,000 passports every day.

"Regional offices issue an average of 650 passports per day in Rawalpindi alone," an official said.

The Bureau of Immigration and Overseas Employment sent more than 270,000 people for employment abroad since October 1999. An annual average of 1.28 billion U.S. dollars has been received as foreign exchange remittances in the last five years.

--DPA 2005-12-05