550 Visas Issued Per Day This Year, Says Pak Embassy in Kabul

The Pakistani embassy in Kabul has announced that more than 116,000 Afghan applicants have received Pakistani visas since the beginning of this year.

According to the embassy, this year the embassy and four consulates of Pakistan in Afghanistan have issued visas to an average of 550 people per day.

It added that the country issued about 250,000 visas to Afghan applicants in 2022 and nearly 410,000 visas in 2021.

According to the announced statistics, the total number of visas issued to Afghan applicants in the last three years is about 776,000.

Official data indicates that close to 957,000 Afghan refugees reside in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province only, with fewer than 650,000 of them being officially registered with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The state government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said that it has invalidated 597 fake ID cards. Also, based on these statistics, 3,911 Afghan refugees have been arrested for various crimes.

According to Pakistani government estimates, about 1.7 million unregistered Afghan migrants reside in Pakistan.

While the country has hosted millions of Afghan refugees for the past four decades, the Pakistani government last month set a one-month deadline for all immigrants without residency documents that they will be arrested and deported if they do not leave Pakistan.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Pakistani government has increased arrests of Afghan migrants to address the issue of migrants without legal documentation.