ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar has said that Pakistan could no longer continue to compromise its national security by accommodating a huge number of undocumented immigrants, referring to the Afghan refugees in the country.
"Our ultimate aim is to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous Pakistan" with associated benefits for our own people, for the region, and the wider world," the prime minister wrote in an article published in the UK-based The Telegraph on Sunday, according to the Express Tribune newspaper.
He said that governments across the world were adapting to a new era of mass migration linked to conflict, climate change, and economic opportunism.
He said the UK government's plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda was a sign of that pressure, adding that the heated debate surrounding the proposal and the many efforts to derail the scheme illustrated the huge challenges for policymakers as they sought to balance human rights with hard realities.
Similarly, he said, France was also struggling, while Italy had expressed fears that it might become Europe's refugee camp.
The situation in the United States was no easier, he added.
"Pakistan's problem is of a different magnitude altogether. Over the last three to four decades, between four and five million migrants (roughly the population of Ireland) have arrived. Many have no right to remain. Despite being a non-signatory to the 1951 Convention on Refugees (and its 1967 Protocol), we have generously accommodated the single largest caseload of refugees," the premier wrote.
"We have worked very hard, over a very long period of time, to accommodate as many as we can while giving those with no right to remain ample opportunity to leave voluntarily," he said.
Unfortunately, despite frequent opportunities to repatriate voluntarily, and multiple government attempts to register those who remained undocumented, a significant number had persistently refused to formalise their status, choosing instead to stay in the shadows, Kakar said.
He said that while Pakistan had benefited from many hardworking and law-abiding migrants, the overall socio-economic and security cost of the huge influx had been staggering.
"Many work on the black market, paying no tax, depressing wages for legitimate workers. They are also susceptible to exploitation by the criminal underworld, with all its disturbing links to terrorist organisations operating in the region," he said.
He said that since August 2021, at least 16 Afghan nationals had carried out suicide attacks inside Pakistan, while 65 terrorists killed in encounters with security forces, mainly in the bordering region, were identified as Afghans.
"No responsible government can ignore such concerns. Whenever we raised this with the interim Afghan government, they advised us to 'look inwards'. We have finally decided to heed to their advice to put our house in order," he commented.
He said that Pakistan's painstaking repatriation programme had attracted predictable criticism from those who did not understand the complex history of the problem or the extraordinary efforts that had been made to avoid forcible deportations.
He said that in order to ensure the welfare of those being repatriated, the government had strictly directed all the officials involved in the programme to treat deportees with due respect and care.
"None of the 1.46 million Afghans who applied for proof of registration cards have been returned; nor have 800,000 or so individuals who hold Afghan citizen cards," he said.