September 17, 2018:

Pakistan is one of the world’s largest refugee-hosting nations with 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees.

Pakistan's new Prime Minister Imran Khan has promised to give citizenship to Afghan refugees and Bengali immigrants, officials said Monday, giving rights to many residents of the country for decades.

Pakistan, one of the largest refugee host countries in the world, is home to about 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees, some of whom have been living in the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

There is also about a quarter of a million Bengalis, many of whom arrived during the Pakistani civil war in 1971, when East Pakistan split to declare independence and become Bangladesh. Khan, who traveled to Karachi on Sunday, said at a fundraising dinner that his government would take steps to grant citizenship to those who had been here the longest.

"The first thing I will do when I come back (to Islamabad), God willing, is that we will receive people from Bangladesh, who may have lived here for over 40 years and their children have aged, have delivered passports and national identity cards. "He said, according to images of the dinner seen by AFP.

"And Afghans whose children have grown older here, who were born in Pakistan, they would also receive passports and ID cards," he said. "When you're born in America, you get the American passport.

This is the practice in all countries of the world, so why not here? How cruel for them. However, he also noted that Bengali immigrants and Afghan refugees have created an "underclass" in Karachi that has helped fuel street crime with the mega-city of more than 20 million people.

Officials confirmed Khan's comments Monday and said a draft policy should be prepared for the cabinet before legislation can be written and debated in parliament. Pakistanis have long regarded Afghan refugees with suspicion, with police accusing them of harassment and extortion.

Many say they have exceeded their home. In 2016, a wave of forced repatriations raised fears of a humanitarian crisis, with Human Rights Watch issuing a scathing report describing Pakistan's "coercive" approach. He accused the government of arbitrary detentions and other violations.

The UN refugee agency hailed Khan's announcement on Monday. "We will continue to work closely with the Government of Pakistan on this issue in the coming weeks," spokesman Qaiser Khan Afridi told AFP.

Source:  PTI

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