Dubai: The United Arab Emirates has effectively halted most visa issuance to Pakistani citizens, stopping just short of a formal ban on the Pakistani passport, according to senior officials in Islamabad.
In testimony to a parliamentary panel on Thursday, Salman Chaudhry, additional secretary at Pakistan’s Interior Ministry, confirmed that both the UAE and Saudi Arabia had refrained from imposing an outright passport ban only because “removing such a ban later would be extremely difficult”.
Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights, told Dawn newspaper that Emirati authorities had cited Pakistani nationals “getting involved in criminal activities” on visitor visas as the primary reason for the restrictions. She added that only a handful of visas were now being approved, and only “after considerable difficulty”.
The measures mark a significant tightening of a previously liberal visa regime for Pakistanis, who form one of the largest expatriate communities in the UAE. More than 1.7mn Pakistanis live in the Emirates, according to official estimates, and remittances from the Gulf state are a vital source of foreign exchange for Islamabad.
The restrictions follow a sharp increase in visa rejections reported since early July, prompting Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi to raise the issue directly with his UAE counterpart.
In a seemingly contradictory development, the UAE ambassador to Pakistan, Salem M Salem Al Bawab Al Zaabi, met Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday to discuss “major visa facilitation reforms”. A statement from the finance ministry said the new UAE Visa Centre in Pakistan was processing nearly 500 applications daily. Analysts cautioned that the centre’s activity appears limited to specific categories such as employment and family reunification visas, rather than the tourist and visit visas now largely suspended.
The UAE has not issued an official statement on the policy shift. Gulf states have in recent years intensified screening of visitors and workers from South Asia over concerns about overstays, petty crime and, in some cases, links to organised begging rings and prostitution networks.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry has yet to comment publicly on the disclosures made to the Senate committee.
