KARACHI, March 28: The registration of illegal immigrants in Karachi has slowed down from an average of daily 500 to only 50 despite setting up of camps and visits of field officers to different parts of the city.
The National Aliens’ Registration Authority (Nara) started function in Jan 2002 but so far only 26,000 aliens have registered themselves with the organization, official sources told this news agency.
According to Nara officials, the registration process faced a setback at the initial stage with the holding of the presidential referendum and later general elections, during which political circles manipulated the situation to muster support of the aliens. Since the aliens were promised that they would be declared citizens of Pakistan by the government, they did not take interest in registration despite warnings.
Nara, with its head office in Shirin Jinnah Colony, has set up camp offices in Site, Karimabad, Orangi Town and Fisheries while its field officers visit different pockets of the city, but with no significant result, the sources said.
The officials held several meetings with representatives of the aliens, particularly the Bengalis, to convince them for voluntary registration of their community but that too did not bear any fruit.
They argued that the Bengalis were citizens of Pakistan as they used to live here before creation of Bangladesh.
Their claim is contrary to the fact that only 40,000 Bengalis were settled here before that period while the rest came illegally in the ‘80s.
Moreover, through the amended Citizenship Act of 1978, all the Bengalis were declared non-Pakistanis and they were required to apply for citizenship.
The Bengalis were asked to apply afresh even if they were settled here before 1971 as required under the law but they were hesitant to do so. Since a majority of the Bengalis got Pakistani NICs, domicile certificates, etc., through illegal means, they were offered to apply even on that basis, but they feared exclusion of hundreds of thousands of names from the voters’ list.
The sources said that out of the 26,000 aliens registered so far, 18,500 were Bengalis, 6,500 Afghans, 40 Indians, 44 Chinese while others included Iraqi, Somali, Iranians, Burmese, Filipinos, Sri Lankan and also US nationals. Most of the registered aliens have been delivered registration cards.
The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has cancelled thousands of NICs of such people and the process is going on. Moreover, a meeting would soon be convened to refer the case of 80 aliens, who have got themselves elected in the local bodies’ elections, to the Election Commission of Pakistan for disqualifying them. They have already been barred from attesting documents.—PPI