Pakistan grants six-month stay extension to registered Afghans

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has extended the stay in Pakistan for registered Afghan immigrants for another six months.

According to sources, the federal cabinet has approved the circular summary in this regard.

Sources said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Interior had proposed the extension of the Proof of Registration (POR) card validity, which will now apply to registered Afghan immigrants and their family members.

The extension for POR cards will be effective from July 1, 2023 until December 31, 2023.

As per sources, the validity of registration cards for registered Afghan immigrants had expired on June 30.

The number of registered Afghan immigrants in Pakistan exceeds 1.3 million.

Meanwhile, over one million Afghan nationals are residing in Pakistan without legal documentation, according to official figures presented to the Ministry of Interior and to the Apex Committee and Prime Minister’s Secretariat.

Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing overwhelmed as Afghans face expulsion

According to the documents, these undocumented Afghans entered Pakistan illegally over the past five years, spreading across 32 districts. A significant portion, migrating after the Taliban’s rise to power in Kabul, represents about 30 per cent of the influx in the last two years. Various institutions across the country have cooperated to collect this comprehensive data.

The total Afghan refugees in Pakistan, as per the latest 2023 data, stands at over four million. This includes 1.3 million registered refugees, one million lacking any form of legal documentation, and 1.7 million currently undergoing verification of their identity documents. Many of these undocumented individuals are involved in small-scale businesses across the regions they inhabit.