ISLAMABAD – Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis travel to foreign countries each year but not all of them are fortunate enough to settle there and are forced to leave the country.
The Pakistanis deported by foreign countries on multiple accounts face difficulties in adjusting to their homeland due to multiple reasons including mismatched skills, incomplete documents, and cultural sensitivities.
The government of Pakistan has officially revealed the number of Pakistanis who were deported by foreign countries in the last three years.
According to the Ministry of Interior, as many as 154,205 Pakistani nationals were deported from different countries over the illegal entry in three years i.e. 2021, 2022 and 2023.
The revelations were made during the question hour session of the Upper House of the Parliament on Tuesday.
According to the official figures, 58,758 Pakistanis were deported in the year 2021 while the number of deportations was 51,869 for 2022. For 2023, the number of Pakistanis deported was 43,578.
The information was submitted in response to a question raised by JUI-F’s Kamran Murtaza and implies that the number of deportations is way too high.
The Interior Ministry has also stated in its reply that 39,201 Pakistanis were deported by air and 19,557 were deported by land route in 2022.
For 2022, 46,193 Pakistanis were deported by air and 5,676 were deported by land in 2022; for 2023, 37,487 Pakistanis were deported by air and 6,091 by land.
The ministry also clarified that 19 European countries deported 17,773 Pakistani nationals for the three years from 2021 to 2023. The details confirm that 1,270 Pakistanis were deported in 2021, 12,837 were deported in 2022 and the number of deportations for 2023 was 3,666.
As far as the countries are concerned, Greece deported 1,377 Pakistanis while Germany deported 962 Pakistanis in three years. Australia also deported 45 Pakistanis in the last three years as per the official figures while Ireland deported 2 Pakistanis.
Interestingly, Turkey deported the maximum number of Pakistanis i.e. over 15,040 in the last two years as per the information provided by the Ministry of Interior.
The shocking figures confirm that more and more Pakistanis intend to travel abroad in search of better employment opportunities even if they have incomplete documents, a visible signal of inflation and poor economic indicators of the country.
