Pakistan’s Foreign Minister has defended an order that all illegal immigrants, including 1.73 million Afghans, must leave, saying no other country allows illegal immigrants and the decision is in line with international practice.
The order, announced on Tuesday and with a November 1 deadline for people to go, has frayed relations with Afghanistan’s Taliban Rulers, who said the threat to force out Afghan migrants was “unacceptable.”
“No country allows illegal people to live in their country， whether it is Europe，whether it is countries in Asia, in our neighbourhood,” the Minister in a caretaker Pakistani Government, Jalil Abbas Jilani, told Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV in an interview on the sidelines of a forum in Tibet.
“So, accordingly，this is in line with the international practice that we have taken this decision.”
Pakistan has been a refuge for people fleeing from war in Afghanistan since the 1970s.
Pakistan’s interior minister said on Tuesday some 1.73 million Afghans in Pakistan had no legal documents and the number of Afghan refugees in Pakistan totalled 4.4 million.
“But now I think it has been more than 40 years, so the government of Pakistan has taken a decision,” Jilani said, noting that the situation in Afghanistan had stabilised.
REUTERS
