In 2012, a Pakistani official claimed that five million illegal immigrants live in Pakistan.[5] Since early 2002, Pakistan's government took steps to determine the number of illegal immigrants in its country. The National Alien Registration Authority (NARA) started registering illegal immigrants in January 2006. According to NARA, there were an estimated 1.8 million illegal immigrantsin Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi in 2007. Others believe that there may be about 3.35 million illegal immigrants in Pakistan.As of January 2010, the number of illegal alimmigrantsiens in Karachi was estimated to be between 1.6 and 2 million Thousands of nationals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Burma, Sri Lanka, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Jordan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Azerbaijan are illegally living in Karachi. This includes thousands of Muslim students from Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia studying in the Pakistani madrasahs while thousands of women from Bangladesh and Burma are working as maids and prostitutes there; most of them are illegal aliens.
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According to some sources, thousands of radicals of Arab origin who entered the country illegally to fight in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, and later against the US-led invasion in October 2001, still remain in the country.
Although the presence of illegal aliens in Pakistan is against the law, the Government of Pakistan did not make a serious effort to deport them until January 2010 when Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik asked illegal aliens to either leave or register themselves with the department concerned, as a major crackdown would soon be initiated against them. This action was taken following the recent bomb attack and targeted killings of political activists in the city, against foreign militants operating in Pakistan.
According to NARA, there are foreign nationals from over 76 countries, mostly from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, India and Burma illegally living and working in the country as laborers involved in construction businesses and others which require unskilled manpower, whilst most of the illegal immigrants are those who intend to use Pakistan as a transit country in order to immigrate to Western countries.
