The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has reportedly stopped issuing visas to Pakistani nationals over concerns about individuals travelling to the Gulf country and getting involved in criminal activities, according to Pakistani media reports.
Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry made the revelation to a Pakistani Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, saying that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had “stopped short of imposing a ban on the Pakistani passport,” reported the Karachi-based daily Dawn.
He also warned about a formal ban on the Pakistani passport, saying that it would be difficult to get it removed. The official said that currently, the UAE was only issuing visas to blue and diplomatic passport holders.
UAE’s Response
Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, who
heads the Senate committee on human rights, also confirmed the development, saying the restriction was attributed to concerns about people travelling to the UAE and “getting involved in criminal activities”.
Zehri said the UAE had largely stopped issuing visas to Pakistani nationals, and only a limited number had been granted recently “after much difficulty”.
Meanwhile, the UAE Ambassador to Pakistan Salem M. Salem Al Bawab Al Zaabi shared “major UAE visa facilitation reforms for Pakistanis” with Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday, according to an official statement from the Pakistani ministry.
The reforms discussed during their meeting in Islamabad included online visa processing, e-visas without passport stamping, and faster system-to-system linkages, the finance ministry said. Nearly 500 visas were being processed daily at the newly launched UAE Visa Centre in Pakistan, it added.
Visa Restrictions For Pakistanis
Chaudhry said a large number of Pakistanis were deported from Saudi Arabia over various legal and immigration violations. The committee was told that the interior ministry had digitally obtained the data of 180 million to 200 million Pakistanis to prevent any misuse or irregularities in passport issuance, Geo News reported.
“Most of the Pakistanis arrested abroad are involved in minor crimes,” he told the Senate panel. Hundreds of Pakistanis leave the country every year through illegal and dangerous routes every year, with some losing their lives in accidents along the way.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have repeatedly raised the issue of a large number of Pakistani citizens getting involved in criminal activities such as street crimes, drug rackets, visa violations and begging rings.
In July, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi intervened after several Pakistani visas were rejected, raising the matter with his UAE counterpart. Overseas Employment Promoter Aisam Baig said the UAE government had reservations that Pakistanis on “visit visas, not work visas”, resort to begging in the country.
This came after two Indian nationals were killed and a third was injured in an attack, allegedly by a Pakistani national shouting religious slogans in a Dubai bakery where they worked, the family members of the two victims claimed.
The victim, identified as Ashtapu Premsagar (35) from Telangana’s Nirmal district, was killed with a sword on April 11. Union minister G Kishan Reddy said that the second deceased has been identified as Srinivas, who hailed from Nizamabad district. A third man, Sagar, was injured in the attack and has been admitted to a hospital, his wife informed.
These incidents have already dented the image of Pakistan’s passport, which was ranked the fourth weakest (103) in 2025 in the Henley Passport Rankings 2025. Pakistan’s passport ranking falls behind Somalia, Bangladesh, and North Korea.
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