During a briefing to the Senate Standing Committee on Overseas Pakistanis, Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry stated that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has effectively stopped issuing visas to Pakistani citizens holding ordinary passports. He explained that, at present, only individuals travelling on official blue passports or diplomatic passports are able to obtain visas. Chaudhry told the committee that UAE authorities had expressed concerns over the involvement of some Pakistani travellers in criminal activities, which he said had led to the tightening of visa rules. Senator Mohsin Aziz, who was present at the meeting, also remarked that he had personally observed a sharp reduction in visa approvals, saying that even the few visas granted recently were issued after considerable difficulty.
However, the UAE’s diplomatic mission refuted these claims. A senior UAE embassy official in Islamabad insisted that the country had not imposed any visa ban on Pakistanis. Similarly, in Karachi, UAE Consul General Bakheet Ateeq Al Remeithi said that all visa categories continued to be processed and noted that the number of applications from Pakistan had actually increased in recent weeks. He emphasised that the UAE was working on new facilitation measures, including online processing and e-visa services, and maintained that no official restriction had been placed on Pakistani applicants.
