Imran Khan says Pakistani citizenship will be granted for Afghans born in Pakistan

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan announced Sunday to offer Pakistani citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Afghans born to refugee families in his country, according to Pakistan’s Samaa TV.
Khan said government will issue national identity cards and passports to immigrants from Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
The United Nations refugee agency and local officials said that there are 2.7 million Afghans, including 1.5 million registered as refugees, in Pakistan. The displaced families have fled decades of conflict, poverty and economic hardships in turmoil-hit Afghanistan.
“Afghans whose children have been raised and born in Pakistan will be granted citizenship Inshallah (God willing) because this is the established practice in countries around the world. You get an American passport if you are born in America,” said Khan in the southern port city of Karachi on Sunday night.
“Then why can’t we do it here. We continue to subject these people to unfair treatment,” he said.
He said that the crisis of thousands of Bengali and Afghan immigrants is pushing them to crime.
“Terrorism and targeted killing has declined in Karachi but there is a major reason behind the street crimes. It is an underclass. They are illiterate and jobless. They are the Bengalis and Afghans who are living in Pakistan,” he said, adding that “These immigrants have lived here for decades, their children were born here, but they don’t have identity cards and passports,” he said.
The people of this deprived class can’t get jobs without ID cards and passports, so our government has decided to issue them computerized national identity cards and passports, Khan said according to Samaa TV.