Avail visa by 31 Jan or face the consequences, home adviser to illegal foreigners

Action will be taken if any foreigner who has been residing in Bangladesh illegally, does not take any visa by 31 January, said home adviser Lieutenant General (retd) Md Jahangir Alam Chowdhury on Monday.

He also warned that anyone detained without any valid visa will be sent back to their country.

While visiting the Department of Immigration & Passports today, Jahangir Alam Chowdhury said there are a number of foreigners in the country who do not have any visa. Many of them have been in various jobs as well. Legal action will be taken against them if they do not avail visa by 31 January.

The home adviser further said the Department of Immigration & Passports is a service-oriented organisation. There has been discussion to scale up the quality of services at the department.

Claiming that corruption in the passport department has come down more than before, the home adviser said, “The magnitude of corruption in this department has declined since this DG (director general) has taken charge. This has to be further brought down. Still many people face sufferings in getting passports. There has been discussion on how to decrease that.”

When asked about many Rohingya people going abroad with Bangladesh passports and engaging in illegal activities, the home adviser said, “Once we thought about withdrawing the police verification system and issuing passports based on NIDs as there are allegations that people face harassment due to police verification, and they receive it late… But the problem with Rohingya people you just mentioned, that is why we are not being able to withdraw the police verification system.”

“I can’t say right now whether there will be a police verification system or not. But if we find that we can manage this only with the NID cards, maybe we could scrap the police verification system then,” he added.

Speaking about the allegations that many foreigners are not receiving MRPs (machine readable passports) even after applying, home adviser Jahangir Alam Chowdhury said that the MRPs have been sent from Bangladesh but those could not be distributed.

The passport department DG is addressing the issue and taking steps so that those could be distributed fast.