Additional Interior Secretary Salman Chaudhry said on Thursday that the United Arab Emirates had not been issuing visas to Pakistanis.
Pakistan and the UAE share close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties. The UAE is one of Pakistan’s largest trading partners in the Middle East and a major source of remittances, with a large Pakistani expatriate population living and working there.
The secretary made this revelation during a meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, further stating that Saudi Arabia and the UAE had “stopped short of imposing a ban on the Pakistani passport”.
“If a ban is imposed, getting it removed would be difficult,” he warned.
The official said that currently, the UAE was only issuing visas to blue and diplomatic passport holders.
Separately, Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri, who heads the Senate committee on human rights, also confirmed that the interior ministry official’s remarks to the media.
Meanwhile, a senior diplomat in the UAE embassy, who wished not to be named, dismissed social media speculation that there was a ban on visas for Pakistanis. Answering a question related to the purported “ban”, he told the media that “there’s no ban on visas for Pakistani citizens.”
On the other hand, UAE Ambassador to Pakistan Salem M. Salem Al Bawab Al Zaabi shared “major UAE visa facilitation reforms for Pakistanis” with Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, the latter’s ministry said.
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 on X.
Nearly 500 visas were being processed daily at the newly launched UAE Visa Centre in Pakistan, the statement added, further outlining reforms shared by the envoy.
Ambassador Al Zaabi emphasised boosting bilateral cooperation in trade, investment and cultural ties, while “appreciating the longstanding contributions of Pakistanis working in the UAE”.
Both sides reaffirmed their resolve to strengthen the fraternal, strategic, and economic partnership between their countries, the statement said.