“From 2012 till April 14, 2017, a total number of 298 Indian emigrants have been granted Pakistani citizenship,” says a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior in response to a query by MNA Sheikh Rohale Asghar of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz during the ongoing session of the lower house of parliament on 19th August.
In 2012, 48 Indian emigrants were granted Pakistani nationality, which rose to 75 in 2013 and 76 in 2014. Only 15 were given nationality in 2015, while 69 got it in 2016, until April 14 this year, 15 Indians got nationality, the statement says.
According to Pew Research Centre, almost half of India’s migrants are living in just three countries: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Pakistan and the United States (US).
In 2015, Pakistan was home to the second-largest number of Indian migrants after the UAE, said a published report on its website.
It said that some 3.5 million Indians have been living in the UAE, making it the most favourite destination country for Indian migrants.
Over the past two decades millions of Indians have migrated there to find employment as labourers.
Surprisingly, Pakistan has the second-largest number of Indian migrants, with two million in the research centre’s report. Almost two million more Indian migrants live in the US, making up the country’s third-largest immigrant group, the report added.
During the last 25 years, the number of global Indian migrants has more than doubled, growing nearly twice as fast as the world’s aggregate migrant population. In 2015, 15.6 million people born in India were already living in other countries, it added.
In another old study conducted in 2010, Pew Research Centre revealed that India’s religious minorities were actually moving from their country at a greater rate than the majority Hindus, who made up 80% of India’s population.
Approximately 19% of the migrant population from India is Christian, though they form only 3% of the entire population. On the other hand, Muslims made up 27% of the Indian migrant population living abroad, compared with roughly 14% of the population in India, it explained. The reverse is true for Hindus: Only 45% of India’s international migrant population was Hindu, compared with 80% of the population in India.
According to PEW As of 2015, about 5.2 million immigrants live in India, making it the 12th-largest immigrant population in the world. The overwhelming majority of India’s immigrants are from neighboring countries such as Bangladesh (3.2 million), Pakistan (1.1 million), Nepal (540,000) and Sri Lanka (160,000).