<\/p>\n
The caretaker govt’s decision also goes against the very spirit of why Pakistan was born \u2014 a place where a minority, once under threat of persecution, could live and be free.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one leaves home,\u201d the British-Somali poet Warsan Shire recently wrote, \u201cunless home is the mouth of a shark.\u201d Such words spoke to the time \u2014 of migrants washing up on beaches, as richer capitals looked away. It was also why Shire\u2019s poem became a rallying cry for refugees, for \u00e9migr\u00e9s, and for those that continue to seek sanctuary elsewhere.<\/p>\n
For nearly half a century now, one of those sanctuaries has been Pakistan \u2014 a country that hosts among the largest refugee populations in the world.<\/p>\n
In early October, however, the caretaker government laid down an ultimatum to change that<\/a> \u2014 by November 1, all \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d were to voluntarily leave the country. After that date, they were to be deported, their businesses and properties confiscated, and any locals facilitating them to face the law \u2014 all via a new task force.<\/p>\n What this meant was immediately obvious to the local press \u2014 that millions of Afghan refugees had been handed their marching orders.<\/p>\n In making a case for the most drastic change to immigration policy in memory, the caretakers linked Afghan nationals to the terror spike over the past year, alleging involvement in 14 of 24 attacks<\/a> \u2014 from Peshawar to Qila Saifullah. Less direct accusations, but mentioned as part of the same press statements, were smuggling, black marketeering, and the drug trade.<\/p>\n Another reason, if left unsaid at the time, was the chill in the neighbourhood \u2014 Pakistan\u2019s growing bitterness<\/a> with a Taliban-led Kabul, which had neither cracked down on a resurgent TTP, nor arrested the wave in attacks.<\/p>\n Over the next several weeks, Pakistan\u2019s state machinery roared to life \u2014 police roundups of Afghan migrants, some resident in the country for decades, ensued across the country; convoy after convoy of refugees trailed its way to Torkham, the border crossing to Afghanistan; and a staggering 3,000 to 4,000 refugees were processed per day, with over 250,000 \u2018voluntary returns\u2019<\/a> claimed so far.<\/p>\n Such numbers hid hurt and heartbreak. \u201cI came to this country when I was four years old with my father,\u201d head of the family Abdul Rasul told Al Jazeera<\/em> journalist Abid Hussain at Torkham recently<\/a>. \u201cI still have my Afghan identification document from when I used to live there. My siblings were born in Pakistan. My parents and grandparents are buried in Pakistan. Please tell me, why am I being sent back?\u201d<\/p>\n Abdul Rasul has every right to ask that question. From the very start, Pakistan\u2019s founding fathers took a fairly liberal view of citizenship \u2014 as a right conferred by birth. Section 4 of the Pakistan Citizenship Act of 1951<\/a> is clear: \u201cEvery person born in Pakistan after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of Pakistan by birth \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n This was the ageless tenet of jus soli<\/em>, Latin for \u2018by right of the soil\u2019, from English common law. While moving the bill in the first Constituent Assembly, Khawaja Shahabuddin \u2014 brother of Pakistan\u2019s governor-general Nazimuddin \u2014 went as far as to stress the point:<\/a> as long as a person hadn\u2019t migrated out of the country at Partition, \u201cthe salient feature \u2026 is that citizenship \u2026 extends to all persons who, or whose parents or grandparents, were born in the territories which now comprise Pakistan\u201d.<\/p>\n Birthright law<\/h2>\n