Canada has announced that it will reopen its visa office in Pakistan after a 10-year-long break. Due to the poor security situation, Canada closed its visa office in Pakistan and relocated it to Abu Dhabi.
Following the reports, the Canadian government has set aside significant funds to establish a visa office in Islamabad. The development comes amid an increase in Pakistani visa applications to Canada.
Pakistan has long urged Canada to reconsider its decision to relocate its visa center to Abu Dhabi, citing that hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis live in Canada, and their relatives are having difficulty obtaining Canadian visas.
In 2019, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Canada requested that the visa center be returned to Pakistan, as other countries had reopened visa centers in Pakistan following a security improvement.
Due to the poor security situation in Pakistan, the Canadian government decided to close its visa center around ten years ago and instead opened two centers in Abu Dhabi and the United Kingdom (UK).
Moreover, Pakistanis planning to travel to Canada were forced to apply for visas in either Abu Dhabi or the United Kingdom. However, as the security situation improved, many countries reopened their visa centers in Pakistan, prompting Canada to reconsider its decision.
During the meeting, the high commissioner stated that as Canada sought to diversify its partnerships, Pakistan was one of the emerging Asian economies offering tremendous opportunities.
Pakistan seeks to revive the full spectrum relations in political, trade, investment, and development fields with Canada, he noted.
He further informed parliamentarians that the two countries’ existing trade relations needed to be strengthened and that allowing genuine traders to visit Canada to meet their counterparts could provide impetus to bilateral trade relations. Similarly, lifting the travel advisory for Pakistan will allow Canadian traders to travel and take advantage of existing profit-making opportunities.