Iran’s Interior Minister: “1.3 Million Foreigners Have Been Deported Last Year”

Ahmad Vahidi, the Minister of Interior Affairs of Iran, told the media of that country that in the past one year, about one million and three hundred thousand foreign citizens have been expelled from that country.
Foreign refugees in Iran, who are mainly Afghan immigrants, have been facing numerous and serious residence problems last year, because the Iranian government announced a new plan to deport all immigrants who do not have a valid and legal residence document in that country.
However, Mr. Vahidi said that in order to prevent the entry of unauthorized refugees into Iran, the related laws should be amended in the parliament of that country. He also said that a number of deported people are re-entering Iran, and to curb this problem, laws must be established to deal with these people.
According to the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are about 3.4 million foreign refugees in Iran, the overwhelming majority of whom are Afghan immigrants.
Despite the fact that the government of Iran has provided different statistics and figures on the number of foreign immigrants in that country, last year, the National Immigration Organization of that country had announced that between 500,000 and 1,200,000 illegal Afghan nationals were present in Iran.
Last year, this organization asked the international community to help Iran with 114 million dollars to pay for the immigrants. In current year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has requested about 110 million dollars to help Iran, and a number of countries have committed to pay a part of it.
While the migration process of Afghan citizens to Iran has increased in an unprecedented way after the fall of the republican government and probably millions of people have become refugees in that country in the last two or three years, the collective and widespread deportation of these refugees by the Iranian government has been severely criticized by human rights organizations.