Why Pakistani passport is ranked 4th worst in the world?

A few days while scrolling through my Facebook timeline, I came across news that the Pakistani passport is considered the fourth worst in the world behind only Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. While initially believing it to be clickbait, a quick Google search confirmed this news. War-torn countries like Yemen, Somalia, and Libya are better than Pakistan in terms of passport rankings!

The rankings have been going down for Pakistani passports for the past two decades in the aftermath of America’s war on terrorism. If like me, you have traveled to any country with a Pakistani passport, then you know what I’m talking about. The stress and tension of going to different embassies to get your visa long before your travel date, the skeptical look of the immigration officer who sees your passport as suspicious, and the constant stress of whether your visa application will get accepted or rejected your green passport. These are just a few of the things you have to face when you have a green Pakistani passport.

Here we would discuss the criteria for passport rankings and why the Pakistani passport is ranked fourth worst in the world.

Our passport is the fourth worst, while the best passports in the world are from Japan and Singapore, which allow visa-free entry to 192 destinations around the world. While the Pakistani passport allows for only 31 countries that have visa-free entry or visa-on-arrival access. Now there are four types of visa categories all over the world:

• Visa Free
• Visa on arrival
• E-Visa
• Proper documentation visa

Then I wonder that despite being ranked as the 52^nd poorest country yet our passport is still 4^th worst, what is the reason that poor countries like Laos, Venezuela, Somalia, Yemen North Korea, and Madagascar are still ranked better than us in Passport rankings?

The main reason for our abysmal ranking is the illegal immigration of Pakistanis. Every year, thousands of Pakistanis, hailing from small cities, give millions of rupees to agents to travel through land illegally to Iran and from there to Turkey, entering Europe from there to enter countries like Greece and Italy illegally.

Another reason for the bad ranking is that people tend to “slip” when allowed to enter any country. For example, you get a tourist visa to visit the UK, but instead of going back to Pakistan before your visa expires, you tend to stay permanently there i.e., you slip to another country. Not too long-ago Thailand used to give visas on arrival for Pakistanis, but a certain political party took advantage of this country, by allowing its workers to commit crimes In Karachi and then sending them to Thailand because it was easy to travel. The Pakistani government had to take action and requested the Thai government to enforce visa restrictions to curb this activity.

Now how do we improve our rankings? By improving our diplomatic relations with developing countries. There are around 40 to 50 developing nations that if we improve our ties with them, we could exponentially increase our rankings. There are many developing countries in Africa and East Asia where we have friendly relations and we could ask them to ease these visa restrictions. Also, we have good relations with the north African nations like Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia.

This is not a difficult task, this can be done with minimal effort and with no potential hassle, all we need is some sensible heads in our foreign office and we could increase our rankings with quite ease if we have a good working relationship with different developing nations like ourselves.