The Department of Immigration (DoI) has said that Syrian nationals, who want to come to Nepal, should apply for visa from the new year. The DoI had forwarded a proposal to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) to stop on-arrival visa to the Syrian nationals two weeks ago.Director General of the DoI, Kedar Neupane, said that they had to take such decision keeping in mind the national security of the country.
"We are concerned about our national security when we found many Syrians using Nepal as a channel to enter European countries and Turkey," said Neupane. "We rethought about Syrian visa restriction after the recent Paris attack."
According to the record at the DoI, many Syrians have been using Nepal as a transit point to enter to European countries due to the on-going civil war. Many of them were caught by Nepal's immigration department for using fake passports of Belgium and Lithuania. Syrians even enter Nepal via Turkey after obtaining tourist visa and sometimes using fake passports.
DG Neupane further claimed that the number of unwanted Syrian nationals will be limited after the new visa policy. "Many unwanted people, even with criminal background, could easily come to Nepal with the current visa provision. We believe that such numbers will go down after implementation of the new visa rule," he stated.
The record at the DoI shows that 24 Syrian nationals were denied entry to Nepal in the fiscal year 2014/15 for carrying fake passports.
With the new decision of the DoI, the number of countries to which Nepal doesn't issue visas at the airport has reached 12. Earlier, Nepal did not issue on-arrival visas to the citizens of Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Cameroon, Somalia, Liberia, Ethopia, Iraq, Palestine and Afganistan.
A total number of 204 Syrian citizens have entered Nepal from January 2015 to November 2015 while 199 Syrians have departed from Nepal during the same period.
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