In recent years, Bangladeshi citizens across all categories including students, businessmen, and travelers have experienced unprecedented difficulty in obtaining visas for short-term business and travel purposes. This transformation from relatively accessible visa regimes to highly restrictive processes arise from multiple interconnected factors.
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus recently stated that Bangladesh has become quite famous globally for the submission of fake documents, noting that the country continues to face the same complaints from receiving nations regardless of the destination. This reputation for fraudulent documentation has created a systemic credibility crisis that affects all Bangladeshi applicants, including those with entirely legitimate purposes.
What began as whispers of concern over visa overstays and forged documents has spiraled into a full-blown crisis, severely impacting outbound tourism, crippling corporate travel, and threatening the country’s vital labour migration sector. Educational institutions face particular challenges, with many students being denied visas despite holding valid admission letters and financial documentation.
The closure of key labour markets has further complicated the situation. Malaysia, Oman, and Bahrain have either suspended or severely restricted work visas for Bangladeshi workers due to recruitment irregularities and migrant misconduct.
The verification processes have become extensively time-consuming and unpredictable. For high-demand countries like Germany, applicants must travel to India for interviews, a process that can take up to two years to receive an interview call. This creates substantial financial and logistical burdens for applicants who may ultimately face rejection despite investing significant resources in the application process.
The difficulty in obtaining legitimate work visas has created fertile ground for exploitation through tourist visa schemes. Aspirant migrants facing limited legal pathways abroad become easy targets for unscrupulous agents who promise overseas employment through deceptive means.
The exploitation of tourist visas by informal networks of middlemen, locally known as “dalals”, represents one of the most pernicious aspects of Bangladesh’s migration crisis. These networks operate in a gray area between legal and illegal activities, systematically deceiving vulnerable workers while enriching themselves through exorbitant fees.
The structure of these networks is hierarchical and deliberately opaque. Behind these digital schemes lies a dense web of actors – village dalals, licensed recruiters who collude with sub-agents, transnational syndicates operating fake job websites, and sometimes even corrupt officials. Each actor plays a specific role in maintaining the illusion of legitimacy while extracting maximum value from desperate workers.
The actual exploitation intensifies when agents process applications using tourist or visit visas instead of work visas. In 2024, hundreds of aspirant migrants from Munshiganj and Cumilla paid around 400,000-600,000 taka each after receiving job offers shared via Facebook groups promising “free visas” to Saudi Arabia, with advertisements carrying official-looking logos and forged signatures. Upon arrival, many discovered their visas were tourist permits, leaving them stranded and jobless.
The agents’ training of workers on how to deceive immigration officers represents another critical element. Migrants receive explicit instructions to lie about the true purpose of their travel, claim they are tourists or visiting relatives, and avoid mentioning any intention to seek employment.
Every time a Bangladeshi passport holder stands at an airport immigration counter, they carry the weight of global suspicion. This psychological burden translates into concrete disadvantages, including extended questioning, additional document verification, and higher rejection rates even for applicants with entirely legitimate purposes. The overall situation is limiting Bangladeshis’ access to educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities abroad.
The education sector experiences particularly damaging consequences. Many students are now being denied visas, with Western concerns over rising extremism and allegations linking Bangladeshi nationals to militancy in Malaysia further damaging the country’s international image. Students pursuing higher education abroad face months-long delays or outright rejections, potentially derailing academic careers and limiting Bangladesh’s human capital development.
The labour migration sector faces existential threats. The interim government has yet to reopen key labour destinations, including Malaysia, Oman, and the UAE. Even Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh’s most reliable destination, is tightening requirements through measures, such as the Takamul certificate, alongside delays in Iqama processing, salary payments, and job transfers.
The diplomatic consequences extend Bangladesh’s already strained international relations. Relations with India, Bangladesh’s largest travel destination, deteriorated sharply after political changes, with India closing all visa centers citing security concerns. Such restrictions create cascading effects, as Bangladeshis need to transit through India to access certain European and Central Asian destinations.
The perpetuation of human trafficking networks represents another grave consequence. The 2025 US Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report placed Bangladesh in Tier 2, with 3,410 Bangladeshi victims documented, including 765 in sex trafficking, 2,572 in forced labour, and 73 in other forms of exploitation. The tourist visa exploitation scheme feeds directly into these trafficking networks, providing revenue streams that enable their expansion and sophistication.
It requires fundamental reform of the recruitment industry’s regulatory framework. This begins with mandatory registration and licensing of all sub-agents and informal brokers currently operating in the shadow economy. Establishing a comprehensive database of registered agents with public accessibility would enable prospective migrants to verify credentials before engaging services.
The credibility of Bangladesh’s passport and the welfare of millions of its citizens depend on transforming the current dysfunctional system into one that genuinely protects workers while facilitating legitimate international mobility.
Ultimately, meaningful reform, ministerial accountability for migration governance, adequate budget allocation for worker welfare, and dismantling political incentives that allow exploitative networks to flourish unchecked are necessary. It requires sustained political commitment, adequate resource allocation, and coordination across multiple ministries and agencies.
Both writers are Adjunct Faculty, Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)
