In an effort to address the root causes of fraudulent visa applications from Bangladesh, the government has enacted Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking and Smuggling of Migrants Ordinance 2025.
Diplomats from the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands voiced their approval of this legislation, which classifies the smuggling of migrants including facilitation via document forgery as a criminal act.
A meeting regarding this took place at the office of Chief Adviser’s Special Envoy Lutfey Siddiqi on Wednesday.
The session was attended by high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET), National Security Intelligence (NSI), the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and the Special Branch (SB).
During the meeting, it was noted that until recently there was a perception that Bangladesh was not sufficiently serious about curbing the use of fraudulent documents in visa applications.
Unscrupulous brokers often exploit social media platforms from within the country and abroad, while prosecution efforts have traditionally remained at a low level.
Specific evidence of widespread fraud was presented, including a report from one embassy that received over 600 applications using forged job offers.
Another mission flagged 300 tourist visa requests from a single region, all supported by fraudulent statements from the same bank. Furthermore, a Facebook-based scam that defrauded 70 individuals of several hundred thousand taka was highlighted, with law enforcement now actively pursuing these cases.
Statistics revealed that immigration authorities offloaded an average of more than 40 people daily in the previous year.
Concerns were also raised regarding the misuse of visa-on-arrival facilities as transit points for illegal travel to third countries.
Last year, one country reported over 6,000 asylum claims from Bangladeshi citizens who had originally entered on student or employment visas. This decline in documentary reliability has significantly extended visa processing periods, with one country halting visa services pending the results of a local investigation.
On a more positive note, the United Commercial Bank received praise for adding QR codes to bank statements to improve verification, a practice recommended for the wider banking sector.
While intelligence-sharing and the use of the EU Returnee Case Management System have improved, participants noted that specialised immigration officers are frequently reassigned too quickly after completing their training.
The BMET confirmed that most of its operations are now fully automated, allowing for the first time the monitoring of cardholders’ exits and re-entries through integration with immigration systems.
Despite the regulation of primary recruitment agents, local sub-agents remain largely unmonitored, prompting calls for stronger public awareness regarding broker exploitation.
Discussions also touched upon The Hague Apostille Convention, emphasising that documents verified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must be authentic in both origin and data.
The discussion concluded with international envoys acknowledging the government’s transparent approach and describing current levels of cooperation as unprecedented.
