The Bangladeshi diaspora consists of people of Bangladeshi descent who have immigrated to or were born in another country. They might have moved for many reasons including better living conditions, to escape poverty, to support their financial condition or send money back to families in Bangladesh. According to a survey done in 2015, the annual remittances received in   Bangladesh were 15.4 billion dollars.

Saudi Arabia has about 2,279,000 people from Bangladesh who are probably first or second-generation immigrants. While Malaysia has about 1,000,000 and the United Arab

Emirates, 100,000. The Gulf seems to collectively have the largest number of Bangladeshi origin citizens with Kuwait having about 150,000 people, Qatar another 137,000, Oman, 130,000 and Bahrain 90,000 people. Their population also plays a giant impact in other parts of the world with 400,000 Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, 200,000 in the United States,  and  73,125  in Canada.

New rules relating to visiting Bangladesh

The High Commission of Bangladesh in many parts of the world passed a recent order allowing Bangladeshi origin citizens to travel back and forth from the country, on their foreign passport, without the use of a visa, if they apply for and receive a No Visa Required stamp on their passports.

Foreign nationals with roots to Bangladesh have to report to the nearest Bangladeshi High Commission office to get their passports stamped. This can be done by filling out a couple of forms and submitting a list of documents to prove their origins. People are allowed to get the

N VR seal for their spouses and children if they can trace their roots back.

The High Commission also created a website allowing people to handle the entire process online instead of having to travel to the office every time. Additionally, other websites facilitate the same among other Bangladesh passport and visa processes, like MRP Passport. Even the documents

can be submitted through the portal. However, the passport will have to be mailed to the office, with details for them to send it back after stamping it.

Technological improvements made to passports to keep up with the times

About a decade back, Bangladesh started issuing Machine Readable Passports to their citizens which was an upgrade from the previous passports that it needed. Recently, however, they have started issuing e-passports allowing their nationals to apply for online passports and electronic soft copies of their passports, making it easier and efficient to carry around.

Machine-readable passports and visas (NVR visas) are quite beneficial since they are computerised and can be read by other computers across the world, making it easier to detect fraud. Fake passports are easily caught by the scanners, which was not something that used to happen in the past since most of the passports then were handwritten.

Some additional information about the High Commission

• The Consular Officer may ask for an interview of the applicant and/or submission of additional information or documents, which is their
• Basic Information (name, date of birth, place of birth) of an individual must be the same on all the submitteddocuments
• The High Commission is not responsible for documents lost or delayed in mail/courier since this is coordinated by the
• The High Commission office functions between 9.30 am to 12.30 pm on working days. No applicationin person would be received beyond this time except in case of