In the quiet corridors of power and the bustling alleys of Kathmandu’s visa consultancies, a silent crime unfolds every day—sanitized, institutionalized, and largely ignored. It does not involve armed traffickers or midnight escapes. Rather, it takes the form of rubber stamps, forged documents, official complacency, and political collusion. The so-called "visit visa" has become one of the most insidious vehicles for human trafficking in Nepal’s modern history—a form of bureaucratized exploitation that now threatens national dignity and international credibility.
The Visa That Isn’t Just a Visa
A "visit visa" is, in theory, a short-term permit allowing a Nepali citizen to travel abroad for tourism or family visitation. In practice, it has become a lucrative gateway to undocumented labor migration, modern-day slavery, and even sexual exploitation. Under the guise of a temporary visit, thousands—mostly young men and increasingly young women—are trafficked to Gulf countries, Malaysia, and even Eastern Europe, where they are stripped of documents, denied basic rights and forced into exploitative conditions.
Unlike traditional forms of trafficking, which are illegal from the outset, visit visa trafficking operates in a grey zone. The initial paperwork is often legitimate. The departure is through Tribhuvan International Airport, not a secret jungle route. But the destination is not what is promised. What starts as a visit ends in coercion, debt bondage, or forced labor, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Institutionalized Exploitation
The layers of corruption embedded in Nepal’s visit visa system are staggering. Travel agencies, manpower agencies, immigration officials, airline employees, embassy staff, and political fixers all operate in collusion to create a pipeline of human capital for export. The entire apparatus is lubricated with bribes—from the police who clear minor documents, to bureaucrats who "recommend" certain applicants, to ministers who intervene when “special cases” are held at immigration.
Nepal's own government claims that over the last eight years, around 2.5 million Nepali youth left the country to work abroad. This figure alone should raise urgent questions: What percentage of them are left with visit visas rather than formal labor contracts? Let’s take a very conservative estimate—say 500 people left daily using visit visas, each paying an average bribe of just $500. Multiply that by 300 days a year over eight years, and we are looking at over two billion dollars funneled into a black economy. And this is an intentionally modest calculation. The real number maybe three or four times higher.
The corruption, however, does not stop with Nepali nationals. According to the Government of India, an estimated 75,000 Indian citizens traveled abroad via Nepal without the mandatory “No Objection Certificate” from Indian authorities. Among them were reportedly criminals and members of terrorist outfits. How did they fly out of Kathmandu? Only one answer fits: they bribed their way through. The amount of money and coordination this level of cross-border smuggling entails is staggering.
This entire machinery is only possible through high-level political patronage. The Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Labour are all either complicit or willfully blind. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that such a massive operation could have continued for nearly a decade without the active involvement—or at least strategic silence—of ministers and prime ministers in office during that period. The same must be said of the receiving countries, who benefit from cheap, desperate labor without asking how these individuals arrived.
The Bhutanese Refugee Scam: Trafficking in the Name of Asylum
If the visit visa trade is a front for labor trafficking, the Bhutanese refugee scandal represents the perverse use of the humanitarian crisis for financial and political gain. In this case, high-ranking political leaders, bureaucrats, and fixers orchestrated a racket that falsely documented hundreds of Nepali citizens as Bhutanese refugees so they could be resettled in Western countries—primarily the United States.
The process included forged identity cards, fake refugee status documentation, and collusion with officials in the Home Ministry. Victims, desperate to migrate, paid an average of NPR 5 million each (around $38,000) in the hopes of securing third-country asylum. Many sold their property or took high-interest loans. Some were abandoned halfway through the process; others made it into the international refugee system under false identities. It was nothing short of state-orchestrated identity trafficking.
This scandal, like the visit visa trade, reveals a criminal nexus stretching from ward offices to ministerial suites. Politicians from both ruling and opposition parties were implicated. Testimonies from whistleblowers and accused individuals pointed fingers at a series of sitting ministers and senior officials. Yet to date, prosecutions have been selective and politically calculated, further reinforcing public cynicism that trafficking in Nepal is no longer a crime—it is policy by other means.
Human Trafficking as Statecraft
When trafficking is no longer clandestine but normalized through government silence, institutional corruption, and diplomatic passivity, we are not merely witnessing a criminal enterprise—we are witnessing a failed state apparatus. Nepal has turned the suffering and dreams of its poorest citizens into a commodity for bureaucratic profit.
In both the visit visa racket and the refugee scam, the victims are not just the trafficked individuals. The victims are the very institutions of the state—immigration, labor, foreign policy, judiciary—that are now hollow shells of legality. And by extension, the people of Nepal are also victims, forced to watch their country's moral and institutional integrity disintegrate in plain sight.
These are not just scandals. They are systemic betrayals, where migration becomes a death lottery, foreign labor becomes a form of exile, and governance becomes indistinguishable from organized crime.
Toward Accountability and Justice
What is needed now is not just another parliamentary committee or investigative commission destined to be buried in bureaucracy. What is needed is a Truth and Accountability Commission for Migration and Trafficking, with full prosecutorial power, independent oversight, and international cooperation.
Receiving countries—especially those who pride themselves on humanitarian credentials—must also be held accountable. They must audit how many individuals entered Nepal under false pretenses, and whether their labor and asylum systems have unwittingly funded or encouraged trafficking cartels.
At home, a complete overhaul of visa issuance, airport clearance, embassy procedures, and labor approvals is essential. But none of this can happen until the people—civil society, journalists, academics, and especially youth—demand an end to this betrayal.
Nepal’s crisis is not just economic. It is not just political. It is moral. Until that is confronted, one bribe at a time, one fake refugee at a time, and one "visit visa" at a time, we will remain a nation trafficking in its own future.
(Dr. Janardan Subedi is a Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Ohio, USA.)
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