July 27, 2000
Parliament has adopted a bill allowing immigrants to become citizens of Nepal if they speak the country's language and have lived in the Himalayan kingdom for 10 years.
Over the protests of opposition parties, Parliament passed the bill on Wednesday, voting to scrap the current law, which restricts citizenship to those who have a Nepali father or spouse. The bill must be approved by King Birendra before it becomes law. Opponents said the bill would allow more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees and thousands of Indian immigrants to become Nepalese.
In the early 1990s, neighboring Bhutan evicted nearly 100,000 people of Nepalese origin when the ethnic Drukpas cracked down on what they called illegal immigration in the secluded country. Most of the refugees are housed in U.N.-administered camps in Nepal.
''This bill will open a floodgate for non-Nepalese to become legal citizens of Nepal. What are we going to do with the Bhutanese refugees who are in Nepal for the past 10 years,'' said an opposition Parliament member, Ramesh Nath Pandey. India and Nepal have an open border and there are no visa or identification requirements for people to travel between the two countries unless they go by air.
Opposition parties led by the United Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Nepal walked out of the House of Representatives, Nepal's lower House of Parliament, to protest the bill.
