TEHRAN – Interior Ministry plans to deal with illegal foreign nationals more seriously, said Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar.

Najjar made the remarks at the 17th meeting of the Foreign Nationals Executive Coordination Council (FNECC) on Saturday.
Illegal foreign nationals must present their economic, social, and identification data or else police and Basij will severely deal with them, Najjar stated.
Iran has been hosting millions of Afghan refugees over the last three decades. The influx of refugees to Iran began when the former Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
The interior minister said a head counting of Afghan nationals was conducted in 17 provinces and 145 towns across the country in the Iranian month of Mordad (23 July to 22 August).
In the next phase, the foreign nationals must register their data online and then decisions will be made on their stay in the country, he added.
The minister also announced that the deadline to implement the plan is the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2011).
He went on to say that Iran has recorded the highest international standards in dealing with legal foreign nationals.
According to the statistics published last year, 69 percent of the foreign nationals in Iran are literate while this figure was six percent in 1981, he explained.
Najjar also noted that 3,800 foreign nationals were accepted at universities this year.
Only three percent of the foreign nationals live in camps, the minister announced