Kuwait suspends 2 years residency visas for expats

Kuwait: Kuwait Suspends granting 2 years residency visas to expatriates , and to issue only one year instead of 2 years.

The local newspaper “Al-Rai” quoted sources as saying that the Ministry of Interior had stopped granting residency to expatriates for a period of 2 years or more, and decided to issues only one year, this new decision affects all including citizens’ wives, children of citizens, mothers of foreign citizens, wives and children of expatriates.

The reason for granting residency for a year was due to the repercussions of the emerging Coronavirus pandemic, which impacted many business.

while noting that granting residency to expatriates within these categories for more than a year “requires medical examinations, review of security restrictions and other technical matters.”

It also pointed out that the Suspension of granting residency visas for more than one year is valid for all, “except for workers in the private sector who are residing in Kuwait and have official work permits for two years or more.”

In a related context, the same newspaper revealed that about 130,000 residency visa violators estimated to be in Kuwait, saying that only 400 expatriates had applied to the residency affairs departments since the beginning of the deadline on December 1 until 7 December 2020.

The Ministry of Interior gave an opportunity for residency law violators for a month, to amend their status or leave the country, “but the response of the violators or their sponsors so far is very weak.”

As the newspaper attributed the failure of the violators to present in large numbers, to their inability to pay the fines and the high prices of air tickets, it quoted sources in the Interior Ministry, “advice to all residency law violators to take advantage of this period, which is the last time limit granted by the Ministry of Interior to them.”

And added: “The Interior Ministry, after its completion, is determined to launch security campaigns in all governorates around the clock to control all residency law violators and remove them from the country, which will lead to not being allowed to enter Kuwait and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC) for a period of 5 years.”

The Corona pandemic has created an unprecedented crisis for expatriate workers in Kuwait. After it revealed the existence of huge numbers of loose workers; This prompted the government to intervene quickly. To adjust the conditions of this employment.

Last October, the government said it had an ambitious plan to deport 70% of expatriate workers, including marginal and illiterate workers, which total about one million expatriates.

Since September 2017, Kuwait has initiated successive government measures for what it called “Kuwaitisation of jobs”, in order to implement a plan to gradually reduce expatriate workers in the public sector and replace Kuwaiti ones with them within 5 years.

Expatriates (foreigners) represent about 69% of the total population of Kuwait, which is 4 million 588 thousand and 148 people, as of the end of June 2018, according to statistics issued by the Public Authority for Civil Information.