KUWAIT — Suspense hangs over the return of thousands of expatriate workers who are outside Kuwait as the government plans to filter out unwanted ones. According to a report in Kuwait Times, an English-language newspaper, Kuwait's Ministry of Interior has commenced a comprehensive process to study the issue of the expiry of residency visas of over 70,000 expatriates while they were abroad since the COVID-19 outbreak until the beginning of this week. The study will be submitted to senior officials in ministry leaders next week, including recommendations on who should be allowed back into the country using their previous residency visas, the report said quoting government sources. "The total number of such expatriates was divided into categories in order to study each category in detail. Those who will be allowed back will enter the country with new visit visas to be later transferred to their previous residency visas," the report added. The study recommends banning three categories of expatriates from returning to Kuwait — marginal laborers, expatriates over 60 years of age and those sponsored by fake companies who have no actual jobs. "Age and criminal records will determine the return of domestic helpers," the report said citing sources. According to the report, sponsors would be asked to replace domestic helpers aged over 60 with younger ones. Domestic helpers indicted in crimes or felonies will not be allowed back. The study said financial dues of holders of expired residency visas who will not be allowed back into the country will be collected by the Public Authority for Manpower from the companies they worked for. Claims for these dues can be made online on the manpower authority website. In addition, the study recommended obtaining arrival and departure lists of dependents to examine the length of their stay in Kuwait, as many of them only stay for a few days and leave, then return before the passage of six months abroad. "Those will not be allowed to get their residencies back," the sources underlined. Earlier, lawmaker Safa Al-Hashem had submitted a proposal on Monday calling to stop issuing residency permits to expatriates who reach 60 years of age and to deport all expatriates undergoing treatment at psychiatric hospitals. In addition, the proposal calls on the government to issue a decision banning expatriates from taking up two jobs and those found to violate the decision should be deported immediately. The lawmaker said that her proposal comes as part of efforts to make a demographic balance in the country as expatriates far outnumber citizens, putting stress on the country's infrastructure. The proposal calls to set up a government committee that will be assigned to resolve problems associated with the imbalance in the population composition. During a meeting with editors-in-chief of local newspapers on June 3, Kuwait's Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah had said that Kuwait is facing a "big challenge" to address its demographic imbalance issue, saying that "the ideal population structure is to have Kuwaitis being 70 percent and non-Kuwaitis 30 percent" of the total population. Kuwait has a population of some 4.8 million people, out of which 1.45 million are Kuwaitis and the rest are expatriates from different countries.
