Immigration statistics from the Central Statistics Bureau revealed that the number of Residency Law violators continues to decline significantly — 121,019 expatriates by the end of 2023; while the number of residency permits issued for the first time reached 84,975 and the number of canceled residency permits reached 57,060 within the same year, reports Al-Anba daily. The data showed that the number of existing visa holders reached 2.93 million distributed as follows: 47,530 Article 14 (temporary residency); 96,500 Article 17 (government employees); 1.5 million Article 18 (private sector employees); 972 Article 19 (investor or foreign partner in a business); 786,000 Article 20 (domestic workers); 504,170 Article 22 (family visa); 735 Article 23 (students) and 1,980 Article 24 (self-sponsor). Meanwhile, the number of Residency Law violators decreased from 133,440 in 2022 to 121,190 by the end of 2023 – a clear manifestation of the tremendous efforts exerted by the State to address the issue.

According to data seen by the daily, half of the Residency Law violators are domestic workers (Article 20) whose number reached 60,700 by the end of 2023; followed by 28,080 Article 18 visa holders; 25,270 Article 14 visa holders; 6,146 Article 22 visa holders; 701 Article 17 visa holders; 196 Article 24 visa holders; 23 Article 19 visa holders and six Article 23 visa holders.

In terms of the nationalities of residency violators, non-Arab Asian nationalities accounted for 71 percent of the total number of violators (86,200), while the number of Arab violators reached 18,030; non-Arab African nationalities – 15,490; Europeans – 516; North Americans – 771; Central and South Americans – 124 and 37 from Australia and the Pacific Group.

In addition, the number of residency permits granted for the first time totaled 84,975 in 2023 distributed as follows: Article 14 – 18,600; Article 17 – 1,083; Article 18 – 15,489; Article 19 – nine; Article 20 – 30,490; Article 22 – 18,800; Article 23 – 18 and Article 24 – 434. The number of canceled residency permits reached 57,060 in 2023 as follows: Article 18 – 23,500; Article 22 – 17,000; Article 14 – 6,345; Article 17 – 5,248; Article 20 – 4,597; Article 23 – 159 and Article 24 – 179.

 

 

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