Ministry of Interior Considers Tougher Visa Rules Suggested By the FNC

Tourism doesn’t seem to be a priority any more.  What happened UAE?

The Ministry of Interior (MoI) is considering a Federal National Council (FNC) proposal that visitors to the UAE will have to furnish a clean police record and a bank statement from their country of origin, senior immigration officials told Khaleej Times on Monday.

Ministry figures show that 80 per cent of pickpockets and thieves, nabbed in recent crimes, entered the country on tourist and business visas.

Brigadier Nasser Al Awadhi Al Minhali, Acting Director General of Naturalisation and Residency Department at the ministry, said the restrictions under consideration would be applicable for visit, business and tourist visas.

“General Shaikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Interior, has issued these directives calling for studying the proposal of the FNC, and take action on it as soon as possible, if the new restrictions prove practical and realistic,” he said.

“The Naturalisation and Residency departments in the country have arrested many criminals, the majority of whom had entered the country on visit, tourist and business visas. This has prompted the department to chalk out new steps, including the ones proposed by the FNC,” the minister said.

Major General (retired) Ali Majid Al Matroushi, a member of the FNC and the Chairman of the Internal and Defence Affairs ad-hoc committee in the House, told Khaleej Times the high statistics had been taken seriously and prompted the recommendations…SOURCE

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Bringing Family to UAE? Think Again… FNC Calls For Tightening of Visa Rules

I hate to say it, but it looks like the Federal Government may have to reign-in the FNC on several issues.  The issues, like the question of Visa rule, pose a big problem for attracting workers for business in the Emirates.  In a fragile business environment to begin with, the UAE needs to be very careful not to muddy the water.

FNC calls for tightening of sponsorship rules

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/12/16/10267705.html

12/17/2008 12:02 AM | By Samir Salama, Associate Editor

Abu Dhabi: The Federal National Council (FNC) on Tuesday proposed increasing the minimum salary requirement to sponsor families of expatriates in the UAE.

According to the proposal, the minimum salary required for an expatriate – without company accommodation – to sponsor a family should be Dh10,000 and an expatriate with company accommodation, Dh8,000. The FNC resumed its session yesterday after National Day and Eid holidays.

An ad-hoc committee of the House also suggested that family-visa applicants should be asked to submit bank statements of six months, detailing salary transfer.

In its first ever open session to discuss the demographic structure of the UAE since its establishment in 1972, the House also suggested that an only an expatriate with a minimum salary of Dh15,000 should be allowed to sponsor housemaids.

It also recommended increasing the annual fee for sponsoring a housemaid to Dh7,000.

According to a report worked out by the committee, there are 5.5 million foreign workers, including 3.1 million workers registered with the Ministry of Labour and 2.4 million registered with the Ministry of the Interior, while the total population was 6.3 million by the end of last year.

The legislature said the Labour Ministry issued 640,000 work permits over the first four months of this year, an increase of 100 per cent compared with the same period last year.

These include 525,000 work permits for individual workers and 115 group permits.

The House expected that 1.920 million permits would be issued by the end of this year, taking into account the visas issued by the Ministry of Interior.

The House was told that foreign workers account for 90 per cent of the total workforce in the UAE at the end of 2006.

Asian workers represented 87.1 of the labour force, while workers of other nationalities including Arabs account for 12.9 per cent.

An estimated 98.7 per cent are concentrated in the private sector, namely in the construction, agriculture, retail business, and also restaurants, hotels, fisheries, security and guarding and cleaning companies…

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The ID Card saga begins here

I think most of us now know that ‘professionals’ have to register for the national ID card by the end of the year.

The other day Gulf News reported that a senior official from the Emirates Identity Authority complained that we, professionals, had not registered earlier.

On the recently published deadline he said: “It was not new but announced in May and everybody knew about it.”

Everybody? I didn’t.

I read several newspapers each day, I listen to the radio and I didn’t know.

I also renewed my Residence Visa last month and no-one said a thing about an ID card.

I was aware that Emiratis have until December 31 to register, but until last week I did not know that the deadline also applied to expat professionals.

Even the recent announcement was confusing and unclear. As we’ve come to expect.

For example, exactly who are ‘professionals’? The announcement talked about white collar workers and quite clearly specified degree holders.

There are many professional, white collar workers who are not degree holders. Does the deadline apply to them or not?

We are told that there are 28 registration centres. The nearest I’ve come to discovering where they are is to read of one in Karama and one in Al Barsha. Those are big suburbs, so where are they exactly? What are the phone numbers?

I’ve discovered that there’s a website – only because reports the day after the announcement said it had crashed under the weight of traffic and was being expanded in the future.

A simple campaign giving basic information would be nice. Stuff like exactly who has to register, by when, where and how, the process required, contact numbers and addresses.

It isn’t hard to do something as simple as that, yet it never happens.

Changes to rules are made, vague and confusing announcements are put out, the next day they’re ‘explained’ or changed. Think of the recent new visa rules, the ‘one villa one family’ campaign. Exactly the same problem. The only information we’re given is unclear, incomplete, confusing…and then it’s changed.

On and off over the past few days I’ve been trying to get into the website, with no success.

I’m going to try again now, and throughout the rest of the day if necessary.

Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted.

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