The Parliament in Kuwait has unanimously passed a law giving the Kuwaiti government a year’s time to reduce its expat population. This move may compel hundreds of thousands of foreign residents to leave the country.
Expatriates in Kuwait have been brought to the Gulf nation in the past few decades for skilled and unskilled labour. They make up 3.4 million of the country’s 4.8 million people.
The law will trigger a series of reforms and procedures now, to curtail the numbers, with the coronavirus pandemic having resulted in low oil prices and having shaken the economy.
The financial impact of this also prompts the government to reduce the number of expatriates and offer more jobs to nationals, who constitute 30 percent of the population in Kuwait.
