Officials of the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) – Dubai held a meeting on Friday to discuss the plans and procedures for the implementation of the two-month UAE visa amnesty programme that will start on September 1.
During the meeting, specialised working teams were formed, including Customer Happiness and Digital Services, Proactive Media Communication, and the Services Development Team, “to ensure a smooth and effective experience for all individuals wishing to benefit from this opportunity,” GDRFA said.
In a similar meeting in Abu Dhabi on the day, Acting Director General of the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP), Major General Suhail Juma Al Khaili, confirmed that the authority will use smart systems and artificial intelligence to implement the decision and simplify procedures in line with UAE’s zero government bureaucracy programme.
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The Federal Authority for ICP announced on Thursday that residence visa violators will be given a two-month grace period to get their fines waived.
ICP said it will undertake all necessary measures to implement this initiative, including waiving fines and legal consequences, allowing violators to either adjust their status or leave the country with ease. Specific procedures for the amnesty will be announced soon, ICP added.
This will be the fourth amnesty programme by the UAE government since 2007.
The last one was six years ago. It started on August 1, 2018, and was supposed to run for only 90 days until October 31, 2018, but the federal government extended the amnesty scheme for two more months until December 31 that year to allow more residency violators to rectify their status or leave the country with no penalties.
Past amnesties
In 2007, about 342,000 residents across the UAE made use of a two-month amnesty, and in 2012/2013, more than 60,000 migrants sought out the service nationwide.
In 2018, GDRFA said a total of 105,809 residence visa violators applied for amnesty in Dubai. Out of these numbers, 30,387 people got out-passes after fines were waived during the amnesty, while 6,288 people received new residency visas and 18,530 people renewed their visas. Another 35,549 permits were issued to job seekers and 13,843 individuals changed their status from illegal to legal residents. Some 1,212 people from war-ravaged countries benefitted from one-year visas.
Millions of dirhams in fines were cancelled during the five-month visa amnesty scheme that ended on December 31, 2018.
Prior to the 2018 amnesty programme, Dubai Police arrested 10,310 residency violators in the first six months of 2018, and a year before that (in 2017) 40,056 people were caught staying illegally while 55,447 residency law violators were apprehended in 2016.