Kuwait: Kuwait National Assembly’s legal and legislative committee has approved draft law proposing quota for expatriates as constitutional.

The bill is to be transferred to the corresponding committee so that a comprehensive plan is created.

According to the bill, Indian’s should not exceed 15 percent of the population. This could result in 800,000 Indians leaving Kuwait, as the Indian community constitutes the largest expatriates’ community in Kuwait, totaling 1.45 million.

The current population of Kuwait is 4.3 million, with Kuwaitis making up 1.3 million of the population, and expatriates accounting for 3 million.

Since the beginning of the CoronaVirus pandemic, there has been a sharp increase in anti-expat speech as lawmakers and government officials call for reducing the number of foreign nationals in Kuwait. Last month, Kuwait’s prime minister, Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Sabah, proposed decreasing the number of expatriates from 70 percent to 30 percent of the population.

In May, it has been announced that Kuwait’s Municipality will soon dismiss all expatriates’ employees and then replace them with local Kuwaitis.

A week later, the Kuwait Petroleum company announced that it would no longer be hiring overseas workers.

In June, Kuwait said that it will ban the employment of expatriates in state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) and its affiliated companies for the year 2020-21.

Also, MP Osama Al Chahin called on the parliament to replace all expatriates working in the National Assembly with Kuwaitis.

Last year, MP Safa Al Hashem also urged Kuwait to deport close to two million expatriates from the nation over the next five years to rectify its ‘population structure imbalance’.

She said that it was essential to have Kuwaitis number more than 50 percent of the country’s population.

The decision also calls for freezing up employment requests from expatriates, canceling assignments under process and not to renew the contracts of existing employees.