It was undoubtedly a massive success. More than 180,000 immigrants living illegally in the UAE who took advantage of the three-month long government amnesty have left the country, hopefully for good.
By the end of November, a further 165,000 are expected to follow suit. A total of 350,000 people, or 8.5 per cent of the UAE population, have opted voluntarily to leave the country.
As a result the UAE is safer, the county is cleaner, the citizens are certainly happier, even the streets are lighter and more importantly the endemic demographic imbalance is leaner. It all came at the right time.
But it is not the end of the demographic nightmare the UAE has been experiencing for the past three decades. Officially, there are some 200,000 illegal people still living in the country and searching for jobs. It also turns out that over 70 per cent of those departing illegals came to the UAE with a visit visa.
Over 19,000 visit visas are issued every single day. And despite talk of inflation and high cost of living and traffic congestion, the UAE remains massively attractive to both the poor and the wealthy.
The result of the current cleaning up operation is no more than a little dent in an otherwise huge demographic problem that is running out of control. It is a deadly serious problem that has yet to be tackled seriously.
This is supposedly the intention of the newly established ministerial committee headed by the minister of interior which held its first meeting last week. The committee is given a clear mandate to review all aspects of the population profile of the UAE and come up with specific recommendations in three months.
Unfortunately, sources close to the committee warn against any high expectations. The committee does not have a magic wand to solve the demographic dilemma. This is the third committee of its kind in the past 10 years.
The previous two ended up in utter failure. Most likely, the fate of this latest endeavour would not be any different. The intentions have always been noble but the realities are just too overwhelming.
For instance, Abu Dhabi announced last week an ambitious master urban plan with an initial investment of Dh600 billion for dynamic growth that will eventually reach Dh1 trillion by 2030. More important, the plan projects a population target of three million people residing in Abu Dhabi.
The central census department of Dubai announced recently that the city's population increased from 1.13 million to 1.42 million over the last year. That is a whopping increase of 26 per cent or 24,333 people per month.
The foreign population numbers keep piling up by the minute as the economy grows exponential with no end in sight. This is a real challenge not just to the new ministerial committee but to the whole country. It is a tough task with no easy way out.
Thorny question
Maybe it is about time to raise the thorny question, is the situation getting out of control? Probably the great majority of UAE citizens firmly believe that they are on the verge of losing it all. Many firmly feel they are no longer in the driver's seat.
The economy is going global and it hardly caters to local needs. They wonder about the new cities that are popping up and the mega projects that are setting world records, none of it is theirs. All of it is built, run and occupied by others who enjoy the bounty more than we do.
The new and old cities are no longer our cities. Worse yet are those expatriates who talk loudly about wanting to be citizens and enjoy the few remaining privileges bestowed on the minority citizens of the UAE. That is highly frightening, extremely alarming and proves the point that things are critically getting out of hand.
The minimum expected from the newly formed ministerial committee is to address the deep concerns of the Emiratis about the situation. What is urgently needed is to calm the local minority population.
One way to do this is to make sure that power in all of its manifestations and wealth in all forms remain firmly where they should remain: solely in the hands of the government and the very citizens of the UAE, who should always feel unchallenged.
A ruling minority status is not necessarily very comforting, nor is it particularly a sustainable governing formula. But for now and until the demographic imbalance is attended to seriously, it is the second best option that might keep things temporarily from getting out of our hands.
Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdullah is a professor of Political Science, Emirates University.
