New visa law, same old story

Why is it that whenever the government seeks to add some sort of regulation to any sector does it end up severly damaging it ? I am talking about the new visa laws, which seem to have been the product of a nice evening throwing darts around a board filled with suggestions on what laws to put in place. Here are just a few brilliant examples of what these laws set to achieve:

* Restricting the amount of tourists from the 34 highest GDP per capita countries in the world coming into the UAE by imposing a 100 Dirham entrance fee into the UAE. If you are a part of a 5 member family living in Oman in search of a budget vacation in the UAE, you can forget about the budget since 1/4th of your expenses will be visa fees.

* Restricting the amount of time these high value tourists have to spend their money in the UAE, from 60 days to 30 days. So we can forget about the high spenders who want to spend several weeks on the beach in Dubai. And also forget about the people who rent apartments or villas, they will take their money to spain or to turkey.

* Equally insane, the beauraucratic system of visa runs (exiting and re-entering the UAE to change types of visa or to renew a tourist visa) is still in place and is on steroids. Now the visa run is restricted to your country of origin. So if you are a person from Indonesia here on a tourist visa and you find a job, what youre supposed to do is to hop on a flight from Dubai to Jakarta (8 hours) lounge around in jakarta airport for an hour then fly back for another 8 hours. You pay about 3,000 dirhams for your ticket.

The UAE tourism sector ladies and gentlemen, that is the most recent sacrifice on the altar of restricting the amount of foreigners and 'preserving the national identity'.

Source : An Emirati's Thought