Jordan’s Labor Ministry will begin placing an electronic “deportation” notice against every undocumented non-Jordanian worker on October 1, including domestic workers, who has not regularized their legal status before the deadline expires on September 30, ministry spokesperson Mohammad al-Zyoud said.
The ministry confirmed that it does not intend to extend the status-regularization deadline, which began in June, or change the financial exemptions offered during the period.
Fines and deportation decisions
Inspection teams use electronic devices to immediately verify workers’ data and identify deportation notices registered against offenders. An employer who hires an undocumented non-Jordanian worker may face a fine of at least 800 dinars (about 1128 dollars) for each worker.
Data from the Labor Ministry’s Central Inspection Directorate showed that deportation decisions were issued against 614 non-Jordanian workers during the first quarter of this year following joint inspection visits with the Public Security Directorate. A further 160 workers were subject to deportation decisions issued administratively.
During the same period, deportation decisions against 65 workers were canceled, while the deportation of 37 workers was canceled after they paid the cancellation costs. Four non-Jordanian workers were released after providing a guarantee.
Exemptions before the deadline
The Cabinet decision includes a 50% exemption from work-permit fees owed by undocumented workers for previous periods, as well as a full exemption from late-payment fines and residency and foreigners’ affairs fines. Under the decision, a worker seeking to regularize their status pays half the applicable work-permit fee to settle their legal status.
Al-Zyoud said that an employer or householder seeking to regularize a worker’s status after October 1 would have to apply to remove the deportation notice. If approved, they would pay 5,000 dinars (about 7052 dollars), in addition to the full work-permit fees, fines and previous obligations, without benefiting from the exemptions available during the regularization period.
Egyptian worker Mohamed Amin said the worker may bear the cost of issuing a work permit, or the employer who recruited them may pay it, depending on the agreement between the two parties. He explained that the fee varies according to the type of permit, whether it is for agricultural work, a building guard or another occupation. Some workers, he added, postpone renewal because they cannot save enough to pay the fee, hoping for a later reduction that may never come.
The cost of living away from home
Potential repercussions for the labor market
Hamada Abu Najma, director general of the Jordanian Center for Labor Rights, said the campaign could reduce informal employment and push workers and employers toward legal frameworks, while curbing unfair competition created by the lower cost of employing undocumented workers. He added that this could create additional opportunities for Jordanians in some occupations and lead to better wages and working conditions.
Abu Najma warned of potential negative effects if large numbers of workers leave sectors that genuinely rely on foreign labor over a short period and lack sufficient local alternatives. This could lead to labor shortages, higher operating costs and possibly higher prices for some goods and services, or push some workers further into informal employment, he said.
Abu Najma said the campaign’s success would depend on aligning enforcement measures with the market’s actual needs and providing legal, flexible pathways for the workers the economy requires, while encouraging the employment of Jordanians in occupations that can be filled by local workers through improved wages, working conditions and training.
Unemployment and workers’ remittances
Ahmed Awad, head of the Jordanian Labor Observatory, said the issue of foreign workers requires an approach that combines labor-market regulation with protecting opportunities for Jordanians and the rights of foreign workers, without holding them responsible for labor-market imbalances.
Awad said the government had intensified efforts to regulate workers violating employment conditions, particularly those working in occupations and sectors reserved for Jordanians, as the unemployment rate exceeds 21% and newly created jobs in the public and private sectors remain insufficient to absorb the number of jobseekers.
He added that narrowing the gap between the number of foreign workers and the unemployed faces several challenges, including some workers’ failure to regularize their status and Jordanians’ reluctance to work in sectors such as construction, agriculture, and loading and unloading because of the nature of the work and its physical demands.
Awad criticized the focus on the money foreign workers send abroad, citing Jordan Central Bank figures showing that remittances from Jordanians working abroad amount to about 2.345 billion dinars (about 3.31 billion dollars), compared with about 379 million dinars (about 534.6 million dollars) sent by foreign workers from the kingdom. Remittances by foreign workers therefore equal about 16% of the remittances sent by Jordanians abroad, he said.
Awad said successive government policies bear part of the responsibility for the labor-market imbalance, pointing to the expansion of university education at the expense of the vocational and technical specializations needed by the market.
