The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party is preparing legislative changes to tighten employment conditions for foreign nationals in Georgia.

Mamuka Mdinaradze, GD Executive Secretary, on Monday said the Georgian Health Ministry will provide job permits for foreigners, which were previously not required. “Foreigners who breach the law will face fines, as will their employers.”

“At today’s session, we discussed several important topics. This week, we will adopt a law in a third reading that will simplify the procedure for expelling persons illegally present in Georgia.

The second issue concerns labour migration. Employment conditions will be tightened for foreigners in Georgia. If no permit was previously required for a foreigner to work, the Ministry of Health will now issue employment permits under strict conditions, including how scarce a particular profession is and how much excess demand exists. On the one hand, we have labour market shortages, but on the other, we still have a large number of jobless. This will allow us to identify areas where we can retrain job seekers to hire more Georgians. In terms of punishments, harsh fines will be imposed on both foreign nationals who work without this authorisation and employers who illegally employ foreign citizens. With such legislative rules, we shall be a responsible country, even in terms of visa liberalisation; we will rigorously adhere to these conditions.

The third direction is investment permits. You may recall that if a foreign citizen purchases real estate worth $100,000 in Georgia, they can be granted residency rights for one year. With appropriate discretion, however, not in all cases. Over the past six years, 16,000 foreign citizens have received residency permits, and of these, only 3,600 people currently maintain it. Despite this, we are raising and slightly tightening the investment condition, and instead of $100,000, it will be the equivalent of $150,000, so that more investment comes in and these conditions are also tightened,” Mdinaradze stated.