Khaled Al-Sulaiman Okaz newspaper The bond of a mother to her children is instinctive and extends from cradle to grave. Just look at the eyes of any mother when she looks at her child whether it is young or old and you will see the same passionate and loving look. Therefore, when the decision was taken recently enabling Saudi women married to foreigners to sponsor their children, I felt that the system of nationalization in our country is still far away from understanding the bonds between the children and their mothers and also their ties with the mother's homeland, especially when these children were born in the Kingdom, brought up on its soil and never knew any other homeland. In most countries, it is a God-given right for children to obtain the nationality of their mother or at least be given the option to choose between the nationality of their mother and that of their father. These countries do not differentiate between the rights of the mothers and the fathers. Nationalization does not differentiate in duties and responsibilities between men and women. They are both citizens with equal rights and duties. In my opinion, the acceptable level of justice would be to give the choice to the children of a Saudi mother and a foreign father the right to choose their nationality when they reach the age of 18 years. If they choose to obtain the nationality of their mother, then they should relinquish that of their father. In the worse case scenario, these children should be given special residency permit (iqama) without the need for any sponsor (kafeel). Here, we are compounding humanitarian cases. The children were born and raised up in this country by a Saudi mother. They did not know any other homeland. They are not in the form of tourists who come to the country now and then. They were founded and settled in our society. We cannot tell these children to return to their father's homeland when their Saudi mother dies. We should not say to them “Good bye. You have become foreigners in the country in which you were born and raised.”
