Rashed Al-Fawzan Al-Riyadh newspaper THIS is a reality. Many people might be astonished but it is a documented reality. The Ministry of Economy and Planning released statistics that show there are 26,818 unemployed expatriates in the Kingdom. Meanwhile, unemployment among Saudi nationals of both sexes has reached 615,249. I have reservations on the unemployment figure given for expatriates and believe it is much higher than reported. The clearest evidence for this is the sheer number of foreigners who can be spotted on our streets looking for jobs. The question that arises here is: How can there be unemployment among expatriates when it is supposed that every expatriate comes to work for a specific sponsor, whether it is a company, establishment, individual or a government authority? This unemployment among expatriates, whose figure I insist is much greater than the one mentioned, reveals the number of expatriates not abiding by the Kingdom's labor and residency laws. If we were to group unemployed foreigners, overstayers and expatriates who run illegal businesses, we would arrive at a number that represents foreigners who we have no need for. I estimate this figure at several million based on the Shoura Council's recent discussion on the existence of five million illegal foreign workers in the Kingdom. When we have illegal residents or legal residents violating the law, we are talking about millions of people. Do we realize the economic impact of this? How many apartments do they occupy? Where are they working? The newspapers are full of stories of bootleggers, burglars, robbers, forgers and smugglers being arrested and one wonders how much money they remit to their countries. Furthermore, they deplete the national economy and cost the state billions of riyals as they benefit from all commodities subsidized by the state, including gas, electricity and water. We need collective efforts from the ministries of labor, interior and commerce to form an authority for reducing the number of expatriates and getting rid of violators. They pose a threat to the economy and we must move to solve this problem before the situation becomes impossible to deal with.
