In his Arab News column, Abulateef Al-Mulhim gives a heartfelt description of the plight that faces many expat workers in Saudi Arabia: They’ve been in the KSA so long that they no longer have a home back in their ‘home countries’. It’s even worse for their children. Not only have these expats grown distant from their families and friends ‘back home’, not only have many of those connection been broken by death, but they even lose facility in their supposed own languages.

Al-Mulhim notes that there are Saudi laws governing the gaining of citizenship. The laws aren’t bad, he says, but they need to be applied more humanely, on a case-by-case basis to account for those who, having chosen a new life in the Kingdom, have no life in the places they left behind.

The Saudi government has, I know, taken a look at loosening citizenship laws. It has done so to some minor extent. It has, of preference, chosen to take another route: to prevent expats from spending so much of their lives out of touch with their homes. Instead, foreign workers would come in under fixed-term, non-renewable contracts. At their conclusion, the worker would have to leave. If he chose to stay outside his home country, then that would be his decision and would no longer weigh on the head of Saudi employers or state.

There are, of course, inefficiencies in doing that. Not only would it require more international travel, but also having to repeat training programs as new employees came in to replace departing ones. Is the efficiency offset by the humanity of this approach? I think it likely is.

The expatriate who forgot his home address
ABDULATEEF AL-MULHIM

When I was in elementary school in Al-Ahssa, Saudi Arabia, in the 1960s, I was taught by some Arab teachers from Arab countries such as Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine and Syria.

And it turned out that some of them are still in Saudi Arabia after all these years; some of them have been living here for more than 45 years. And about 30 years ago my older brother brought an Indonesian nanny for his first child. It turned out that after 30 years in the Kingdom, she doesn’t want to go back to Indonesia. And more than once, she was paid extra money just to persuade her to visit her relatives. But, two days after her arrival to Jakarta, she turns around and makes a reservation to come back to Saudi Arabia. Now, she is part of the family and not a nanny any more.

Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine wanted me to join his father’s company as a consultant. The day I went to the company I met an Egyptian engineer who simply knew my cousins and friends by their first names. It turned out that this engineer has been in the Kingdom so long he didn’t want to tell me, because he didn’t want to reveal his age. There was an Indian in Dammam named Ali Koya who lived in the Kingdom for almost 40 years, and I can recall many more examples such as these.
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