I have visited my village twice in row, and I found that people are so busy with the issue of visa and the deportation of their children out of the country in a semi-mass migration. Their repetitive conversation in their gathering to the extent of boredom and nausea, are not without discussing the details of passport, visa, travel procedures, examination of the hepatitis virus, and then recently an additional to the above, the precautionary measures against the Corona epidemic and the required vaccine doses imposed by the Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabia, which is the most destination for the Yemeni immigrant by virtue of the neighborhood and historical relations.
As a result of the Corona pandemic that is sweeping the world, a set of laws and procedures are followed to regulate entry and exit; Although we believe in the importance of these measures in order to preserve public health, however, the helpless immigrant found himself a victim of this, due to duplication and the failure to follow binding unified standards. The border crossing between Yemen and its neighbor has become crowded with queues of young people looking for an opportunity to live outside their country, in which life has narrowed, but endlessly stretching into the cycle of war, poverty and unemployment.
An example of this duplication is related to the organization of vaccination campaigns against the Coronavirus (Covid-19); Saudi Arabia has made the vaccine dose a condition for entering its territory, while neglecting the other part! Whereas, the Kingdom did not apply the compulsory vaccination to those who leave the KSA; this has plunged Yemeni expatriates who may leave Saudi Arabia into the trap of preventing them from returning and re-entering; As a result, the expatriate returning to his work in the Kingdom is faced with prevention at the border crossing on the pretext of not being vaccinated in his country for two successive doses; It has also disrupted the opportunity to for the first time entrants, or for those whose entry visa has expired, forcing them to undergo new procedures at a high cost!
We all know; Including immigration and passports in Saudi Arabia, the current situation in Yemen, the scarcity of vaccination campaigns, and the lack of resources and support for vaccine doses of the virus; Are Yemenis currently taking two consecutive doses of vaccine?
Visa and immigration have become a hassle. But staying in the country seems doubly difficult. The Yemeni youth, defeated by the conditions of their homeland, besieged by war, had no choice but falling between two fires; The fire of surrender to the tough reality and lack of opportunities, and the fire of leaving the country and seeking better life opportunities outside homeland, and for the sake of this dream you find people making effort, money and mediation to obtain a visa.
And because migration has become fraught with great difficulties and high costs, not to mention the cost of exorbitant annual payment fees for residence and sponsorship, families are forced to sell their land, homes, livestock, and jewelry, to deport their children. As for whether migrants can compensate for this loss and obtain a good source of income, it is difficult to predict that because it is subject to the volatile and unstable procedures and laws of the countries of immigration, especially Saudi Arabia.
Despite the historical agreements between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni expatriate is subject to the exceptional laws followed by the latter with regard to immigration, residence and work; we believe that such unfair laws, even for a non-Yemeni immigrant, need to be reviewed and discussed, foremost of which is the sponsorship system by a Saudi citizen for every resident from outside the Kingdom, which is an odd system that is not applied in any country in the world except in KSA.
The “sponsor” is the Saudi guardian of the non-national citizen, who is responsible for the procedures for residency, determining its location, type of work, and its movement between professions and jobs. Indeed, the “sponsor” has recently become the controller of the expatriate’s life outside his country, and he has the right to extend it or not. In return, the Saudi guardian receives a monthly amount paid by the resident worker in addition to the high cost of the annual residence fees, which may reach 15,000 Saudi riyals per year, without taking into account any proportion between the annual income and the required annual fees. Rather, the residence fees include the non-working resident, such as children and women and family members accompanied the expatriate.
You can imagine how miserable is the situation of an expatriate who receives a monthly salary of 1500 Saudi riyals, or what a resident expatriate who supports an entire family can afford to pay in terms of residence fees! Under the sponsorship system, the Saudi individual became a partner authority of the state, sharing responsibility for the lives of foreigners within its territory.
“Saudisation” is another system facing the Yemeni expatriate inside the Kingdom. The “Saudisation” approach adopted by the Saudi regime included many fields of work and production. Thus, the expatriate became besieged in front of limitation of the available fields of work for him, and this stood as an obstacle to many who worked in different trade or craft professions for many decades. They found themselves jobless and deprived of their professions and jobs under the "Saudization" law. Moreover, KSA has been recently abolished the work of foreigners in many fields; the selling of accessories, the street sellers, the taxi driver, the university professor, and owning an institution and the commercial company.
The migration of Yemenis over many decades, whether in the kingdom or elsewhere, was neither evil nor harmful, as much as it was good and beneficial. However, poverty and need forced the Yemeni migrant to leave his homeland and his family; as a result of Yemen’s turbulent and unstable political conditions, and succession of regimes that did not possess the proficiency and capacity to manage the country’s resources - and most of them – were helpless to cover the basic needs of their citizens.
As expatriation was a solution and a profitable for Yemen, similarly, it was an addition for the countries of the diaspora, at the forefront of which is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is not inconceivable that the efforts of long decades of expatriate Yemenis in its lands have provided goodness and development to its economy and construction, until the time of the visa was definitive with this extended suffering!
