Immigration crackdown results in store closures

RIYADH (AP):

Garbage is piling up on streets around the mosque housing the burial site of the Prophet Muhammad. Grocery stores have shut their doors and almost half of Saudi Arabia's small construction firms have stopped working on projects.

The mess is because foreign workers on which many businesses rely are fleeing, have gone into hiding, or are under arrest amid a crackdown launched November 4 targeting the kingdom's nine million migrant labourers. Decades of lax immigration enforcement allowed migrants to take low-wage manual, clerical and service jobs that the kingdom's own citizens shunned for better paying, more comfortable work.

more jobs for citizens

Now, authorities say booting out migrant workers will open more jobs for citizens at a time when unemployment among Saudis is running at 12.1 per cent as of the end of last year, according to the International Monetary Fund. But the nationalist fervour driving the crackdown risks making migrant workers vulnerable to vigilante attacks by Saudis fed up with the seemingly endless stream of foreigners in their country.

The majority of workers hail from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as well as Egypt and Yemen. Others, mostly from east Africa, have never acquired visas, often taking perilous boat journeys across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen from where they cross illegally into the kingdom with the help of smugglers.