Saudi deports its immigrants workers
Saudi Arabia has a huge problem. Saudis do not want to work for Saudi wages. So, the Arab/uslim autocracy is deporting is deporting immigrant workers .. 2 million Ethiopians, Somalis, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who make up around a third of the country’s 30m population. 25% of young Saudi males do not work, do not want menial jobs in the ultimate trickle down economy where inherited wealth of the royals .. expanding geometrically in a polygamous society, is eventually going to impoverish the country.
In the meantime, just as in the US, someone needs to sell hamburgers and take care of kids. US immigrants ship home $28bn last year, according to estimates by the World Bank. Saudi Arabia is second only to us but with a much smaller cadre of citizens divided between the Überwealthy and (unlike in the US) a proletariat that gets welfare worthy of … worthy of a Saudi. Those maids, servants, burger flippers and janitors ship billions of dollars home. “ Saudi flows will vanish, impacting the poorest areas of eastern Africa,” says an official at a regional development agency. Saudi analysts expect the crackdown on illegal workers to reduce remittance flows by nearly a quarter next year, or about $7bn.
Teodros Adhanom, the Ethiopian foreign minister,
“Last night arrivals from Saudi reached 100,620,” he wrote on Friday, describing a fraction of one of the largest deportations in recent Middle East history.
Sounds rather like the inverse of the Passover story … though Israel also has its problems with poor immigrant workers.