Saudi Arabia to expel up to 2 million workers

Auldloon

I worked there. It's basically an open prison. The Saudis I met were absolute cun"s to a man. I got to know a Bangladeshi guy who told me his story, modern slavery is the best description.
Best climate ever though, warm and no humidity.

Limecube

I have heard persistent stories that Saudi Arabian students engage in widespread cheating at exams. I would never trust them w.r.t. results getting into places like Royal College of Surgeons.

Nodin

Limecube wrote: »

I have heard persistent stories that Saudi Arabian students engage in widespread cheating at exams. .......

I've heard if you hop backwards while saying the Popes name in German, a demon will appear and offer a deal for your soul.

wes

Awful thing to do, but honestly they may be better off. I had an Uncle who was there legally and they generally treated foreign workers like crap, regardless of there whether they were there legally or not.

Sunglasses Ron

Einhard wrote: »

Ha, the chances of the average Saudi citizen applying for any type of menial job are nil to none. The reason they have 10 million foreigners in the country to sweep the streets, make the tea, mind the babies, teach the children, build the roads, drive the taxis is because the locals wouldn't be caught dead doing so. And, as long as the authorities bribe the populace with grants and goodies to ensure they won't revolt, then they won't have to. Idiotic move.

crybaby wrote: »

Only 11 percent of workers in the private sector are Saudi nationals, the sheer laziness is mind boggling. Sweeping a street, driving a taxi or cooking a meal is beneath them

About time they get off their oil rich holes and started working

Is there not an irony somewhere of tarring each and every Saudi citizen as a lazy obese maid raping misogynist getting fat of the blood and sweat of their migrant workers?

woodoo wrote: »

If a European country was to do the same what word would we see used repeatedly... you guessed it... the word RACIST.

The Saudi economy is in decline seemingly, what else do you expect them to do? If we had done like the rest of the EU in 2003 and went down the route of renewable work permits and such, which under the EU law at the time we were perfectly entitled to do, we may not have gotten into quite as deep of a crisis as we have. But of course, to come up with a scheme like that would be Fianna Fail effectively admitting there was some possibility the CT might not last forever, and sure talk like that would be sure to give the contributors at the Galway Races the s'hits about how the days of being knee deep in Bulgarian apartments might be a bad move.

And exactly how exploited are the bulk of these workers? Now, I don't know if any of you have even been there but people are claiming that every taxi driver, street sweeper, bus driver, security guard, retail worker and so on and so forth is foreign. I know in Qatar many of the Nepalese work as construction labourers in awful conditions- their life consists of little but the site and the hostel provided for them. They are fed rations and paid a wage only mildly better than their home country despite living in a nation where a night out would probably cost them their years wages. They live for years in a country where they likely never buy a single item, working on sites where the architect is on Western wages and the labourers (and, I would guess, even the bulk of the tradesmen) are on a few bucks a day.

That is exploitation. Working a minimum wage job that allows the worker to pay their own rent and save some amount of money is anything but. I know workers living with their employers in Saudi are often abused, but people like the aforementioned bus and taxi drivers? Really? Not to mention that with th scrutiny that Western human rights organisations put on firms outsourcing work to abusive employers (Apple in China for example) I would be somewhat doubtful that the US and UK oil firms out there are paying the site cleaners and general hands a complete pittance and getting away with it.

malibu4u

Sunglasses Ron wrote: »

And exactly how exploited are the bulk of these workers? Now, I don't know if any of you have even been there but people are claiming that every taxi driver, street sweeper, bus driver, security guard, retail worker and so on and so forth is foreign. I know in Qatar many of the Nepalese work as construction labourers in awful conditions- their life consists of little but the site and the hostel provided for them. They are fed rations and paid a wage only mildly better than their home country despite living in a nation where a night out would probably cost them their years wages. They live for years in a country where they likely never buy a single item, working on sites where the architect is on Western wages and the labourers (and, I would guess, even the bulk of the tradesmen) are on a few bucks a day.

That is exploitation.

Dubai is the same. The labourers etc are imported from third world countries and paid next to nothing. The middle east is a horrible place in my opinion.

Einhard

Sunglasses Ron wrote: »

Is there not an irony somewhere of tarring each and every Saudi citizen as a lazy obese maid raping misogynist getting fat of the blood and sweat of their migrant workers?

Might be, but since I suggested nothing of the sort, I don't see the relevance.

coolbeans

Sunglasses Ron wrote: »

The Saudi economy is in decline seemingly, what else do you expect them to do? If we had done like the rest of the EU in 2003 and went down the route of renewable work permits and such, which under the EU law at the time we were perfectly entitled to do, we may not have gotten into quite as deep of a crisis as we have.

Not really sure how our immigration policies deepened the crisis. It was excessive lending by the banks coupled with irresponsible borrowing by a huge minority of Irish people that led to that. FF's populist policies only added fuel to the fire. Nothing to do with immigration. In fact immigration today is keeping the likes of Google and eBay in Ireland due to the massive shortage of skilled Irish workers in the tech sector.

smurfjed

They are deporting NON-DOCUMENTED ILLEGAL RESIDENTS. They don't have a problem with people who have the legal right to reside and work in the country. Saudi Arabia has changed dramatically in the last 5 years under the present monarch, with a huge young population, the government has realised that they must create employment opportunities for them or they could face their own spring event. It is extremely common to find young Saudis males and females working in stores or even starbucks, the majority of taxi drivers are also Saudi. They certainly aren't ready to clean the streets just yet, but by the next generation they will be

Now how would you like to have 300,000 illegal people living in Ireland (8% of population). How would you feel if every time you stopped at a traffic light your car was accosted by a dozen beggars, some with missing limbs, some with babies, or if you parked your car you would be surrounded by a dozen car washers trying to earn 3 euros to wash your car. This is the visible signs of this illegal population.

Nodin

smurfjed wrote: »

They are deporting NON-DOCUMENTED ILLEGAL RESIDENTS. They don't have a problem with people who have the legal right to reside and work in the country. Saudi Arabia has changed dramatically in the last 5 years under the present monarch, with a huge young population, the government has realised that they must create employment opportunities for them or they could face their own spring event. It is extremely common to find young Saudis males and females working in stores or even starbucks, the majority of taxi drivers are also Saudi. They certainly aren't ready to clean the streets just yet, but by the next generation they will be

Now how would you like to have 300,000 illegal people living in Ireland (8% of population). How would you feel if every time you stopped at a traffic light your car was accosted by a dozen beggars, some with missing limbs, some with babies, or if you parked your car you would be surrounded by a dozen car washers trying to earn 3 euros to wash your car. This is the visible signs of this illegal population.

O NOES!!!!!!!!

Sunglasses Ron

coolbeans wrote: »

Not really sure how our immigration policies deepened the crisis. It was excessive lending by the banks coupled with irresponsible borrowing by a huge minority of Irish people that led to that..

And a great deal of that excessive borrowing was to build second homes as resale investments. Second homes that were often partially built by migrant labour, often to be lived in by more newly arrived migrant tenants attracted to the country with the promise of jobs building more new homes, while the landlord waited for the property to rise to a ridiculously profitable re sale value. A great deal of these migrants are now gone, forming part of the reason for the ghost estates and the high home vacancy rate, which leads to these investors being stuck with a house that has nobody in it paying rent and that they can't quickly sell for a price that will cover their original mortgage. None of this would have happened to such a serious extent if we had undertaken some sort of quota/ renewable permit scheme like most of the rest of the EU, simply because the yearly increasing demand for rented accommodation would not have been as high, and few people are willing to take out a bank loan and have a house sit there completely empty for 10 years waiting for the bubble to peak, are they? A vicious circle that was the type of get rich quick scheme the government is meant to avoid promoting. Developments started in, roughly, the period from early 2008, were built on the incorrect assumption that this constant inward flow would not stop any time soon, rather than having a system where we knew that x number of migrants were to be allowed in in 2008 and building a suitable, rather than short sightedly excessive, amount of housing for them. The crisis of Ghost Estates and high vacancy would have happened regardless, but certainly not to the same extent.

Of course, people would rather blame the "bastard bankers" for feeding them scandalous loans like an alcoholic blaming the pub for serving him enough drink to ruin his life, and the government for letting the migrants in, rather than blame the biggest player in it all, themselves and the getting one up on the Jones new car yearly Bulgarian holiday home lifestyle.