RIYADH — Umm Faisal, a 50-year-old Saudi woman formerly married to a Yemeni man who subsequently left her and her three children behind in the Kingdom, is struggling to make ends meet and fight her son's pending deportation due to her inability to correct his residency status. Umm Faisal urged Saudi authorities to make an urgent intervention to alleviate her suffering and put an end to her ordeal. Umm Faisal does not know anything about her parents. She and her siblings lived like orphans after they were abandoned by their parents. When she came of age, she was married off to a Yemeni national and they had three sons. Later, he divorced her and left for Yemen for good, putting her and her children in a financial and legal crisis. Unable to provide for herself and her children, she faced the additional burden of coming up with SR2,000 to renew the residency permits of her sons. Later, she opened a commercial establishment, a move which deprived her of a pension and other allowances from the General Organization for Social Insurance. Umm Faisal says that commercial establishment was instrumental in depriving her of social security benefits and job opportunities for her sons with other sponsors. She praised Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah for his directive to treat the children of Saudi women married to foreign men as citizens. Umm Faisal, who is suffering from hypertension and diabetes, said she had to suffer a lot in order to get residency permits for her children. “The Ministry of Social Affairs wrote a letter to the Passport Directorate asking it to issue Iqamas for my sons and exempt me from any fees due to my difficult financial condition. Even though my 30-year-old son got an Iqama easily, it was an ordeal to get an Iqama for my 24-year-old second son because I had failed to renew it for two years,” she said. Umm Faisal said she is afraid her third son, 17, will be deported as he lost his passport and residency permit. “When I approached the Passport Directorate to get an Iqama for my youngest son, they directed me to contact the Deportation Center under the Department for Foreigners. For the past five months, I have been continuously coming and going to the Passport Directorate and my local Passport office under the scorching sun in order to complete the necessary paper work. I was finally asked to pay SR1,150 but I could not come up with the cash due to my financial situation,” she added. While urging the authorities to intervene to end her suffering, Umm Faisal said she has outstanding debts in excess of SR100,000.
