Talal Al-Qashgari Al-Madinah If the status correction campaign has had a bright side, it is that it has uncovered many Saudis who brought in a large number of foreigners on work visas and left them on their own to work freely in the labor market in exchange for certain monthly or annual fees. When these workers asked their sponsors to release them to correct their status, the sponsors reciprocated with mountains of injustices. This is a true story that I have not heard from anyone or read in any of the newspapers. I was an actual eyewitness. An expatriate asked his Saudi sponsor to transfer his iqama to another sponsor who needed his services before the grace period was over. The expatriate gave his Saudi sponsor SR3,000 to make this happen. The poor man was saving this money to send to his family back home. The Saudi started to procrastinate for a whole year until the grace period was about to expire. When the expatriate dared to ask the Saudi to release him before it was too late, the latter slapped the former many times on the face. I saw tears rolling out of the poor man's eyes. He was too frightened to hit back so he swallowed his miseries and kept quiet. I saw his tears with my own eyes and was devastated to see how anyone could be so unjust to others? We should be God fearing and never unjust to the poor expatriates who come to our country looking for a good living. We should either treat them nicely while they are under our sponsorship or release them gracefully to look for their living elsewhere. I wished so much that we had a certain mechanism in the Labor Ministry or the Passports Department to settle the complaints of the expatriates against their unjust Saudi sponsors expeditiously. The unfair Saudi sponsors should be punished just as the expatriates would if they violated work and residency rules. These unjust sponsors have flatly violated all human rights.
