Despite concerted efforts of the Ministry of Labor through increasingly severe punishments, the trade in sponsorship for profit remains as lively as ever. Authorities are becoming concerned at the number of “vagabond workers” found on the streets of almost every city of the Kingdom, many of whom carry legitimate visas but find themselves without work once they arrive in the Kingdom. Having paid exorbitant price to sponsors for their visas in the first place, they then are forced to pay further stipends to have their paperwork done. Meanwhile, no genuine employment is offered to them, and they have to make their way seeking work whenever and wherever they can. With no regular and guaranteed income, many of the workers find themselves living on the streets, or finding refuge with friends or others in a similar situation who have managed to find somewhere to stay, often hosting 10 or 20 people in one room. Muhammad Othman arrived several months ago with a legitimate visa. “I left my family and children to come here, only to find there was no job or accommodation for me,” he said. “I and ten others paid SR5,000 for a visa. Now we go out in search of work every day.” Sa'eed Mansour is a teacher at a private school. He arrived in the Kingdom 7 years ago on a work visa. When he found work at the school his sponsor decided to charge him SR400 every month for three years in return for transferring the sponsorship. Visa traders can be owners of bogus companies or simply individuals making a profit from bringing laborers from abroad. Dr. Muhammad Aal Zulfah, member of the Shoura Council, describes the visa trade as “a kind of fraud and treason.” “It is a serious security issue endangering society,” he says, citing arrests involving forgery of visas and Interior Ministry, Saudi embassy and court stamps. Dr. Osamah Abu Ghararah, another Shoura Council member, says the problem is limited to individual cases and does not represent a phenomenon. The Labor Ministry has managed to curb the extent of violations and, he says, the Ministry of Interior is monitoring the situation closely. Shoura member Dr. Bakr Khishaim, however, says that accurate studies by the Passports Department and the labor offices are needed to fully assess the scale of the problem. Dr. Suhailah Zain Al-Abedeen of the Human Rights Society describes trading in visas and exploiting laborers as a form of human trafficking. It is, she says, internationally prohibited. “A number of studies by the Human Rights Commission have been presented to the Shoura Council, and proposals and solutions will be disclosed soon,” she said. Vice Chairman of the Human Rights Society, Dr. Muflih Al-Qahtani, said the society was in the process of carrying out a study of the sponsorship system to help address any failings. Labor Ministry statistics show it issued 1,702,740 visas in 2006-07 for the private sector, including visas for private company workers and domestic workers. In comparison to 1,265,366 visas issued in 2005-06, the number of visas granted to the private sector rose in 2007 by 437,396 visas, or 34.5 percent. Visas granted to private companies reached 1,205,699 with a rise of 54.19 percent in 2007.
