JEDDAH, 11 November 2003 — Stories of the Passports Department chasing overstayers make familiar fillers in the popular Arabic press. But Al-Madinah newspaper recently reported a remarkable variant from the Bab Shareef district.
There, the paper said, a group of overstayers who have run out of money gather every morning in the hope that the Passports Department will arrest and deport them. Those who fail to get themselves arrested one day will be back the next. Some desperate overstayers have been waiting for 10 days and are still at large, the paper said.
One of the hapless men, Pakistani Najeeb Khan told the paper he came to the Kingdom two years ago on an Umrah visa. “I worked in every job you can imagine, and I made about SR700-800 a month.”
But lately the work has dried up. “I have decided to go home, but I don’t want to spend the money on a ticket, so I have come here to get arrested. This is my fourth day, but no luck so far.”
Overstayer Jaafer Mirza was fired from a job that earned him SR900 a month. “Next I tried working as a car cleaner, but the income wasn’t very steady. I have now decided to go home since I am losing money by staying here. I hope the Passports Department will arrest me soon.
“Sometimes I wonder why the department chases overstayers in the street while we are waiting here, willing to be arrested. They just ignore us,” he added.
“I have been coming here for 10 days and I don’t know why they don’t arrest us,” a Yemeni overstayer said. “What is the difference between us and other overstayers they run after? I think they are playing cat and mouse; they are waiting for us to find work and then they can arrest us and fine our employer,” he said.
A number of businessmen complained to the paper of overstayers gathering in front of their stores in downtown Jeddah. “Every day more than 500 overstayers gather here, waiting for the Passports Department to come and arrest them,” one of them said. “Sometimes the officials come and sometimes they don’t. When the department finally comes, they only arrest those with passports. It’s as if they are saying that people without passports have a right to stay in the Kingdom.”
But a lieutenant colonel in the Passports Department who would only give his name as Ayed said officers arrested overstayers every day. “Those with passports are handed over to the immigration department. Those without are taken for investigation to see if they have a criminal record or if they are wanted for a crime,” he said. “We arrest between 250 and 300 overstayers a week. But we insist that overstayers pay for their own tickets home. If they can’t pay, we get the money from the Saudi who is sheltering them.”
