RIYADH, 11 May 2004 — After years of announcements that a change in the citizenship law was imminent, the response of expatriates to news that the Shoura Council passed amendments that could allow them to apply for Saudi nationality has been muted.
Some expressed reservations about the reported conditions for citizenship, especially on dual nationality and linguistic and professional skills.
They say a condition specifying fluency in written and spoken Arabic would exclude highly qualified applicants.
But non-Saudi Arabs are pleased. Nasser, a Palestinian PR executive who has lived in the Kingdom for 23 years, said the move could help halt the brain drain of Arabs and Muslims who leave when their contract is up and whose children take the skills they have learned in the Kingdom’s international schools elsewhere.
Abdullatif Omar, a Jordanian Palestinian, welcomed the new regulations. “My children were born and educated here,” he said. “It would certainly mean we could invest our money here instead of sending it abroad.”
Abdul Hannan Faisal Tago, a Filipino Muslim from Mindanao, also had no objection to the language requirement since he has a degree in Arabic literature.
Others were skeptical of red tape. “How are they going to implement it and who will implement it? Will it take years?” a Palestinian asked. “Even qualified candidates could face obstacles unless procedures are streamlined, and that would open the doors for corruption.”
Expatriates from the subcontinent adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Shahid Fareed, a travel executive from India, said that while the idea in principle was good, the question was whether many would be ready to give up their Indian passport for a Saudi one.
“Saudi passports no longer have the premium value they used to have,” one South Asian expatriate said.
They worry that if only Arabic speakers are eligible, a great many doctors, engineers and other professionals would be disqualified, and that would defeat one of the objects of the law — persuading top professionals to stay.
But Seyed Hamid Moulana, a hotel executive from Sri Lanka, said many expatriates had become so much at home in the Kingdom they need orientation whenever they go back to their own countries.
Shajahan, a Bangladeshi who has been here for more than a decade said Saudi citizenship to him would be “a godsend.”
A Shoura Council member has said the amendments to the citizenship law are meant to meet the requirements of a changing society. The amendments relax naturalization rules for foreign spouses of Saudis while toughening already strict requirements for permanent residents applying for citizenship, Mohammad Al-Zalfa was quoted as saying yesterday.
Zalfa said that while some of the new laws introduced in Saudi Arabia in recent months were speeded up to meet requirements of membership of the World Trade Organization, proposed amendments to the naturalization law had been on the table for many years and were triggered by the changes that have taken place in Saudi society.
“More Saudi men and women are marrying foreigners now than when the current law came into force some 50 years ago as society opens up to others, and this necessitates flexibility,” Zalfa said.
Proposals intended to make life easier for mixed couples include giving Saudi women the choice to keep their citizenship or acquire that of their husbands and relaxation of conditions for naturalizing foreign spouses and children.
“We now have some seven million foreigners living here. We had to make it tougher to acquire citizenship in order to make sure that those who apply for it are loyal to the country and have integrated in Saudi society,” Zalfa said.
