The extraordinary closure of many Saudi-owned shops and businesses run by expatriates has come about because of fears that official checks on iqamas and other papers will reveal that a large number of foreigners is working here illegally or with at best dubious documentation.

Equally, as illegal workers fear that the Ministry of Labor clampdown is bringing their time in the Kingdom to an end, there has been a significant, and as reported yesterday in this newspaper, according to some experts, an alarming increase in the transfer of funds, via third parties, to banks in expatriates’ home countries.

The fact that so many foreigners are nervous of official inspection demonstrates clearly just how the iqama system has been exploited or circumvented. In truth, this is a situation that has long been known. For many Saudis, the Ministry of Labor’s new sharper focus on work permits is long overdue. The law is the law and it has long been understood that it was honored in the breach.

Yet there is another way at looking at this challenge. The Kingdom relies heavily on its expatriate work force from consultants and technicians through to laborers, shopkeepers and artisans. The Saudization program is making progress in replacing some of our overseas workers with locals. It is an absurdity that there should be any significant unemployment among Saudis in an economy as vibrant and strongly growing as ours. Employers are, albeit sometimes reluctantly, biting the bullet and paying higher wages to newly-hired Saudi nationals. But the process still has a long way to go.

Moreover the pace of Saudization is not simply dictated by the speed at which employers take up the challenge of taking on locals. It is equally crucial that Saudis have the necessary skills, along with the willingness to accept work which has until now been done by expatriates. The farming sector provides an example of how unwilling many young Saudis are to take up the rewarding but demanding job of working the land.

The intensification of checks on the legal status of foreign workers, is a necessary part of the drive to give jobs to Saudi nationals. In an ideal world, it ought to be imagined that a Saudi shop owner for instance, who now finds that his expatriate staff have stayed away, perhaps because they gained employment with false papers, or even that they were engaged when the employer knew perfectly well that they were not entitled to work in the Kingdom, has a simple solution. The owner of the business needs to go out and hire Saudis. It very much remains to be seen if this is what is now going to happen.

Meanwhile, we have a situation where the economic life of the Kingdom is in danger of being disrupted to a degree, as it seems the true level of expatriates working here illegally is being unmasked.

The law is indeed the law and must be enforced. Yet it is also important that it is done both humanely and with an eye to the wider economic interests of Saudi Arabia. As shown in reports in this newspaper, behind every expatriate worker with a doubtful or non-existent legal standing in the Kingdom, there is a human story, a potential tragedy. Workers have bought iqamas from some sponsors, knowing that under the regulations, these can be held to be invalid. Among laborers, there are some illegals who live in work camps and because of their status, are forced to accept poor conditions and pitiful wages, which may not be paid for months at a time. Since some of them should not be working here in the first place, these tragic expatriates can have no recourse to any complaint mechanism that would give them their money.

The Ministry of Labor should certainly continue its dragnet. However, it is important that the economic impact of finding and deporting illegals is taken into consideration. Of equal concern must be the behavior of undocumented individuals who have fled the jobs to which they were not entitled and gone to ground. How will they now survive ? Might they contribute to crime and lawlessness ?

Though the law is clear, its implementation is not a black and white matter. The clampdown on expatriates without the proper papers is going to throw up many issues at both a human and economic level, which the authorities and society at large will have to address.