Foreign workers gathering near the Saudi immigration ministry in Riyadh yesterday to apply for  exit visas as  a four-month deadline ended for overstayers to regularise their status, leave the country, or risk imprisonment.

AFP

Riyadh

Saudi authorities yesterday began a clampdown on illegal immigrants after the end of an amnesty that gave overstayers and workers a grace period to leave or legalise their status.

Police patrols will be searching for illegally-staying foreigners and those who help them, interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki said.

Violators will be arrested, penalised and deported, he said.

Nearly a million Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Indians, Nepalese, Pakistanis and Yemenis, among others, have taken advantage of the three-month amnesty - announced on April 3 and then extended for four months - and left the country.

Another roughly 4mn have legalised their situation by finding employers to sponsor them.

Under the new rules, workers can be employed only by their own sponsors, banning the practice of working independently or for non-sponsors.

Thirty Filipino workers who returned home yesterday alleged they were abused in the process of leaving.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is seen as a goldmine for millions of people from Asia and elsewhere in the Arab world, who find work as common labourers, drivers, porters and house maids.

Expatriates account for around 9mn of the country’s 27mn-population.

Saudi Arabia has the Arab world’s largest economy, but the unemployment rate among natives is above 12.5%, a figure the government is aiming to reduce.