Saudi Arabia-born expats face an identity crisis

There are 8.4 million expatriates in Saudi Arabia. Of these, over two million are estimated to have been born in the country and spent all their lives here. According to Indian diplomats, 10 percent of the two million Indians living and working in the country were born here. When it comes to third-generation Indians, it is thought that there are around 30,000. If those figures were replicated across other expatriate communities, it would mean 820,000 Saudi-born expatriates living in the Kingdom. Of these, a quarter of a million would be third-generation expatriates. In fact, the number is probably higher. According to official figures, in 2009, over 14.4 percent of births in the Kingdom were registered to foreign parents.
More specifically, there are well over a million Palestinians, the overwhelming majority of them born in the Kingdom. There are groups such as the stateless Burmese, now into their fourth and fifth generations, of whom there are more than 300,000. In addition to the Saudi-born Indians, there are large numbers of Saudi-born Pakistanis. Although there are half a million fewer Pakistanis than Indians, it is claimed that the percentage born in the Kingdom is over 30 percent.
Despite not being given Saudi nationality, these Saudi-born foreigners strongly feel they belong here. In the case of third generations expatriates, they have inherited the Saudi culture from parents also born in the Kingdom and themselves with a strong sense of being Saudi.
"It is a complicated situation. My son knows very well that both his father and mother were born in the Kingdom. He has no connections whatsoever with his original country and does not know anything about it other than the fact that his grandfather lived there for some time before coming to the Kingdom," Adel Abu Hassan, an Eritrean expatriate who has a son and a daughter, told Arab News.
He was worried about the future of his children and said he would not know what to say to them when they grow up. "Do I consider my children Saudis or foreigners? They were born here. So was I. I have no answer to this question," he said.
Abu Hassan said there was no chance his children would ever go back to Eritrea. "All connections with our ancestors’ country were severed. We belong to Saudi Arabia where we were born, raised, educated, married and had our children," he said, expressing fears that the problem will exacerbate as more generations are born in the Kingdom and still treated as foreigners.
Second and third-generation expatriates say the fact they are treated as non-Saudis may prevent them from finding jobs or being admitted to schools and universities. They are also upset at not being able to benefit from government services provided to its citizens.Continued