RIYADH: “I’m half Sudanese and half Chadian but the first thing I do everyday is check out the Saudi newspapers and magazines,” Mansour Alhadj told The Media Line.
The founder of Mawaleed.net, a website that aims to connect children born to expatriates in Saudi Arabia, Alhadj is leading the campaign for Saudi citizenship.
“My favourite [soccer] team is a Saudi team called Al-Ahli,” he said. “When the national Saudi team is playing, I always support them.”
Alhadj was born and raised in Saudi Arabia , only leaving the country for the first time in his teen years, when he was forced to fly to his father’s home country to continue high school, as non-Saudis are not permitted to attend Saudi high schools.
“The first time I went to Chad I was called ‘the son of Saudi Arabia ’,” he remembered. “Nobody in Chad considered me Chadian.”
“I struggled very hard to become part of the Chadian community but everybody was refusing me,” he said.
The name of Alhadj’s website, Mawaleed, comes from the Arabic term Mawaleed El Mamlakah, which means young people of foreign decent.
“We decided to launch this website so all the Mawaleed can come together to discuss their issues, among them the right to naturalization,” Alhadj said. “We don’t have any relationship with our own countries. We are all born in Saudi Arabia we love Saudi Arabia and we want to live in Saudi Arabia.”
Alhadj refutes claims that the purpose of the campaign is to gain entitlement to the financial benefits that Saudi citizens enjoy.
“It’s not about what you gain,” he said. “We believe that this is our right. We were born in Saudi Arabia. We did not choose to be born in Saudi Arabia. We carry the Saudi culture, we are no longer related to our ancestor’s country; our parent’s country, the country we are labelled with.”
Several hundred people have signed up with the group and, while Alhadj has not received a response from the Saudi government, he remains hopeful that once the group’s petition reaches King Abdullah, their demands will be listened to.
“Everybody is really excited about King Abdullah because he has done so many things towards reform,” he said. “We believe that once the initiative reaches him, he will absolutely consider either citizenship or at least permanent residency.”
When oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in the 1950, the country began developing rapidly, recruiting large numbers of foreigners with the skills needed to build a modern economy, something most nationals lacked.
The same phenomenon repeated itself across the region.
“These countries are the sole home these kids consider home, so I understand giving citizenship to expats here, where they make up a small percentage of the population,” a foreign-born Saudi businessman told The Media Line on the condition of anonymity. “But in Qatar or Dubai, where expats are 80-90 percent of the population, it’s not so easy.”
“This is something that they [the Saudi government] will have to think long and hard about,” he said. “It’s a problem that has been around for a while, and now the rooster has come home.”
