Isn’t it amazing how other countries routinely appear to be able to do what we are informed is not only impossible, but outright unthinkable?
Teodros Adhanom, the Ethiopian foreign minister, has turned to
Twitter almost every night for the last three weeks to tersely report
the number of his countrymen expelled from Saudi Arabia.“Last night arrivals from Saudi reached 100,620,” he wrote on Friday,
describing a fraction of one of the largest deportations in recent
Middle East history. Riyadh has said it wants to forcibly expel as many as 2m of the foreign workers, including hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians, Somalis, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who make up around a third of the country’s 30m population.At home, the exodus of illegal workers is being seen as the kingdom’s
most radical labour market experiment yet. With one in four young Saudi
males out of work, analysts applaud Riyadh’s determination to tackle the
problem, but doubt the crackdown will achieve its objective, as Saudi
nationals are unlikely to apply for menial jobs.
What a fascinating way to solve the unemployment problem! Get rid of the excess labor supply. Why, the next thing you know, someone will discover that the Law of Supply and Demand applies to the labor market! And if a country with a 30m population can expel 2m illegal workers in a civilized manner, then surely a country with 300m population is capable of expelling 20m of them. Minnesota could be Somali-free within 15 days if they contracted the job out to the Saudis.
It’s not a coincidence that after importing tens of millions of immigrants, the USA has gone into economic and demographic decline. The same is true of the UK and Western Europe. The facts are in. Mass immigration does not boost mature economies. It only speeds up their decline by reducing wages and forcing native workers to go into debt in order to try to maintain their standard of living until the debt limits are reached.
As for the unwillingness of Saudi nationals to apply for menial jobs, the Saudis might consider raising the wages and eliminating the subsidized unemployment.