Some are sponsored as “maids” or “drivers” to stay in Saudi
Saturday, 12 February 2011
The National Society for Human Rights voiced their concern that the children of Saudi women from foreign men are still stifled with ‘paper’ problems as they suffer unequal rights in comparison to regular Saudi Arabians or children of Saudi men from foreign women.
“We are closely monitoring these cases with a view to reaching a solution to this humanitarian problem,” Hussain al-Sharif, supervisor of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), told the Saudi-based newspaper Arab News on Friday.
Al-Sharif said the society had looked into many such cases and had called for a new system that would enable all such children to obtain citizenship.
While children of Saudi men from foreign women do not face such problems, where their children are automatically entitled to citizenship at birth, the boys born to Saudi women from foreign husbands can apply to obtain the nationality and the passport at the age of 18, while girls can only do so if they marry Saudi men.
The daughters from such marriages are given cards when they are 18 years old stating that they should be treated like 'Saudi citizens', but according to al-Sharif this would not allow them to work.
Need for sponsorship
These particular job titles will prevent their sons and daughters from getting proper jobs and prevent the mother from recruiting a driver or a housemaid from outside 
Children born to Saudi women and foreign fathers require residence permits and to obtain exit-reentry visas every time they want to leave the Kingdom, also the children need sponsorship.
Sponsorship on the other hand can potentially put these children at the mercy of the kafeel (sponsor), al-Sharif said, adding that the sponsors “may not give them a vacation or accuse them of going AWOL from work if they refuse to pay him money.”
He said many Saudi mothers register their sons and daughters under their sponsorship as drivers and housemaids regardless of their education in order to save them from deportation.
“These particular job titles will prevent their sons and daughters from getting proper jobs and prevent the mother from recruiting a driver or a housemaid from outside,” he added.“These children feel humiliated in their motherland, the very place they were born in.”
He also said that if the mother was able to register her children as companions to her, they would not be granted work permits regardless of their financial needs.
The children's problems include the difficulty of obtaining free medical treatment in government hospitals.
"The society has come across cases in which children from such marriages were not allowed to obtain their mothers’ pensions or social security assistance."
Meanwhile, children born to Saudi women and Palestinian men are not allowed to apply for Saudi citizenship
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