Saudis who trade in entry visas, also called “visa brokers,” are usually influential citizens who can to obtain numerous visas for about 1,000 riyals ($266) each then sell them for more than 10,000 riyals ($2666).
The number of work visas issued by Saudi authorities exceeds the number of laborers needed in the Saudi labor market. Today, there are more than nine million foreigners in the kingdom and more work visas are still being issued.

According to the secretary general of the Saudi Council of Chambers, there is a dire need to restructure the market in a way that balances between supply and demand.

For Dr. Abdullah al-Kaeed, writer at Riyadh newspaper, the issue of trading in labor visa is complicated and is caused by a variety of reasons.

The problem, Kaeed argued, is not just related to visa brokers and their quest for profit because government bodies are involved as well.

“When a company is about to start a project, it submits a request for laborers to the Ministry of Labor, but the ministry often approves less that the requested number,” he told Al Arabiya.

This pushes the company owner to seek other ways of recruiting laborers in order to secure the required workforce for the project.

“This is when visa brokers come in,” he added.

Visa brokers, Kaeed explains, operate in one of two ways. Either they obtain visas then directly sell them to laborers or give laborers visas for free and take a portion of their wages.

Another factor that aggravates the foreign labor problem, Kaeed said, is the religious status of Saudi Arabia.

“All Muslims want to enter Saudi Arabia to perform the pilgrimage. Some of them stay afterwards and look for jobs.”

Ahmad al-Obeid, Director General of the Labor Office in the Eastern Province, said that the Saudi Ministry of Labor has started blacklisting specific Saudi nationals involved in illegal trading of visas.

“Those blacklisted will be barred from receiving all services from the Ministry of Labor,” he told the Saudi newspaper Okaz.

Obeid pointed out that the Eastern Province Labor Office has already blacklisted 600 Saudis for recruiting workers without having jobs for them or for employing them in jobs other than the ones they were originally recruited for.

Those visa brokers, Obeid added, have always tried to go around the problem to mislead the ministry.

“They would rent shops temporarily and put up signboards indicating some business activity. However, once the visa is issued, the signboards are removed and the workers disappear.”

The Saudi government has started five years ago a long term plan to prevent the unwanted influx of foreign labor, which was referred to as the “Saudization” or nationalization of the job market. However, the problem persisted with the brokers emerging as the ultimate winners.