Job Discussion Forums

[hack1]

Just one final note about IH SAUDI ARABIA (RE: 'JUST LEAVE')

The person who posted the message saying just leave has clearly never worked for IH (not IH Saudi Arabia at any rate) and is not as bright as he/she thought!!

The company you work for can ONLY issue the exit visa. Going to your embassy and screaming blue murder is useless. YOUR PASSPORT IS USELESS WITHOUT AN EXIT VISA. MR S, your overlord and Master who controls operations in Saudi Arabia, is the ONLY ONE who can get your passport stamped with an exit visa (or exit and re-entry visa if you want to return).

So in reply, get ****** real. Have you ever been to Saudi Arabia?!!

'Just leave' you're having a laugh!! MR S, your overlord and master, TELLS YOU WHEN YOU CAN LEAVE. He has you by the short and curlies
Hack1

[also in saudi]

What is "short and curlies?"

[jonks]

[crashartist1]

That is absolutely not true. You do not need a VISA to leave the country, you would need a VISA to get back into the country. And if you do go to your embassy and say that you need to leave they will help you leave. We are not in jail here, whoever tells you this stuff is uninformed.

poorESLteacher

[scot47]

You need an exit visa to leave, unless you are here on a business visa.

Some of the dodgier employers bring people in on a business or visitor's visa. If your employer does that be careful.

You should be here on a working visa with an igama. If that is the case you need an exit/re-entry visa, or a final exit visa if you are leaving for good.

Send me a PM if you want to know about some of the more reasonable employers in KSA who play the game by the rules.

[crashartist1]

Scot, not all employeers are dodgy if they bring you here on a business or visitors visa. In the world of private language schools we have to maintain a high number of saudi's in our work force. Many are unable to due, and therefore can't get the proper working VISA. As Saudi's are nearly impossible to fire we don't want to hire everyone that walks through the door, anytime you are NOT allowed by law to fire someone this is a problem so imagine hiring someone that can not show up to work for 9 days straight and work one day in 10 and not lose their job, this is Saudization and for a private language school not possible to financially cope with this sort of professional behavior. They will also leave a company after a year if someone comes along and offers then 50 Riyals more a month, there is no loyalty among them. If all private language schools had 75% Saudi's working in them then the VISA issue would be a non-issue, but this is the problem and always will be a problem. What should you do as a business when your business is English and the government won't give you anymore VISA's to hire native language instructors? You start to hire Sudanese, Egyptian, Saudi's, Turks, Lebanese, Syrian, Pakistanians and others already in the country that you can easily transfer to your sponsorship, then what do you tell the potential clients who ask where your 'native speakers' are? They will never understand that these other nationalities are probably 10 times the teacher the native would be, they only want a native, no native=no contract=no money. So private language schools have to, unfortunetly, bring teachers over on business VISA's and visitor VISA's just to stay afloat.
Saudi's are rarely reliable. They have no problem saying they need a month off from work to take care of 'family issue's' and fully expect to have month off in the busy season. You tell them they cannot have a month off and they leave anyway, you hire a new person and the old one comes back and demans his job and you must give him his job or he gets the saudi labor office involved to get his job back or he gets a 11 year old prince to call up the owners of the school to tell us to hire him back. Most of them don't have a college education and the others that do barely graduated and they really want to be the manager of a place because they are Saudi and they feel it is their birthrite to have this position and they should be paid like an executive and have 2 personal assistants (perferably Asian and sub-continent Asian) and 3 months of vacation a year, house of their choice and car or their choice. All this from someone who barely graduated in 6 years with a degree in eletrical engineering (had to take ethics in Islam twice because of bad grades), his english is in a beginners stage, his reading and writing in English is almost non-exsistant and he wants to be the manager of a private language school.
Whoa, seriously off-track. Sorry guys, had to get it out.

Anyway, don't write off the schools that can't offer everything legit right off the bat, I wouldn't work a for a few of these languages schools because they treat you like a damn slave once they have you passport in hand. I would hate to give up my passport to anyone for a long period of time, like a year! Luckily I have a work VISA for Saudi Arabia, a multiple exit/re-entry VISA and I get to keep my passport with me and I have an Iqama.

poorESLteacher

[thrifty]

What is the relationship between having to employ Saudis and not being able to provide work visas for foreign teachers?

[Bebsi]

OK, OK, Crashartist1, we've heard the language schools' argument. Now let's look at the other side:

It is very simple indeed. As a worker in KSA on a business visa, you have virtually no rights. You cannot buy a car or open a bank account AND signing a contract is pointless because yopu would hve ZERO rights to any claim under Saudi labour law. In a nutshell, if you go to KSA on a business visa, you are leaving yourself open to complete exploitation. NO reputable employer that I am aware of will refuse to get a business visa. Incidentally, there are legal ways to circumvent the problems you describe. Hiring foreigners illegally is not one of them, obviously.

However, with a work visa, you DO need an exit visa, either an exit/ re-entry or a final-exit. You need SOME kind of visa. So, while the schools will make the Crashartist1 argument, teachers must look at it from their side, not their employer's side.

Incidentally Crashartist1, when writing an argument you would do much better to write in paragraphs. That way, it comes across as a reasoned, structured rational argument. As one long paragraph, without topic sentences and so forth, it just comes across as a mindless rant. This is something you might even consider teaching in your language school. Also, as this is primarily an English teachers' forum, you might pay a little more attention to your syntax.

You might also bear in mind that apostophes are NOT added to nouns to make them plural. Thus, we say Saudis, VISAs (yes, even where we use uppercase) and issues, not VISA's, Saudi's and issue's. This is a fundamental principle taught even to beginners.

Just thought I'd mention to these points, as you evidently work for a reputable, conscientious language school, and will want to get this sort of thing right.

[Cleopatra]

[crashartist1]

my apologies, if I knew I was going to be graded on my paper I would have taken care in what I was doing.

It was a rant, a long quickly typed rant.

The relationship between hiring Saudi's and providing working VISA's for teachers is that you need to have high Saudization in your company before the government grants you working VISAs. The government takes a look at the number of employees you have, and how many Saudis you employee, how many are in positions of management and from that point they will or will not grant you VISAs.

You are right Bebsi, if you are not on a working VISA you have no rights because you are not legally allowed to work in the country. It is a possibility that you could be hired by a school that will treat you very poorly and usually this forum provides everyone with warnings about such places.

My whole point is that private language schools have different factors working for and against them. When the issue comes to VISAs, without 75% of your working force being nationals it is harder to get the VISAs for teachers, so just because private language schools have to give visitors visas and business visas does not make them all dodgy.

poorESLteacher

[thrifty]

You have got it the wrong way round. The amount of Saudi employees is a percentage of the amount of non-Saudi employees.

Where do you go for the weekend with your multi visa when you are in Jeddah?]

[Bebsi]

I take your point, Crashartist, about the difficulties in getting work visas. There are indeed all sorts of arcane rules concerning the percentage of Saudis a company must employ. There are exceptions to teh rules however, such as, if I am not mistaken, the necessity of hiring expats for work for which Saudis are generally not qualified. I would suggest checking thse rules out with a corporate lawyer.

In any event, whatever the reasons for having to make do with business visas, anyone employed on them is an illegal employee and therefore has no rights whatsoever. When taking a job in KSA, one should look at what is good for themselves, not their employer. I wouldn't care what difficulties my employer was facing, I wouldn't take a job if I was going to have no rights, no legal defence in the event of anything going wrong and generall was in danger of my own position being seriously compromised.

Moral justification for an illegal act doesn't alter its illegal nature, nor it's effect on others.

[crashartist1]

the biggest problem with typing anything is going to be that no one else can see the sarcasim in my typing. VISA's, Saudi's, teacher's

You are right again Bebsi, it is illegal. People should look out after themselves first, but people will always want to come to work in Saudi Arabia with the qualifications needed to get a comfortable Uni job. Part of my job is to make sure that all the teachers and administration staff are treated fairly and equally regardless of what VISA they are on.

I believe I made my point's clear about why private language schools do this. We are not bad people trying to steal from people or be dishonest with them, this is just a fact of life in Saudi Arabia.

Okay I finished with this conversation.

peace!

poorESLteacher

[Bebsi]

Was the spelling of "Sarcasim" intended also?

I would very much like to know why the sarcasm in the first place? When defending a hard-to-defend situation, sarcasm is NOT appropriate. What was the point of it anyway? Believe me, it didn't come across as sarcasm. Unless the reader is absolutely certain of what it is, sarcasm can be very self-destructive. Thatis why they have smilies here, I imagine.

[Mark100]

Crashartist1

While i am not one to go on about spelling and such on an internet forum you do seem to lack basic English writing skills.

As for the whole issue of visas I have to side with those who recommend only dealing with institutions that provide legitimate residential visas.

I have seen and heard far too many horror stories in the good old KSA to recommend otherwise.