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Israel. Unemployment in Israel was 11 percent and rising in Fall 2003, and the government attempted to remove many of the 180,000 unauthorized foreign workers; there are 80,000 legal foreign workers. In the year ending September 2003, some 22,000 unauthorized foreign workers were removed, and 46,000 left on their own. Foreigners are 13 percent of the Israeli labor force, and are paid about 40 percent less than Israeli citizens, whose average per capita income is $16,000.

The Immigration Police launched another campaign to allow foreign workers and their families to leave Israel 'voluntarily' instead of risking deportation. Despite the deportation policy and a ban on the entry of foreign workers, at least 25,000 new workers arrived with permits in 2003 and an unknown number entered illegally.

When Israel signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, there were about 120,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements; at the end of 2003, there were about 236,400 Israelis in the settlements. There are about 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Saudi Arabia. Bombings of settlements housing foreign professionals are causing many to consider leaving, even though salaries for Arab professionals in Saudi Arabia are five to 10 times higher than in Egypt, Lebanon, or Jordan.

Illegal foreigners without the funds to travel home report to the passport office, hoping to be arrested and deported at the Saudi government's expense. The office says it arrests about 300 overstayers a week, and tries to get them to pay their own way home.

UAE. The UAE had a six-month "amnesty" that ended in June 2003 and permitted unauthorized foreigners to leave without paying fines. By Fall 2003, it was reported that unauthorized foreigners were returning to the UAE. About 200,000 foreigners left the UAE under the first amnesty in 1998, and 100,000 under the second in 2003.

The United Arab Emirates was formed in 1971 of seven independent "provinces" that had been a British protectorate. The population today is 3.8 million, but only 18 percent are Emirates; the foreigners include a million Indians, followed by migrants from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines. Dubai has become the center of commerce and trade, with Indians and Filipinos providing most of the skilled workers, and Nepalese and Sri Lankans tending to be unskilled.

Most Gulf labor importers require foreigners to have local sponsors. Since foreigners are willing to pay to get into the Gulf States, local sponsors have an incentive to request more foreigners than they can employ. By some estimates, 600,000 foreigners, or 27 percent of the foreigners in the UAE, have suspect local sponsors, many of whom abandon the migrants who paid fees for the contracts they offered. About half of the 400,000 businesses in the UAE may have been established in order to sponsor migrant workers.

Ruth Sinai, "Foreign workers get another change to leave 'voluntarily,'" Ha'aretz, January 2, 2004.