More than 11,000 Sudanese workers have returned voluntarily from Saudi Arabia after an amnesty for foreign employees to legalize their status, official media said Saturday.
"The number of Sudanese that have voluntarily returned from Saudi Arabia has reached 11,678 as the amnesty for people working in the country without proper permits expired on Nov. 3", the state SUNA news agency reported, quoting Khalid Fath Al-Rahman, deputy head of Sudan's Embassy in Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia said last week that it had deported more than 71,118 illegal foreign workers since the amnesty ended and that more would follow.
Nearly a million migrants from various countries took advantage of the amnesty to leave voluntarily.
Another four million were able to find employers to sponsor them, a legal requirement in the Kingdom as in several other Gulf states.
One Sudanese was killed on November 13 in clashes between Saudis and illegal migrants in the Riyadh neighborhood of Manfuhah, police said at the time.
SUNA reported that 26 Sudanese were arrested in Riyadh and 43 in Eastern Province.
"They were released to correct their residency situations," the report said, adding there were 500,000 Sudanese in the Kingdom.
Sudanese Labor Ministry figures show that Saudi Arabia is the largest recipient of a mounting number of migrants from the economically troubled country.
In total, more than 94,000 workers left Sudan last year, compared with about 10,000 in 2008, Agence France Presse said, citing a Labor Ministry study.
Sudan's overall unemployment rate was an estimated 18.8 percent in 2011, but almost double that figure for young people, according to data cited by the United Nations Development Program.
11,000 return to Sudan from KSA
