As already mentioned, the lack of sufficient employment opportunities
in the country forces many young Egyptians to consider engaging in labour
migration for a limited time or perhaps leaving the country for good. This
is very harmful for the country’s economy, for those who leave have often
received an expensive university education in their home country as medical
doctors, engineers, mathematicians, etc. But the remittances of the Egyptian
labour force abroad are an important pillar of Egypt’s economy. In 2000/01
they constituted Egypt’s second-largest source of foreign currency at US$
3,021 million (see Table 7.1). The exact size of the emigrant labour force is
unknown. Official sources mention 1.9 million persons, while others make
them up to 5 million (Internet 1999a). In 1999 Egyptians constituted 35 per
cent of the Arabic-speaking employees in Saudi Arabia and 18 per cent of all
foreign ones (ibid.). Before the Gulf War of 1991 nearly 1 million Egyptians
were working in Iraq alone. When the war broke out they had to leave the
country overnight. These events, and the economic crisis in some Arab states
caused by the deterioration in the price of oil after the mid-1980s, created a
strong wave of remigration of Egyptian foreign workers back to their home
country. This caused additional problems on the Egyptian labour market,