The severe economic crisis that began more than two years ago is suffocating the Lebanese, 80% of whom are below the poverty line, which pushes young people to seize their only chance to survive by emigrating to other countries to work and perhaps permanently reside and obtain another nationality.
The emigration of Lebanese youth raises fears of turning the country into a “camp for non-nationals” in the foreseeable future. Although the researcher at the International Information Company, Muhammad Shams Al-Din, rules out this hypothesis, he warns of what is more dangerous, “the migration of young people will turn Lebanon into an old society, and then it becomes necessary to resort to foreign workers to run the wheel of production.”
“Going to Dubai?” a young Lebanese woman asked me, while I was heading to the “counter” to check the bags at Beirut airport, and when I nodded to her in the affirmative, she said in a stifled voice: “Take me with you.”
I realize that the girl, who appears to be in her late teens, is traveling for the first time, alone. I reassured her that it was easier than she thought, and promised to follow her until we got out of Dubai airport, when her relative would come to take her home.
Arriving at the airport three hours earlier gave us time to get things done quickly and to find plenty of time to walk around the duty-free market and chat.
When I offered her to go into the cafeteria for juice, she said in a low voice that she had not slept for three days, and she was beginning to show symptoms of exhaustion.
Marietta leaves Lebanon, for the first time, to work in a beauty salon in Dubai, through her resident aunt.
While we were waiting for the hour to take off, the daughter of the town of Metulla in the Chouf, who lives in Byblos, told me that she had to give up her university studies at the beginning of the financial crisis three years ago, to go to study cosmetic art, with a quick course that does not exceed six months, in the hope of finding a job as soon as possible.
She adds: “My father and sister work and receive their salaries in Lebanese currency. A salary that goes to pay the electricity generator subscription bill, while we deal with the second salary according to priorities: food and medicine.”
stop education
According to statistics published by UNICEF at the beginning of this year, 3 out of every 10 young men and women in Lebanon have stopped education, and believe that life will get worse, refuted in a study on the reality and future of Lebanese youth, “extremely negative data regarding the mental health of the young generation.” With the absence of political will to address the predicament, the economic crisis is intensifying, and the country continues its free descent to the bottom of collapse, while the only hope for young people is to get out of a homeland in which they feel they are under house arrest. According to the statistics, regarding 41% of the Lebanese youth find that the only chance for survival in front of them is to search for opportunities abroad.
Passports
“Thank God I have a passport. My parents and my sister tried to apply for passports and were unsuccessful because they did not meet the required conditions,” says Marietta.
This is another suffering facing those who aspire to leave in search of a chance for life. The Lebanese Public Security Directorate has set “impossible” conditions for obtaining a passport, following it was found that the overwhelming majority of citizens obtained passports without using them, and this percentage amounted to 69 percent. More than 15,000 passports were completed in public security centers and were not received from their owners.
“The family whose members do not work abroad dies a slow death and no one feels it,” says Marietta, as she puts on her seat belt, contemplating from the window of the Beirut plane, which sank in darkness and desolation, so she did not recognize her from the air.
An escape without a prior plan
If the high demand for passports does not necessarily indicate the number of immigrants, it monitors the extent of the Lebanese people’s current willingness to leave. This is what applies to Akram Johari. One day in the spring of 2021, he carried his luggage and passport, and boarded the plane from Beirut to Baghdad, without a prior plan, in search of work, following his salary in Lebanon did not support a family of two girls and two elderly parents.
Akram’s salary, 42, is no longer worth a hundred dollars, with the value of the Lebanese currency declining by regarding 90%. He, like many Lebanese, chose to travel.
He left his work in Lebanon, and Baghdad was the most obvious choice for him, “a city nearby with an emerging economic movement, and receiving the Lebanese with an entry visa at the airport.”
“I didn’t have enough time to look for work in the Gulf,” says Akram from the cafe he started running regarding a month ago in central Baghdad. I had to make a quick move. I came to Baghdad and started looking for a job on Instagram,” until he got the job.
Although he is able to secure a good living for his family as a result of his work in Baghdad, this comes with a taste of bitterness for Akram. It hurts the man so much not being able to see his two daughters grow up in front of him. “I am very sad because I cannot see my two-month-old daughter,” he says.
From one troubled country to another
The movement of Lebanese to Iraq has doubled recently, and has increased steadily, especially in the health sector, as this applies especially to dozens of Lebanese doctors who provide services and are considered visitors in Iraqi hospitals and medical centers, according to the Lebanese ambassador in Baghdad, Ali Habhab.
According to the Iraqi authorities, more than 20,000 Lebanese entered Iraq between June 2021 and February 2022, not counting the visitors who come to Najaf and Karbala.
It seems that the Lebanese do not care regarding the deep living crisis facing the Iraqis, who are themselves immersed in poverty, unemployment and deteriorating infrastructure. burdened with crises.
A quarter of a million immigrants in 5 years
According to the report of the Crisis Monitor at the American University of Beirut, the mass migration waves that Lebanon experienced in its history accompanied their timing with periods of war, but the wars in Lebanon were not a main driver of migration, but rather the prevailing economic conditions. The latest statistics on the emigration of the Lebanese indicate that the year 2021 recorded the largest number of immigrants and travelers during the past five years, while the number of departures between 2017 and 2021 amounted to more than a quarter of a million people.