Amman Center welcomes the decision to stop deportation of Egyptian workers
The Amman Center for Human Rights Studies appreciates in greater satisfaction the decision of the Ministry of Labour to halt procedures of deporting the Egyptian workers who are violating their residency in Jordan, and give them a chance to rectify their situations, for the Center has, with great concern, been following the deportation of more than a thousand Egyptian workers to their country, especially as the unfortunate procedures affected a large number of legal workers who have valid work permits, which could harm the efforts made over the past years to urge non-regular workers to straighten their legal status, in which the center and its partners had practical role through many seminars and workshops in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Interior, the Egyptian embassy, and a number of related union organizations and civil society institutions that examined and discussed at the time the mechanisms and procedures that limit the spread of illegal employment in the labor market, and through preparation and widely distributed publications aiming to encourage migrant workers to be legal; to protect them from exploitation or exposure to deportation.
But sadly the recent procedures of deporting Egyptian workers came as a result of poor political relationship between the two countries, while we stress the relationship with our neighbor Egypt strategic and deep to serve the interests of the peoples of both countries, away from passing tensions and disagreements, for it is unacceptable for the new Egyptian leadership to stop the implementation of bilateral economic agreements and sacrifice profound relationship by turning it into a political pressure point to support a certain local Jordanian political party or a team with temporary differences with the government.
As it is not prudent, too, to use workers to pressure their government to contact the Jordanian government and discuss economic relations between the two countries, most of the victims of deportation are poor workers who have direct economic obligations toward their families, who cannot afford the results of such arbitrary actions, affecting them and their rights is not just a violation of the bilateral agreements, but a major violation of human rights and conventions on the right to work, which also guaranteed the right of migrant workers any arbitrary actions similar to the recent situation of deportation campaign of Egyptian workers.
Finally we call upon the governments of the two countries to work hard and to serve the development of bilateral relations, with further steps of economic integration, to conclude bilateral agreements that serve the economies of the two countries, which suffer from difficulties and challenges, to abide by their letter and spirit to serve the two brotherly peoples, and for the life of the Egyptian worker in Jordan or Jordanian student in Egypt to be free from reactions for each variation in opinion that suddenly appears, to establish steady trade relations between the two countries that is stable and not influenced by transient negative climates, and none of the aspects of bilateral cooperation is subject to any cases of political blackmail mutually between the two governments, both peoples have more than enough economic and non-economic challenges.
