Egypt’s Nile Delta: Fertile land, but not for jobs
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For generations, Egypt has been a country to leave. It has long been stingy with opportunity, and its people have become exports to countries in need of laborers. Five million Egyptians work as bricklayers, carpenters and in any other jobs they can find in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and, for those with professions, Europe and the United States.
About 40% of Egyptians live on $2 a day or less. If it weren’t for the estimated $6 billion to $8 billion sent home every year by workers abroad, the nation would barely survive.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the money Egyptians earned in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations built new neighborhoods in Cairo. The laborers worked in Israel, and in Iraq before the war. These days they disperse across the region on ferries and buses. Others pay smugglers and hop on ragged vessels that sail across the Mediterranean toward Europe. Many drown with borrowed money in their wallets.
Excerpted from an article by Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan for the Los Angeles Times
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