An embroidered shawl is all Alaa has left from her previous life in Gaza, now little more than a poignant memory of a destroyed past and an extremely uncertain future. 

The shawl was a birthday gift from her mother and sister, and it was all that she could snatch from under the rubble of her bombarded apartment building during the first months of the Israeli war on Gaza. 

Alaa was able to cross the border into Egypt in the company of her sick father and her eight-year-old daughter. Her father was in need of urgent medical assistance, and only Alaa and her daughter were allowed to accompany him. 

Although she considers herself “lucky to have Egyptians as neighbours”, Alaa can hardly cope with the fact that she is living away from her mother, siblings, and memories of a hometown that overlooked the sea and was bedecked by olive enclaves and spacious agricultural areas. 

The memories of family life and the once beautiful enclave also appear in the drawings of Alaa’s daughter, who is suffering from the psychological pain of displacement. Like all Gazans, going back to her homeland is the one dream that Alaa and her daughter cling to.

“Nothing feels like home, nothing,” Alaa said. “How can I have a normal life when I know my mother and family are suffering repeated displacement amid constant bombing, hunger, unbearable living conditions, and the loss of loved ones? Whole families have been wiped out. How can we ever forget this,” she asked.

However, Alaa is struggling to lead an independent life despite her inner pain. Armed with a good education, work experience, and, more importantly, a wealth of inner power, Alaa could land herself two online jobs that could help her make ends meet.

“Egyptian people have been very kind to me. They always volunteer with all kinds of help once they know we are from Gaza,” Alaa told Al-Ahram Weekly. “We, Gazans, are really lucky to have Egyptians as our neighbours. Egypt is so much like home except that we miss our family and friends.”

Such mixed feelings “between alienation and companionship” also provide the title and subject of a recent book by Bassem Al-Ganoubi, a Palestinian-Egyptian writer and the founder of a volunteer initiative to help refugees and expatriates. 

The book has a chapter on how Egypt has always been a good host for expatriates throughout history and how refugees have always found it a solace for their feelings of loneliness and alienation. It shows how “Egypt has always served as a second home to Arabs,” being a magnet for immigrants who have shaped its history and culture over the centuries and even marked its architecture.

According to Al-Ganoubi, “one beautiful thing about Egypt is that expatriates are never referred to as refugees in mainstream discourse or even official statements but are always seen as visitors or brothers and sisters. Their physical presence cannot be mistaken in the streets and shops, where different dialects can be easily spotted and be perfectly merged into the social fabric.”

However, such visitors to Egypt are now facing mounting challenges and an extremely uncertain future. As the Israeli genocide in Gaza continues, together with the armed conflicts in Sudan and Syria, it is unsafe for refugees to go back home. Meanwhile, their presence in Egypt may not last due to a new asylum bill that may demand further documentation and higher residence fees. 

Many expatriates have dwindling funds since they are already struggling with the high cost of rent and tuition for their children, and they may have limited chances of finding jobs and affordable schools.

INFLUX OF REFUGEES

The 2011 Arab Spring protests that swept across the region marked a turning point in the influx of refugees into Egypt. 

Although Egypt also saw political unrest following the 2011 protests, it remained a safe haven for droves of refugees who fled armed conflicts in their homelands, particularly Syria, Libya, and Yemen. 

Official data indicate that Egypt received millions of refugees between 2014 and 2024. One statement by the head of the Central Agency for Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) estimated that Egypt hosts about nine million refugees, including four million from Sudan and 1.5 million from Syria.

This huge number has triggered debates about whether the refugees constitute an extra burden on the country’s already strained economy. Egypt has been suffering from unprecedented inflation, high rates of unemployment, and shortages of basic goods and services. This year has seen a large influx of Sudanese refugees fleeing war in their country, and this has been blamed for the sudden rise in the prices of real estate and rent that has severely affected the middle and lower classes. 

The owners of some small businesses, particularly food shops and textile factories, have also blamed Syrian immigrants for attracting customers away from them, allegedly causing a recession in the Egyptian market. Last summer, some owners of businesses circulated a hashtag on social media against Syrian and Sudanese refugees and calling upon the government to curb the influx of visitors to an already overpopulated nation facing economic challenges and recession. 

But this did not represent the view of the majority of Egyptian people, who have always been receptive to Syrians.

A cabinet press release earlier this year said that Egypt has received 40 per cent of the people fleeing armed conflict in Sudan, in addition to hosting 1.5 million Syrian refugees since 2012. 

Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli said in the statement, released in January, that the country expected to receive more Palestinians displaced from Gaza. He promised that the government would audit the number of refugees and review state expenditure on services extended to Egypt’s guests with the intention of seeking international aid to ease the mounting economic pressure.

A few weeks ago, Egypt’s parliament approved a controversial bill that establishes a legal framework regulating the status, rights, and obligations of refugees. The 39-article bill proposes the creation of a permanent committee for refugee affairs that will handle refugee-related matters, including managing data and statistics. 

The committee will be affiliated to the prime minister’s office and headquartered in Cairo. In coordination with the Foreign Ministry, it will be responsible for processing asylum requests, cooperating with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and providing support, care, and services to refugees.

In cases where the committee rejects an application for refugee status, it will request the ministry concerned to deport the asylum seeker. Once in place, all refugee and asylum matters will be decided by a newly established Permanent Refugee Affairs Commission under the lead of Madbouli. 

“The new asylum law shifts the ownership of the migration issue and its operational side to Egypt,” Kelly Petillo, a Middle East researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), said, adding that “the decision has been viewed quite negatively, as rights groups have been seeing it as a removal of ownership away from the UN and rights-based organisations.”

The asylum bill has been met with criticism by 22 rights groups, which say that only around 800,000 of the nine million visitors to Egypt are registered with the UNHCR and thus entitled to aid, healthcare, and education. The remaining majority live without any official refugee status or protection and rely on their own savings and donations from relatives and some volunteer initiatives. Some have been able to land jobs or create their own businesses.

The government says that the new law “aims to provide a comprehensive legal framework for refugees, while ensuring a delicate balance between refugee rights and national obligations.” Rights groups, however, insist that “it could be used to overly restrict the rights of refugees without any real oversight or legal recourse.”

“The importance of guarantees that asylum seekers cannot be forcibly returned to their countries of origin, when it is unsafe to do so, is a vital protection that is guaranteed under international law,” Timothy E. Kaldas, deputy director of the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said. 

“This law in no way upholds that protection and guarantees that right.”

Egypt, however, seems pressured to take more ownership of the asylum issue, probably to curb the influx of Gazans. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has repeatedly made it clear that Egypt will not take large numbers of displaced Palestinians in order to protect their right to their land in Gaza. 

In Egypt, neither the UNHCR nor the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UN Palestinian refugees agency, holds a direct mandate for Palestinian refugees. In certain circumstances, displaced Palestinians in Egypt can receive minimal protection or support under the UNHCR’s wider refugee mandate.

CONCERNS

Many Syrians now feel more worried than ever about their legal right to stay in Egypt after 10 years of relative settlement.

“It is difficult to feel secure and perhaps have to leave Egypt, our second home, where we have made memories and lived a whole life of good and bad times,” said one Syrian living in Cairo on her Facebook account. 

“It was in Egypt that I started a new life and recently got married to an Egyptian man. We thank Egypt for its great hospitality, but it is painful for many that ten years of adapting to a new life full of memories and mixed feelings could be terminated at any time.”

Al-Ganoubi told the Weekly that “one main problem with the new law is that it has come so late.”

“Even before the Arab Spring protests, Egypt had a huge number of refugees, estimated at two million, and there was already a large number of Sudanese visitors living in Egypt as well as others coming from other African countries, Yemen, and Iraq. The law should have been issued at that time to curb the influx of refugees. Now their number has ballooned to more than nine million. There has been infiltration across the borders, and that makes the real number of refugees unknown.”

However, the fact that the number is unknown is also due to the fact that “the definition of a refugee is not clear-cut,” Al-Ganoubi said. “Should businessmen, for instance, be counted as refugees?”

“It remains questionable who should decide whether their country of origin is safe or not, and the new law does not answer any of those questions and remains vague in several areas.”

Although Egypt is among the nations that signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its later Protocol in 1967, Al-Ganoubi says that the country has put important restrictions on the definition of refugees, seeing many of them as only “visitors” and therefore only allowed a temporary stay.

“Now there is a law that equates refugees to visitors that can be forced to leave at any time,” Al-Ganoubi noted. “This explains why they are required to pay 20 to 30 times the original residency fees, and why they no longer have access to affordable state health and educational services.”

“Syrians in Egypt now have no option but to enroll their children in private schools and pay fees that are higher than those paid by their Egyptian counterparts,” Al-Ganoubi said. “Gazans cannot enrol their children in any schools, public or private, because it is state policy that they do not become permanent residents in order to support the Palestinian cause.”

“Gazan children living in Egypt are left with no other choice but to receive online education from Gaza as a result.”

ECONOMIC GAIN OR DRAIN

This is the title of a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and also an issue of heated debate in Egypt. 

This year, some people started to blame the recent influx of refugees, particularly of Sudanese, for the inflation Egypt has been going through. An AUC study titled “Does Egypt Need to Change its Refugee Policies?” by Mostafa Shehata, a senior researcher and writer for AUC’s Alternative Policy Solutions Project, has similarly investigated the issue of whether refugees put extra burdens on the country’s economy.

Although inflation was very evident last summer in the real-estate market, causing an unprecedented hike in rents and the price of apartments, both studies say that the influx of refugees in general has not necessarily put further pressure on the country’s already strained economy. 

After all, refugees are a small fraction of the total number of foreigners living in Egypt. The rest, according to the two studies, are financially independent and pay their taxes and cover their expenses in accordance with the stipulations of the law. 

The Carnegie study, authored by Nourhan Hefzy, an Egyptian journalist, writer, and a Master’s student in international relations and cultural diplomacy, agreed with the AUC study in saying that public anxiety regarding the economic burdens of visitors to Egypt is primarily due to the fact that they are all put in the category of refugees, which is absolutely not the case.

“The difference between the numbers stated by the Egyptian Government and other organisations is due to the fact that Egypt considers all migrants to be refugees,” Shehata wrote in his study. “Meanwhile, the UNHCR only recognises those registered with it as refugees. And there is a difference between the definition of a refugee and a migrant.”

According to official statistics, refugees and asylum-seekers represent the smallest group among the nine million visitors in Egypt.  

“The UNHCR works with the Government of Egypt to provide protection and legal services to these groups, especially those who were forcibly displaced,” Hefzy said. “Those who are not registered with the UNHCR are considered ‘visitors and temporary residents,’ as well as migrants who try to regularise their status through various legal means to obtain long-term residency and subsequently integrate into society.”

“According to official statements, 60 per cent of foreigners living in Egypt have been residing in the country for about ten years, and 37 per cent of them work in permanent jobs in stable companies,” Hefzy added. 

“These groups do not receive any form of support from Egypt.”

Instead of draining the economy, there is almost a consensus among analysts that visitors have instead been the source of economic gains, particularly since most of those coming from Sudan, Syria, and Gaza belong to the upper or middle classes and have paid for all the services they have received in hard currency.

“Foreign students pay enrollment fees in Egyptian universities, as well as residency expenses, in US dollars and other foreign currencies,” Hefzy said. “US dollar payments are not limited to obtaining government registration documents either but often extend to paying rent and other expenses related to buying and selling real estate.”

One issue that perhaps affected the real-estate market was that landlords gave priority to expatriates over Egyptians when renting their apartments because they paid in US dollars, explaining why rents abruptly soared. Otherwise, expatriates have been of relative benefit to the economy, pumping hard currency into the market.

Egyptian columnist Akram Alfi is quoted in Hefzy’s study as saying that “most Sudanese and Syrian refugees and residents who came to Egypt belong to the upper and middle classes. These individuals have significant capital and can rely on their savings to live comfortably and integrate easily into the community,”

“Therefore, they do not represent an economic burden but rather are an economic opportunity for several reasons,” Alfi said.

They “are not taking advantage of subsidised resources that could strain the budget and public expenditure,” he said, and “are instead paying for services like health, education, and housing in US dollars, contributing to the national economy rather than depleting it.”

“Their presence in Egypt has also revitalised the economic sectors in which they have invested, such as real estate and hotels, some of which were on the verge of decline.”

Alfi’s point is obvious in the case of Syrian refugees. Most Syrians residing in Egypt belong to the wealthy business category of the population, and they have been able to start their own businesses and import their expertise, particularly in the fields of textiles and the food industries.

According to Alfi, most Syrians residing in Egypt come from Aleppo, renowned as a centre of industry and commerce. “They came with industrial, commercial, and educational affluence,” Alfi noted. “Of the one and a half million Syrians residing in Egypt, approximately 200,000 are venture capitalists, while 600,000 to 700,000 work in family businesses.”

In the same vein, the Sudanese who have come to Egypt mostly belong to the upper and upper-middle classes, and, according to Alfi, have similarly “revitalised the real estate economy”.

The presence of the refugees, Hefzy concluded, “does not strain the service sector, as their US dollar payments for services are expected to foster growth to accommodate the increasing number of users.”

“Additionally, the influx of these guests during the economic crisis means that they may help share the burden,” Hefzy said.

Al-Ganoubi referred to a 2006 survey carried out by the UK Foreign Ministry based on a report published by the British Daily Mail newspaper, which had accused Asian refugees in the UK of putting economic burdens on the British economy. 

“The official survey found that those same refugees helped to boost the economy by revitalising particular sectors, opening up new domains of investment and generating new job opportunities,” Al-Ganoubi said. “Another Canadian study on asylum seekers found that their presence boosts the economy, particularly when it includes labour.”

“In Egypt’s case, the influx of Syrians into Egypt has resulted in the fact that Egypt now has thousands of Syrian restaurants, factories, and companies that all employ Egyptians. Even small businesses employ Egyptians,” Al-Ganoubi said.

 “This job generation has no doubt reflected positively on Egyptian people. In addition, those businesses have pumped funds into the treasury in the form of high fees and taxes,” he said, and the introduction of Syrian businesses into the Egyptian market has also created competition resulting in the improvement of the quality of many products.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 December, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly