Many expatriates also come back to Lebanon hoping to start their own business, and therefore avoid the difficult recruitment process. “But starting a company in Lebanon is tough,” says Chaaban. “It’s expensive, there’s a lot of corruption and many red-tape regulations that need to be followed. To simply get electricity and water implies to wait three to six months.”

These are the obstacles facing 41-year-old Elie Issa, who moved to Lebanon in December after 18 years in Australia. There he was heading a major European car dealership and making more than $180,000. Here, he’s looking to start his own business.

“Last September, it just went downhill,” he says. “In January 2008, I had been told to get rid of eight of my employees, and part of me kept thinking I could have been the ninth.”

Issa sold his car, house and stocks and decided to come back to Lebanon. “We kept hearing the country’s better, the economy is good. I wanted to be a part of that,” he says. “I expect 2009 to be difficult for the car business in Lebanon, so I thought about starting a PDR [car detailing and reconditioning] business, something that doesn’t exist here and doesn’t need a large investment.”

But it turned out that good real estate spots are too expensive, and simply getting the right information to start his business seemed all but impossible, especially for someone who is unaccustomed to the Lebanese way of doing business. “I have no directions, people deliberately don’t tell you how it works so you’ll bribe them, they discourage you or try to rip you off,” he says. “There’s no organization for expats coming back with money to invest, or skills. It feels like they don’t want us here.” He’s given himself up to two years to set up a business before looking for options elsewhere.

“These kind of skilled people who have legitimately high expectations will be hard to absorb, unless the government invests in new jobs like they’re heavily doing in the [United] States,” Chaaban says. “The government must step in – they cannot rely on the private sector alone, which is not that interested anyway. But until now, nobody’s reacting.”

Lebanon urgently needs a public strategy to tackle such employment issues, especially if the number of expatriates returning home continues to grow. “Right now, no new projects are under preparation [in the Gulf region], so many more engineers will be laid off later on and will want to come back to Lebanon,” Sabbagh says. “Those who rushed to Lebanon for the past few months did so in order to get the positions before others take them.” Considering the impact that the economic downturn has had on the Gulf states, more Lebanese may follow in the months ahead, and their job pros-pects will be less promising still. 

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