Neal, I sympathize with you completely. You are in a tough situation.
Even just visiting the US (for example) for a foreigner can be a tough thing, particularly for people from certain countries. My own wife cannot currently visit the States because she is under a certain age and from a poor country (though not a country on a "watch" list) and a recent immigrant (7 years!!!!) to Argentina, unless we go through the whole immigration to the US routine. We don't want to do that because we live here, help support her brothers and sisters who live here (two live with us to go to school here, the rest support themselves, but need help from time to time) and travel often to Paraguay to help her family who still lives there (really, really big family!). My father has cancer and has never met his daughter-in-law, yet we cannot get her a tourist visa, even though she's married to an American - in fact that actually hurts her possibilities to enter the country just as a tourist.
I'm not sure that your position is the worst it could be yet, though. I don't know enough about Saudi Arabia and living there, although I've certainly heard a few things. However, if you're not in any imminent danger or about to be in serious problems, often the situation you know is better than the unknown if you're not prepared.
Things are not all that easy in Argentina for foreigners right now, be they rich or poor. They're not all that easy for Argentinos either, of course. Iznogud is completely correct in what he says, as far as I'm concerned. The government here is doing many things patterned off of what Chavez has done in Venezuela. I won't debate the good or bad of it, as I have my own opinions and have expressed them many times here and that's another subject.
However, in relation to foreigners, I can't see things getting better under the current regime. The president here uses things, such as the Falklands, the international debt that Argentina accumulated supposedly in good faith and then defaulted on which is being called an "invalid foreign debt", has stolen a huge part of an oil company from Spain because they wanted to actually make money instead of trying to support the government's idiotic price controls, are very "anti-colonialist" and often use that as an excuse for things that are done, etc. All to unite as many people as possible under the flag of "solidarity to Argentina" which as Iznogud mentions really appeals to the poor more often than the rich, and the poor outnumber the rich by a good percentage here. All of that combines to make foreigners (particularly foreigners from "colonialist" countries, to be sure) somewhat of a target if things get further heated up. So far that hasn't happened to any reat degree, but who knows what the coming months and years will bring.
Heavy import and export restrictions, price controls, horrible labor laws (for businesses trying to start up a company or employ people), strong unions for some industries and none for others, a very corrupt justice system, and many other things, all come together to make it seem to many of us that Argentina won't necessarily be rising very far in the years to come unless things change quite a bit. The manner in which the government is approaching these things doesn't help foreign immigrants much at all, although those who will have the worst time of, as Iznogud says (and I agree with him) are likely to be South American immigrants.
My brothers-in-law all work back-breaking jobs to barely make ends meet. They live in dingy, dirty places because it's very difficult to find reasonable housing on the wages they make and they don't have family that own property here to guaranty something as simple as a lease on a decent apartment. They certainly can't afford to rent a temporary apartment, as if the owners of such apartments would even rent to them, being where they're from. They either live far outside the city and commute to and from work (a good hour to two hours each way at times - when the trains are running), or live in "hotels" in the city that don't have bathrooms or kitchenettes even in their rooms. They work typically 6 or 6 1/2 days a week, 9-12 hours a day and maybe make as much as 3800 pesos a month on the high end, or barely 2000 pesos a month on the low end. One of my brothers-in-law was lucky enough to fall in love with a young lady (Peruana) whose father works for Terrabusi and got him a union job riding with a delivery truck and collecting money from customers, for about 4800 pesos a month, plus benefits, and only works 5 days a week, 9 hours a day.
To be fair, they are not educated past high school (one of them dropped out before the last year), so they have much less opportunity to find something better-paying than what they are currently working in. I don't know that it would be easier for someone who is well-educated, but it may well be.
BTW - every one of my brothers-in-law came here from Paraguay unable to speak, and barely able to understand, Spanish. They all speak Guarani where they come from. Their culture is a mix of guarani and spanish, though, so they have a leg up on many foreigners who come here without speaking Spanish. Guarani as is spoken by most in Paraguay is about 20% or so mixed with Spanish so it's a bit easier for them to pick it up relatively quickly.
If you come here, you may not be able to find a job doing what you've been trained for, but you could almost certainly find something along the lines of what my brothers-in-law do. You may also be able to find a better job due to your education, but perhaps not in the field you seek. If you can tolerate that, and think that you may be better off working and living like that until you can somehow break into the industry here or find a better job in another industry, I can understand that. You may even get lucky and do so relatively quickly. You may also be able to find jobs overseas via telecommuting on sites like Freelancer.com, etc, but that's going to require a computer and an internet connection and a lot of patience to find projects - competing with people from all over the world who often bid projects ridiculously low.
I feel bad that I have no other advice to offer. I really despise the immigration policies of many of the "first-world" countries, but understand to a small extent why it is so (still don't agree with much of it, even in understanding). Unfortunately, for now, it is the world in which we live - which is easy for me to say because I recognize that I, personally, am much more fortunate than the vast majority of the population of this planet, and that very fact really saddens me, particularly when I contemplate why it is so.
As far as the freedoms you mention - you are completely correct that here seems like it would be much better than where you are. At least, for the time being, and I don't really see a lot of that changing, on a person-to-person basis. It's one thing, perversely, that I like about here compared to the States - for the most part people leave you alone and let you live your life, within the life you can afford to live. It may make some sense for you, given what you describe as conditions in Saudi Arabia, to put up with some discomfort in your living conditions and work requirements to have some freedom.
