Watermelon Population Policies on the Persian Gulf: a Brief Exasperated Analysis……
“DOHA - Qatar's population has more than doubled since 2004 to 1.7 million, the country's statistics office announced on Wednesday, without specifying what proportion were indigenous Qataris. The preliminary findings of a census carried out between April and June indicate that the gas-rich Gulf state has 1.696 million residents, up from 744,000 in 2004, representing an increase of 128 percent. More than three quarters of the population of the emirate, where foreigners outnumber native Qataris, is male, the study found. The emirate sits on 900 trillion cubic feet (25 trillion cubic metres) of natural gas reserves that are ranked the world's third largest, and it pumps around 800,000 barrels per day of oil……”
This doesn’t mean that Qataris have been busy begetting, not at all, Okay they have been, but there is a more compelling mechanism for this huge growth. My first reaction to this was the usual: they have been encouraging child-rearing among the native population in order to reduce the percentage of temporary foreigner workers, and this has had the opposite effect. More native population growth means more temporary foreigners: this is how it works in the states of the Persian Gulf. Each new native citizen requires the services of so many foreigners, from housemaids to doctors to garbage collectors. This is how it works in all the Gulf states, as I have written here in the past. They are encouraging more children in order to change the population mix, but it has the opposite effect.
This is how temporary foreign labor form majorities in all these states, except in Saudi Arabia where they form only about 30-35%. The worst case is in the UAE where "temporary" foreign workers reportedly form almost 90% of the total population.
But in truth, the oligarchs only pay lip service to adjusting the population mix: otherwise who would rent all these apartments they have built, and who would purchase all these imported Western goods they sell at exorbitant prices?
Such are the watermelon population policies on the Gulf.
Cheers
mhg
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