So when you hear or have heard enyone say,”oh look how advance such and such countries are so advance”, and how equal every citizen is, then you should come to realise that state and religion should be always seperate. This way, and only in this way is every citizen’s rights protected.
Look at our parliament now, its like a bloody religous meeting with all these beards everywhere. what next, taliban style law?
These religious rightious idiots, and the ignorant people who vote for them think sharia law is perfect, yet not one would want to live in a place like afganistan. If sharia law was layed down in it’s intirety, people would be stoned to death, hands cut off etc. IS this the kind of place you want to live in?? what tickles my bones is the fact that if a muslim abandons his religion for another, by sharia he/she must die. this fact cannot be argued, it’s in the koran, like the fact that ‘magic’ really exsists. now tell me, how medevil can one get??

a while back i tried to find as many pics as i could and i put them on flickr.

“we are not racists, if we were, we wouldn’t be a minority in our own country” …

Kuwaitis are not being accused of racism, but it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that expats are welcomed to Kuwait for any other reason than they are needed to do a lot of the work that many Kuwaitis won’t do.

On the other hand, one of my closest friends is Kuwaiti, and I know that there are a lot of Kuwaitis who are frustrated at not being given a chance to do jobs that they are well capable of doing but won’t be given them because employers want to pay lower salaries to expats than they would have to pay a Kuwaiti.

Another point…If I were to marry a Kuwaiti woman, and have children with her, as far as I know, I’d have no automatic right to stay in the country with my children if she divorced me.

Now, there’s something wrong there.

Everyone else… excellent discussion. Citizenship is such a complicated issue, and as with everything else here is subject to whims and wastas… thats why even normal forward thinking Kuwaitis are wary of who gets it.

That said, permanent residencies and propert ownership are the way forward. God knows they would boost the economy.

As for the Muslim rule for citizenship… that’s just shameful!

Countries that (almost) welcome “new citizens” (Canada, Australia, and even UK & US if you have family there already, Germany (Turks), etc.) all have something in common.

They have generally well-educated populations, high taxation to fund a proper welfare state (ok, so not the US but…) and pay for amenities suited to an enlarged population. Also in all of these countries a tiny tiny tiny % of the population gets anywhere because of who they know - they’re much more egalitarian societies.

Kuwait can - and maybe one day will (if the oil doesn’t run out first) - have an educated population, high taxation, and an egalitarian judicial and legal system. Then begin to accept citizenship more readily (as you can see from Q8Sultana’s post, it’s allowed now if you meet the criteria). But note, most countries accepting migrants for citizenship are still mostly doing it based on having (usually) lower level skills for jobs which the current populations don’t want to work in.

Meanwhile, to put a lighter note on the situation… I feel priviliged to be a UK citizen who has the opportunity to make and take a ton of money from Kuwait to have a better life at home when I finally leave this country. And don’t think I mean that I’ll actually move back to the UK… there are so many countries out there for ALL of us that will welcome us. I moved to Thailand in 2000 and now live there (except when I’m here working) and have a business there. There are permanent residence rules for all Southeast Asian countries, which are accomodating.

I realise that this doesn’t take into account the years you’ve lived here and the roots you feel you have but, it’s a very transient country anyway. Right? Don’t you get that feeling?

This is not true. There are plently of Christian Kuwaiti families in Kuwait. For example, Shamas and the family of the Priest of the Anglican Church.

One thing i know for a fact is that you are at present allowed to buy property (strictly apartments)in Kuwait as an expat.If the goverment encouraged real estate builders with incentives to build high quality apartments, there would certainly be an increase in foreign investment.If they provided residence visas (as it already does for people taking up office space at shuwaikh free port), then everyones happy.

Having said that, we have to understand that Kuwait,unlike the UAE does not depend on tourism/freezones/seaport to derive its majority income.This single statement makes everything else null and void and shifts the balance towards not giving citizenship status

As long as oil keeps burnin, this mindset is not likely to change.Kuwait does not want to be a Dubai (often called by Wolf Blitzer as the cross road between Riyadh and Vegas) for purely conservative reasons.They would rather be intelligent investors in other economies.What this ultimately means is that the Kuwaiti investors themself get richer, but the country’s infrastructure remains stagnant.Once in a while , you will hear of the Mall of Kuwait or Bubiyan Island Project.However the corruption that goes into these projects result in poorly constructed shoddy representations of what they could really stand for (I heard that the pipeline at Dar Al Awadi broke yesterday-case in point!)

Ive veered off from the subject too much. Heres my two cents, Kuwait may not be ready to provide Citizenship to everyone who loves Kuwait or is used to Kuwait more than their own nation. But it can atleast put steps in the direction of providing renewable residences to people based on criterias such years of employment, property acquisition etc.This will not tarnish the current demographics.

Afterall if youve lived here for 30+ years, thats more than half ur adult life and the place (for some -moi included,) does tends to grow on you.