KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti politician chimed in on a rise in rhetoric blaming expatriates for many of the shortcomings witnessed in Kuwait, arguing that such claims are used to cover up for governmental mismanagement. “Framing them as a problem in society is in my opinion a balloon created to cover up for other problems,” Meshari Al-Ibrahim, Assistant Secretary General of the Kuwait Democratic Forum, said in a talk show on Al-Rai TV. “It’s a rightwing rhetoric that we’re used to seeing in Europe and other countries too. [It’s] a xenophobic rhetoric that tries to make people fear that people from abroad are coming to create problems,” he argued.

Kuwait’s expatriate population has seen growth in recent years, maintaining a level of nearly 70 percent of the state’s total population, even though family and visit visas were suspended. The government’s recent decision to lift some of the restrictions on issuing visit and family dependency visas has led to the reemergence of comments, publicly and on social media, expressing concern that these measures might lead to an influx of foreign workers overusing the already exhausted public services in Kuwait.

But Ibrahim suggests that growing expat numbers is not the main reason for deteriorating public services, but rather it was the previous governments’ failures to fulfill necessary urban development plans to keep up with population growth. “The failures we see in hospitals and schools are not a result of the presence of expats in Kuwait,” he said. “It’s a result of failure in government planning, and failure to include solutions in the government’s program for existing problems.”

The new Cabinet led by HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Dr Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah has highlighted investment in human capital and improved private sector participation in economic development as the main pillars of its work program. In explaining the recent decisions to open up visas, top state officials said Kuwait aims to attract highly-skilled workers who have been lured by neighboring countries in recent years, emptying the state of manpower it desperately needs.

Ibrahim agrees that high-skilled foreign labor forces are important for the state’s development. “In Kuwait, there is a segment of our expat brothers who do jobs that Kuwaitis often don’t do, or they have skills that we need,” Ibrahim said. “Expats in Kuwait are not trespassers. Expats in Kuwait come, carry out a task, and once they are done, they leave. So this is not a problem.”