Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Where do the 35 million foreigners living in the GCC come from?
Around 60 million people live in the six Gulf monarchies: Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates (UAE, including Abu Dhabi and Dubai), Kuwait, Oman,
Qatar, and Bahrain. These Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries share the
same religious, cultural, and social values, including Islamic identity, Arabic
language, and Bedouin-merchant lifestyle, as well as modest behavior and
hospitality. These countries are all scarce in water resources, but extremely
rich in oil and natural gas resources, which generate the vast majority of
their government revenues and contribute a significant portion of their GDPs. Also
common among the GCC countries is their heavy dependence on foreign workers, or
expatriates. Even though nationals are the majority of the population in Saudi
Arabia and Oman, non-nationals outnumber the nationals in the other four
countries, most significantly in Qatar and the UAE, where over 80% of their
populations are non-nationals. Then where do those expatriates come from?
Read the article and learn how dependent the GCC countries are on
foreign workers.
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