Laith requests, Shafiq wishes

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The position of some Arabs towards Kuwait is similar to their position towards the United States. They insult America in the afternoon and write articles attacking that country at night and the next morning you find them in queue at the American Embassy gate waiting for an entry visa.

Laith Shubailat, a religiously extremist Jordanian dissident and supporter of Saddam, wrote an article addressed to the Gulf people describing them as intolerant towards each other, keeping people with them for long years and denying them permanent residence.

Shubailat compared our situation to that of Canada, and how Ottawa grants citizenship to immigrants, the last of whom were eighty people from thirty countries.

The comparison between the Gulf States and Canada is unfair and ridiculous. Things must be put in the right context.

Canada differs from the Arab countries, the Gulf countries in particular, with its culture, universities, religious tolerance, belief in human rights, vast wealth and membership in the club of the richest and greatest countries, therefore, neither Kuwait nor its peers are comparable.

Take for example, the economic difference between the two countries. Canada did not give citizenship to the eighty people for nothing, and there are certainly no Gulf Arabs among them, nor are there millions of other immigrants, but rather those whom Canada needs them.

Shubailat’s pride in Canada embracing Jordanians or others is pathetic. This is not something to be proud of. Rather, it is evidence of the inability of the countries to absorb these immigrants. To think of it, how can we request countries to absorb them that don’t tolerate each other?

And if Kuwait opens its doors to Laith and his family and relatives and gives them its citizenship or permanent residence, then it is obliged to give the same benefits to hundreds of thousands of other Arab brothers.

If this happened, and it later became clear that neither the state’s space nor its financial capabilities were able to accommodate all these numbers, Laith and his family would be the first and the loudest voices in demanding to stop the immigration of brothers or their permanent residence among us.

As for the other, Shafiq Imam, he lived among us for nearly half a century and benefited from his experience financially, and returned to his homeland without paying a penny of tax on his income.

Shafiq, upon his settlement in Egypt, sent tweets and articles that reeked of sedition, recounting seven dilemmas that Kuwait would face in the event that it imposed fees on those who reached sixty, and explained how health insurance in old age is a duty of the Kuwaiti government for all residents and a constitutional right on the ground they made contributions.

He threatened that the issue of these people would become a subject of controversy in the international community, and global and regional organizations. I do not know where these organizations stand with regard to dozens of countries, including Egypt, which do not treat foreigners, and even Arabs, the same as citizens but in a different way, and this is an indisputable sovereign right for each country.

His demand to grant permanent residency is a troubling and sensitive issue, the victim of which will be the resident himself if it is expanded. No country in the world is obliged, neither constitutionally nor humanly nor morally, to give permanent residence or the nationality of the state to whoever worked in it, if that state does not want or its laws do not allow because of the limited resources or any other reason.

Therefore, he and others must stop this nonsense. Kuwait opened its doors to the brothers and the strangers before he or Shubailat were born, and they found nothing in this honorable homeland except all affection and love, and the majority of these returned to their homelands, or remained in Kuwait.

The state has the right to grant nationality or permanent residence to those it wishes and this is what we tend to do but no one has the right to threaten us with the wrath of the world if we impose fees on one category and exclude the other.

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By Ahmad alsarraf

This news has been read 31419 times!