7 ms·

Scheme to transform a remote island into the new Dubai

64 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

jevinskie 11y ago
Can somebody help me understand why the countries where Bidoon reside are so hesitant to give them some form of documentation? State actors shopping around for citizenship for their residents just sounds so fishy. Do they not want the Bidoon in their countries? If so, can't they simply be deported?
- lnanek2 11y ago
  It's exactly the same here in the US. Only a small minority of the states (10) allow illegals to get driver's licenses, for example.
  - mc32 11y ago
    It's hardly exactly the same. Bidoons are natives of those countries yet are still denied documents. (Illegal/undocumented) immigrants tend to have documentation from their home countries and have citizenship from those countries. They are not lacking in citizenship. And it's not as if Mexico grants 'documents' to illegal immigrants to their country, nor does South Africa, nor does China, nor does... As to the OP's Q: I think it's because conferring citizenship entitles them to benefits the government is reluctant to extend to clans/ethnicities they feel are not loyal to the ruling party.
    - akiselev 11y ago
      I don't think that the Bidoon are confirmed natives of Kuwait, because if they were the designation probably wouldn't exist. The problem is that the state can't confirm, for whatever reason, that they are or are not natives, so they're not willing to take on the liability of granting them a nationality (not just citizenship) due to internal and international politics. Im not sure it's a question of loyalty, but of old world beliefs about original nationality. When someone lacks basic documentation like papers from their country of origin, the immediate assumption is of wrongdoing even when the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the 4,000 affected families.
    - jldugger 11y ago
      I doubt you can trust Wikipedia on a contentious issue like this, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedoon_%28ethnicity%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedoon_%28ethnicity%29, Kuwait appears to treat them as illegal immigrants, and that they're hiding their true nationality.
- meric 11y ago
  I think some of them have lived there for decades and did not know about procedures for registering their citizenships when the country was formed. I am not sure even the Arab authorities have the political power to deport hundreds of thousands of people who were originally from their country, who have no other place to call home. And if they were going to try do it anyway, to where, Syria? I guess the foreign citizenship plan was to give these people a citizenship in the Comoros, and in exchange give the people temporary visas to stay in those Arab countries, and slowly phase them out because they don't want to share the country's bounties with these people.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    According to the article the second phase of the plan was mass deportations under a pretty transparent guise. That never happened though, fortunately. I wonder if any of the Bidoon ended up in the Comoros.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Because giving them documentation would also give them rights and turn them from 'nobodies' into 'somebodies' whose numbers are sufficient to then create a political bloc with some power. Hence the attempt to make them go away.
technomancy 11y ago
First thought: will they be using Guile, Chicken, or Racket?
- smir 11y ago
  and second thought there; bizarre scheme .. is that a new one?
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    It uses < > instead of ( ) so the code in it looks sorta like half-finished XML document.
hellofunk 11y ago
Impressive, but at first I read this as the scheme programming language, which would have been extra impressive!
- WildUtah 11y ago
  You can do that in Haskell, but it takes a truly expert level grokking of monad category theory.
wellyWellyWell 11y ago
Why is Dubai such a talked-up place? Buildings and Islands, sure. Anything else beyond... architecture?
- WildUtah 11y ago
  Stability, low taxes, relative openness, and easy work permits right in the center of one of the very wealthy regions of the world. And the rest of that gaudily rich region of the world is known for its nastiness toward foreigners, intensely planned socialist economies, and violent volatility.
  - lucaspiller 11y ago
    I lived there for a year, and yes this is pretty much it. Compared to the rest of the Middle East it's a very stable and open place, it's mostly on par with Western cities. You can get a residence visa and open a company for around $20,000 which makes it an attractive option for the rich to flee from whatever oppressive regime they have at home. For Westerners the main attraction is no taxes and the glitzy lifestyle.
    - zodiakzz 11y ago
      Wow, it is actually just 20,000 AED ($5500~) according to [1]. That's pretty neat! 1: http://www.investorvisa.ae/investor-visa/uae/ http://www.investorvisa.ae/investor-visa/uae/
    - gotchange 11y ago
      "which makes it an attractive option for the rich to flee from whatever oppressive regime they have at home." Funny you're saying this about Dubai and the UAE in general when they're known to be one of the most oppressive regimes in the region when it comes to political freedoms.
      - WildUtah 11y ago
        "one of the most oppressive regimes in the region " Oh, I forgot about all the liberal democratic regimes in the region. You must be talking about Saudi, Guitar, Jemen, ISIS, Quwait, Syria, Iran, Bahrayn.
anandr2013 11y ago
I have often thought that for a lot of the countries in Africa (where land is in abundance, for example a place like the DRC), creating mini Singapores/Dubais/Monacos could be a viable, if ecologically disastrous, way of economic development. The potential revenue would far exceed the necessary infrastructure costs with land being free. The only thing they would have to guard against is political instability.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Economist Paul Romer has some interesting, if provocative thoughts on that idea, chiefly the idea of developing countries choosing to outsource the administration of a parcel of their territory to institutions designed and backed by more economically developed foreign powers. http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/charter-cities http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/charter-cities
  - gkanai 11y ago
    Romer was covered by Planet Money a while ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/09/164813887/episode-415-can-a-poor-country-start-over http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/09/164813887/episo...
  - SilasX 11y ago
    Not that it's a bad idea, but it does sound a bit like colonization :-p
    - anandr2013 11y ago
      Hahahaa. As someone who has spent a couple of years of years in the DRCongo, and comes from a colonised country (India), I am not sure how to slot this (good,bad, bit of both). I think it's probably short/medium term good , but long term bad. The ecological consequences alone suggest that it's long term bad. The only problem is that having spent a lot of time there and now knowing a lot of people from the country, I am biased towards short term good.

64 points by pmcpinto 11y ago

Can somebody help me understand why the countries where Bidoon reside are so hesitant to give them some form of documentation? State actors shopping around for citizenship for their residents just sounds so fishy. Do they not want the Bidoon in their countries? If so, can't they simply be deported?

lnanek2 11y ago
It's exactly the same here in the US. Only a small minority of the states (10) allow illegals to get driver's licenses, for example.
- mc32 11y ago
  It's hardly exactly the same. Bidoons are natives of those countries yet are still denied documents. (Illegal/undocumented) immigrants tend to have documentation from their home countries and have citizenship from those countries. They are not lacking in citizenship. And it's not as if Mexico grants 'documents' to illegal immigrants to their country, nor does South Africa, nor does China, nor does... As to the OP's Q: I think it's because conferring citizenship entitles them to benefits the government is reluctant to extend to clans/ethnicities they feel are not loyal to the ruling party.
  - akiselev 11y ago
    I don't think that the Bidoon are confirmed natives of Kuwait, because if they were the designation probably wouldn't exist. The problem is that the state can't confirm, for whatever reason, that they are or are not natives, so they're not willing to take on the liability of granting them a nationality (not just citizenship) due to internal and international politics. Im not sure it's a question of loyalty, but of old world beliefs about original nationality. When someone lacks basic documentation like papers from their country of origin, the immediate assumption is of wrongdoing even when the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the 4,000 affected families.
  - jldugger 11y ago
    I doubt you can trust Wikipedia on a contentious issue like this, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedoon_%28ethnicity%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedoon_%28ethnicity%29, Kuwait appears to treat them as illegal immigrants, and that they're hiding their true nationality.
meric 11y ago
I think some of them have lived there for decades and did not know about procedures for registering their citizenships when the country was formed. I am not sure even the Arab authorities have the political power to deport hundreds of thousands of people who were originally from their country, who have no other place to call home. And if they were going to try do it anyway, to where, Syria? I guess the foreign citizenship plan was to give these people a citizenship in the Comoros, and in exchange give the people temporary visas to stay in those Arab countries, and slowly phase them out because they don't want to share the country's bounties with these people.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  According to the article the second phase of the plan was mass deportations under a pretty transparent guise. That never happened though, fortunately. I wonder if any of the Bidoon ended up in the Comoros.
jacquesm 11y ago
Because giving them documentation would also give them rights and turn them from 'nobodies' into 'somebodies' whose numbers are sufficient to then create a political bloc with some power. Hence the attempt to make them go away.

technomancy 11y ago

First thought: will they be using Guile, Chicken, or Racket?

smir 11y ago
and second thought there; bizarre scheme .. is that a new one?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It uses < > instead of ( ) so the code in it looks sorta like half-finished XML document.

hellofunk 11y ago

Impressive, but at first I read this as the scheme programming language, which would have been extra impressive!

WildUtah 11y ago
You can do that in Haskell, but it takes a truly expert level grokking of monad category theory.

wellyWellyWell 11y ago

Why is Dubai such a talked-up place? Buildings and Islands, sure. Anything else beyond... architecture?

WildUtah 11y ago
Stability, low taxes, relative openness, and easy work permits right in the center of one of the very wealthy regions of the world. And the rest of that gaudily rich region of the world is known for its nastiness toward foreigners, intensely planned socialist economies, and violent volatility.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  I lived there for a year, and yes this is pretty much it. Compared to the rest of the Middle East it's a very stable and open place, it's mostly on par with Western cities. You can get a residence visa and open a company for around $20,000 which makes it an attractive option for the rich to flee from whatever oppressive regime they have at home. For Westerners the main attraction is no taxes and the glitzy lifestyle.
  - zodiakzz 11y ago
    Wow, it is actually just 20,000 AED ($5500~) according to [1]. That's pretty neat! 1: http://www.investorvisa.ae/investor-visa/uae/ http://www.investorvisa.ae/investor-visa/uae/
  - gotchange 11y ago
    "which makes it an attractive option for the rich to flee from whatever oppressive regime they have at home." Funny you're saying this about Dubai and the UAE in general when they're known to be one of the most oppressive regimes in the region when it comes to political freedoms.
    - WildUtah 11y ago
      "one of the most oppressive regimes in the region " Oh, I forgot about all the liberal democratic regimes in the region. You must be talking about Saudi, Guitar, Jemen, ISIS, Quwait, Syria, Iran, Bahrayn.

anandr2013 11y ago

I have often thought that for a lot of the countries in Africa (where land is in abundance, for example a place like the DRC), creating mini Singapores/Dubais/Monacos could be a viable, if ecologically disastrous, way of economic development. The potential revenue would far exceed the necessary infrastructure costs with land being free. The only thing they would have to guard against is political instability.

notahacker 11y ago
Economist Paul Romer has some interesting, if provocative thoughts on that idea, chiefly the idea of developing countries choosing to outsource the administration of a parcel of their territory to institutions designed and backed by more economically developed foreign powers. http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/charter-cities http://urbanizationproject.org/blog/charter-cities
- gkanai 11y ago
  Romer was covered by Planet Money a while ago: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/09/164813887/episode-415-can-a-poor-country-start-over http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/09/164813887/episo...
- SilasX 11y ago
  Not that it's a bad idea, but it does sound a bit like colonization :-p
  - anandr2013 11y ago
    Hahahaa. As someone who has spent a couple of years of years in the DRCongo, and comes from a colonised country (India), I am not sure how to slot this (good,bad, bit of both). I think it's probably short/medium term good , but long term bad. The ecological consequences alone suggest that it's long term bad. The only problem is that having spent a lot of time there and now knowing a lot of people from the country, I am biased towards short term good.