Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?_r=2&hp&pagewanted=all

by gibsonf1 • 17 years ago

79 53 17 years ago

mavelikara• 17 years ago

An article about foreigners in Dubai managed to get written without interviewing a single Indian - amusing. I was under the impression that Indians constituted a large portion of the foreigners in Dubai.

gms• 17 years ago

The Indians usually work in more menial jobs and aren't in a position to flee.

jhancock• 17 years ago

Don't confuse "menial" with "low paid". I'm sure there are many Indians working in Dubai that do just as much non-menial labor as others and simply get paid a lot less for it...just as in other parts of the world.

Also, try not to degrade "menial" labor unless you've spent a few years digging ditches yourself. Your perspective may change.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=55704

It's the great escape by Indians who've hit the dead-end in Dubai.

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.

jgrahamc• 17 years ago

Dubai always looked to me like it was some sort of Las Vegas without gambling, alcohol or sex. i.e. a hollow shell.

Now it turns out that it isn't even that.

Can't say I'm sorry.

fiaz3• 17 years ago

Surprisingly, there's plenty of alcohol and sex there. Gambling is a separate story.

jonknee• 17 years ago

... Compare it to Vegas. Alcohol is banned most places in Dubai. In Vegas there aren't even open container laws, you can walk around with a cocktail. As for the sex side, how many strip clubs are around? How many escorts? You can't walk down the strip without being offered cards for call girls. In Dubai you can't even kiss in public.

ajaypopat• 17 years ago

I guess Andrew Blair from Scotland would disagree:

"Blair is determined to stay in Dubai at all costs. He said:It’s the clubs, the bars, the beautiful women, its tax free, all-round good weather. I could give you an A to Z. He added:This is the place to be.

"http://www.7days.ae/storydetails.php?id=72910&title=A%20...

kingkongrevenge• 17 years ago

> Now it turns out that it isn't even that.

There were a lot of almost convincing articles about how the Dubai building boom had a lot to do with laundering global organized crime money.

dhimes• 17 years ago

A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000).

That'll inspire confidence.

justindz• 17 years ago

By my reckoning, if the law passes it would immediately apply to the people who wrote the law. Now that's leading by example.

sethg2• 17 years ago

Dubai has debtors' prisons! Wow.

yesimahuman3• 17 years ago

Another crazy non-secular society.

fiaz3• 17 years ago

Dubai is a constitutional monarchy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy

But this doesn't excuse the fact that "debtor's prison" is a horrible, horrible, horrible concept in place in Dubai.

1gor• 17 years ago

As a mental experiment, let's imagine there were debtors' prisons in the US.

Do you think this would restrain consumer credit card/mortgage borrowing and prevent people form getting into the current mess?

wallflower3• 17 years ago

A large number of citizens might be under house arrest, as I think spending against future earnings is part of our culture.

sethg2• 17 years ago

Very few people borrow money with the expectation of not being able to pay it back.

endtime• 17 years ago

Not surprised...Dubai has sounded way too good to be true for a long time. I doubt you really get cockroaches coming out of the plumbing, but I would believe that the palm island is sinking. I wonder if it was really a con (which implies intent from the beginning) or if they just got carried away and were then in denial that they were seriously overextended.

“Before, so many of us were living a good life here,” Mr. Thiab said. “Now we cannot pay our loans. We are all just sleeping, smoking, drinking coffee and having headaches because of the situation.”

Dare I suggest that all the coffee and smoking may be responsible for the headaches?

cabalamat• 17 years ago

> I wonder if it was really a con (which implies intent from the beginning) or if they just got carried away and were then in denial that they were seriously overextended.

I think the latter. It's far too elaborate for a con. And people are very good at persuading themselves that bad things won't happen.

netcan5• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if they meant con in the premeditated, organised sense. But there are probably all sorts of shady dealings going on.

Economies like Dubai's (& Hong Kong & other gateways) tend to attract money launderers, scams & other such 'cons.' There were probably builders that knew it couldn't last but built anyway.

trevelyan• 17 years ago

Hong Kong is a working city and a great place.

saljar2• 17 years ago

While in the hindsight Dubai turned out to not make sense as a "global" city, it still might make sense for its vast "region".

I mean for the 2.1 billion living between Europe and South East Asia, (with a combined economy worth $1.8 trillion in terms of GDP, growing until recently at an annual rate of 5 per cent.) namely: North and Eastern Africa, the Levant, the Caspian, the Indian Subcontinent and the GCC States.

Dubai is not Las Vegas/Miami/New York, but for these 2.1 billion, a tuned-down version of these, even blended chaotically in a small city-state, would still completely make sense.

I am long Dubai.

potatolicious2• 17 years ago

This makes no sense. Vegas is popular because it is a central destination that is both cheap to get to and has a wide "scalability" in terms of spending. You can go as lavish or as run-down as you feel like, and that's part of the charm.

It's pretty darned expensive to get to Dubai from southeast Asia, and not to mention if you're talking about "hub of entertainment" you already have major cities like Shanghai and Macau. Why would the 1.6+ billion people living in China head all the way out to Dubai when there are plenty of "global" cities right on its doorstep?

Not to mention these cities are actually based on real industries, real exports of real goods, and have an economy that doesn't rely on hype and speculation.

Dubai has no future. It doesn't even have that many oil holdings, nor does it sit in the middle of a large industrial economy. It has no reason to exist at the scale that people seem to think it deserves.

ijntybvrt2• 17 years ago

It's a safe (politically, legally, physically) place in an unstable region to base your headquarters or send your workers for R+R. Monaco has survived for 500years for similar reasons without a great deal of mineral wealth.

saljar2• 17 years ago

2.1 billion people was the figure for people living between Europe and South East Asia (i.e North and Eastern Africa, the Levant, the Caspian, the Indian Subcontinent and the GCC States). China is of course a different story.

Giorgio Armani once said "Dubai is the new New York. It's the New York of the 21st century" (http://tinyurl.com/aqc63r). It turns out not to be as he thought, but for these 2.1 billion people, a cheap flight away from their cities, Dubai will always have its appeal.

daniel-cussen• 17 years ago

It's Potosí for the new millenium. Super ghost town.

If they knew their history, they'd know that having beautiful architecture can't save you if there's nothing to do.

titocosta• 17 years ago

Funny how about less than 3 months New York Magazine came out with this article "Escape to Dubai": http://nymag.com/news/features/52180/

josefresco• 17 years ago

"Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out."

Absolute garbage reporting, Robert Worth and the New York Times should be ashamed of themselves. I read the NYT for quality articles with solid investigative reporting backing them up, not FUD and gossip trash like the quote above (regardless of it's merit)

ijntybvrt2• 17 years ago

It's reporting that there are rumours = telling you something about how the locals feel. That's the reason for newspapers and reporters (and spys) instead of just reading raw data feeds. What people are saying - true or not - is the important news.

raganwald• 17 years ago

This is the line of reasoning Fox uses to justify reapeating innuendo without bothering to corroborate stories or check facts. It's an embarrasment to journalism.

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

It's not garbage reporting, it's a badly written sentence that makes it read as if the "lurid rumors" part only applies to the first part (sinking), not the second (cockroaches).

nlanier• 17 years ago

As the old saying goes, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

riffic• 17 years ago

what if it never seemed good at all?

blackguardx• 17 years ago

Halliburtan just moved their headquarters to Dubai. I wonder what they are going to do now.

yesimahuman3• 17 years ago

This is why you stay away from these countries. You don't have the same rights and can't expect sane legal proceedings like you can in America.

tsetse-fly• 17 years ago

Make sure you're an American though, or else you might end up at Guantánamo- well, pre-Obama you might have.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitm...

ahoyhere2• 17 years ago

No amount of money would lure me to a foreign country with debtor's prisons, where people go to jail for having a tiny speck of marijuana leaf found on the bottom of their shoe:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/...

I do wonder what people were thinking.

LogicHoleFlaw• 17 years ago

Some of the prescription meds I take would have me arrested upon landing in Dubai.

Scary stuff.

ewiethoff• 17 years ago

Get thrown in the slammer for 4 years for eating a poppy seed roll. Ouch.

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

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