Labor Ghettos

Kuwait's Parliament is considering a bill to build special townships for foreign workers and separate them from Kuwaiti residential areas. I don't claim to know Kuwaiti crime statistics, but if most crime is by foreign workers - which would be unsurprising considering they are most of the population - locking the whole group away from society would only trap honest workers in crime-ridden slums. The word "township" (admittedly not the Arabic) when applied to social segregation also has a nasty history.

On a related note, stories like these are why I dislike President Bush's guest worker program despite my pro-immigration leanings. It is very easy for such programs to lead to these kinds of abuses, or worse.