A Look at Kuwaitization and the Broader "Arabization" Project—Countries CAN Choose To Support Their Own People

By Alex C.

The Western world is not the only region of the planet to have become addicted to cheap foreign labor and the elite exploitation of migrant populations while simultaneously ignoring the political desire of native populations for less strangers in our midst. The Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations have long relied on expatriate labor to fuel their rich oil-driven economies. Foreigners, many of whom are essentially corporate servants under the notorious Kafala system that ties migrants to employers who often steal their passports and put them to work in poor conditions. One can find numerous reports from global organizations reporting the ‘modern’ enslavement of millions of people across the GCC monarchies. This has been great for the construction of roads and the extraction of oil, but the sheer volume of foreigners (70% of the population of Kuwait) has begun to cause social tension and a certain degree of fear for the cultural future of the country.

In 2017 Kuwaiti parliamentarian Safa Al Hashem spoke of her worries that foreigners bringing their families in on guest visas to utilize subsidized public services were freezing out Kuwaiti families. These feelings of alienation within their homeland have has led to the construction of “Kuwaiti only” public services such as hospitals and mandates that foreigners pay for things such as water and electricity while Kuwaitis receive them free of charge. These developments have been followed by a raft of new policy making and immigration has been turned into an election issue.

In 2018 the government put in place a policy of Kuwaitization to ensure that Kuwaitis make up the vast majority of workers for the government and government owned companies. That Kuwaitis are seeing Kuwaiti doctors and Kuwaiti judges are, infact, Kuwaiti. In June of 2020 the then Prime Minister of Kuwait, Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah proposed that the expat population be reduced from 70% to 30% of the overall population of Kuwait and that all 100,000 government workers of foreign-origin be replaced with Kuwaitis. In October of 2020 the parliament of Kuwait unanimously approved a law instructing the government to take a year to review migration policies with the aim of cutting the foreign population of Kuwait substantially.

Kuwait is far from the only Gulf Arab state to aim at reducing its foreign worker population. In 2016 Oman began a program of prioritizing the employment of native Omanis in both the public and private sector with great success, more on that later!

Kuwaitization Success

Kuwaitization, the government-driven policy designed to increase the employment of Kuwaiti nationals across various sectors, has done well in prioritizing local placement in the workforce over expatriates. The share of Kuwaitis working for the state oil concern, the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, has increased from 68% in 2014 to 88% as of 2022, and this goes far beyond a corporate or management role. Locals men are graduating from trades schools and colleges with diplomas and training to operate the refinery technology and take over the work. The oil sector is responsible for 50% of Kuwait’s GDP and more than 90% of revenues to the state. Kuwaitization in this sector is expected to continue among all 16 companies and subsidiaries owned by the Kuwaiti state with the aim ultimately being an oil sector composed 100% of Kuwaiti employees.

This is particularly relevant from a Western perspective because much as rich Arab publics are derided as too “lazy” or ”good” to do certain work so are our Western populations. Claims that we cannot build our own homes, pave our own streets, or pick our own food run rife in the United States and Europe. Despite the fact the statistics show that where Westerners are the overwhelming share of the population we do those jobs, it also proves that even the most financially well off, such as the recipients of oil money, will also take up the mantle of so-called ‘bad’ jobs in order to serve their Eaton.

Kuwait, much like many Western countries, has also long suffered from a shortage of domestic doctors, Partly because of self-imposed mass migration and party because of a lack of resources to graduate enough physicians. The country has been engaged in resolving that issue too (Britons take note!). Kuwait has increased its share of Kuwaiti physicians from 31% in 2015 to 41% as of 2024 and by 2028 it expects to be graduating 52% of the doctors it needs for domestic healthcare.

The country has already achieved near-success in respect to dentistry as well. Between 2022 and 2025 the share of Kuwaiti dentists working for the state healthcare system (which is the vast majority) went from 73% to 85%. In order to bring about this swift change the Kuwaiti state has been sending students abroad for their training on the public dime – certainly a necessity for such a small country with only 1.5 million citizens and limited university space. The Kuwaitis made a policy choice to import and employ foreign medical professionals until their population cried out for change, for doctors who spoke their language and understood their culture. To be looked after by their countrymen. Western countries like the United Kingdom, where near 40% of doctors are foreign-born, could make similar attempts to “Britonize” their medical sector by choosing to open up more places and make more funding available for British students rather than looking abroad to hire.

Policy choices matter.

By 2023, 10 government sectors, including information technology, media, public relations, and administrative support, achieved 100% Kuwaitization, demonstrating the policy’s effectiveness in replacing expatriates with nationals. But the work is far from complete. Kuwait’s Supreme Committee for Addressing Demographics, charged with achieving the population balance of 70% citizens and 30% expatriates, has a great distance to go. Kuwait’s demographics as of 2024 were 32% Kuwaiti and 68% foreign, only a 2% improvement upon the situation in 2020 when the demographic composition of the country became a policy priority. This slow transition is likely due to the issues of encouraging Kuwaitis to take over private sector roles where pay is lower than state-owned companies and services.

Despite initiatives to move Kuwaitis into the private sector, such as mandating that 70% of bank managers in the country be Kuwaiti citizens, the country has only achieved 4.4% Kuwaitization in the private sector. Other Arab states in the region have been successful at growing their domestic private-sector workforce, however. Not only does this prove it can be done in the region but it certainly proves that industries in the Western world that are currently heavily reliant on migrant labor (transportation, agriculture etc) could also be transitioned away from their often 40-60% immigration origin work-forces and into the hands of competent natives.

Not only have the Omanis managed to reduce the foreign population of the country from 46% to 43% as of 2024 (the previous low was 39%), but they have managed to modestly increase native Omani participation in the private sector. In 2015 Omani citizens were just 11% of the private-sector workforce in the country but by 2025 they had increased to 16% of the private-sector workforce and their adoption into private businesses is on an increasing trajectory.

Today (2025) in the United States the foreign born share of the private sector workforce has increased to 19.2%. In the Western United States foreign born workers are 24.4% of the labor force while in the Midwest they are barely 10.7% of the workforce. As for the public sector, foreign born workers comprise some 10% of the workforce. In the United Kingdom the number of foreign born workers has exploded from 2 million in 2014 to more than 7 million as of 2024, all while youth unemployment and incomes in the United Kingdom have begun to stagnate and the native population feels particularly isolated in their own homeland. Non-UK workers are also making up an increasingly large share of the state employees in the United Kingdom, some 16% as of a 2022 report by the Migration Observatory. Other European countries are also experiencing issues with growing migrant populations and work-forces. Germany would rather train migrant students than natives, forcing German citizens to go abroad, while reports have shown that unemployment is staggeringly high for those with foreign born parents and labor force integration remains poor across generations.

If ridiculously wealthy Arab states with extremely small populations of a few million or fewer natives can begin the process of transforming their labor markets to rely on native labor then so can Western governments and societies. Choosing to allow in a massive migrant workforce, to strain public services, and to cause unnecessary social tension between competing groups through artificially induced mass migration is a policy choice.

We can choose differently.

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