Fair?

This is what happens when an extremely small country (in terms of the population of Nationals) caters to the world with its massive building projects and huge influx of expats... The nationals of THAT country are exempt from... basically everything...

Right now in this city you hear horror stories about how expat workers (mostly, think unskilled workers) haven't been paid in months, or their employers have fled the country without telling their employees, etc. But then, in a time when the whole world is dealing with an economic downturn, Emiratis are getting a free pass.

See this story for the whole article, but basically, while everyone else is getting laid off, or "downsized", Emiratis now cannot be "let go" unless they commit "exceptional misconduct". Which is huge for Emiratis as it is. People who are expats here and work in the private sector are always telling stories about the laziness of many of the Emiratis who work there. Obviously this is not all of them. One of my favorite people here is an Emirati and she is a very hard worker and has plenty of goals for her life, but far too many of them get a pass to be lazy, come in late, work minimally, etc. while many more professional and skilled people cannot get jobs.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this country in the next 10-15 years. See how it will adjust to functioning as a society instead of just growing exponentially. Methinks these types of policies are going to come back to bite them in the butt in later years.