Why should the US pay Jordan because a Jordanian doctor has to emigrate to Saudi to work? I don't understand.

Should the US pay if a million Filipinos work in the Middle East? or 10 million Pinoys have to emigrate elsewhere to find work and support their families back home?

The reason that they work in Saudi and even (yes) as maids and construction workers in Jordan is because this country has so much corruption that business won't invest here.

Alas, in the Philippines, as in many Middle Eastern countries, job and business opportunities tend to go to the relatives of those in charge, not the best suited one. So the hard working carpenters and maids and doctors go elsewhere, and their salaries often enable entire families to break out of poverty into the middle class.

The answer is to encourage entrepeneurship and business organizations such as the Rotary to help fledgling businessmen get started.
Getting handouts from the US or Saudi will only lead to dependency.

Daoud, it seems that a disparity exists on many levels, but also may be a two-way street. Often the poorest of nations are blessed with magnificently-rich heritages and traditions while the financially-wealthy nations lack this deep substance. Yet those coming from this rich culture fall sway to the media that drives the wealth machine and they, too, fall sway.
We steal because we, as a society, have put far too much value on "things". I believe that we can help eachother out of this mess, but it will require a serious change of mindset. A re-embracing of traditions and less emphasis on material wealth.

And as our allies an enemies around the world tell us consistently, it is the current very pro-Israel policies of Bush that have made us so hated around the world.

There seems to be...see the first four posts
above, a little group of people who hasten to every guest columnist to post a sneering line or two. For those of us who read most of the guests, we know them to be very pro-Israel and anti Arab wherever they post. Is it a campaign run by some nasty central source as usual ? Or just second nature, to be expected always. And still, new international polls, including the US, show they are not winning the PR fight. Only 17 per cent, and falling, of the people of the world have a favorable feeling about Israel.

Wow, why such defensive responses? Kuttab clearly hit a nerve, perhaps with the allegation that the US or other labor-importing countries have a "responsibility to remove the causes of political and financial instability"

Kuttab strikes a point that is worth elaborating: oftentimes policies recommended or imposed by the 'experts' in labor-importing countries are unrealistic, impractical, or inflexible to the changing needs of a country, or that they are not always designed without the best interests of a country and its people in mind. Certainly, the labor-importing countries cannot solve all economic and political problems of labor-exporting countries, but the former could do a lot more to work with the latter to improve economic and political conditions of stability (a concept the current administration is not particularly skilled at implementing).

[For anyone who has lived in a labor-exporting country, this is probably completely obvious. In many countries, US ambassadors move their pinky finger and it gets reported on the front page of the local papers.]

Search Jean Raspail Camp of the Saints

When was the last time you have seen an American leave the US for good, I will answer that for you Never. You know why because when you are a US citizen you are considered a human being. No one wants to leave their family, even back in the days of the Mayflower, but sometime you got move on. As far the “Western World” and the US have a “direct responsibility, I would say hell no. The so called Arab countries leaders are the ones who are responsible for the miserable condition that their citizen live in. The ironic thing is that the Citizens are busy call America all kind of names. You got help you self before you ask for help. The only people the USA own something to are American Indian and Slaves. By the way I am first generation US citizen, the main issue I see with all of this “West Must Give Aid to Exporters of Labor” a lot pf people will consider losing an arm to come to the US because they know that they can better them self’s and get rewarded for it. The reason the US is great it is because of it citizens.

Forget it, the only compensation you'll get is a few bags of rice and a laptop with the plans of how to build a nuclear bomb from some holier-than-thou liberal. You know the type, running all over the world with their nose turned up and wagging their finger at everybody, making all their false promises and the usual all words and no action. Christ, at least Christians only have to be preached at once or twice a week. These liberals, they know EVERYTHING and NEVER shut up. It's these liberals who have in truth made the USA such a hated country.

You are right though, such countries should be compensated, but the liberals have set it up so that the darker-skinned educated from all over the world can escape their homelands so that the liberals can puff up their chests and say 'see I'm not racist!' However, their obession with race proves very much they are rascists other wise why go to such extreme lengths to prove otherwise?

We all know the liberals are just sucking the blood out of Mexico, Jordan, Iraq, and anyone else they can sink their fangs in. After all, it is only the hardest workers, the financially well-off, and the most educated who manage to get to the US. The home countries where the vast majority of the people and the most suffering are, are left to rot. That's where you see into the true heart of these western liberals. Immigration to the US should be banned and these educated and relatively well off immigrants should be part of the solution to building and rebuilding their homelands. Instead of your countrymen who know and love their country best, you'll get some half-ass liberal charitable organization showing up with the afore mentioned bags of (obscenely overpriced) rice and the laptop with nuclear bomb blueprints...

I'm sorry, I really wish it were better, but after World War II these liberals have had such a grip on power in the west for so long it may be impossible to fix everything they have destroyed...here's wishing

Hey wait a second...Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc. are "new countries"?

As far as I'm concerned, the ones who want out are largely the ones worth saving. Leave the rest to rot and watch the old system collapse. It might have been better in Iraq to have set up a series of "underground railroads" to enable sufficient brain drain to implode them from within. Perhaps this could be put to use in Iran?

I get tired of the Mid east always looking for someone else to slove your problems. Why don't you talk instead of killing.

Every time we allow immigrants from corrupt nations to come to this country, we are helping the corruption continue. If those 'freedom fighters' remain in their countries, they will have a superb chance to change their government, and come forward to stand among the nations of men with pride.

The American Government has jiggered information so thoroughly that we don't have any idea at all who is unemployed.. who slide through the cracks. I no longer believe anything this administration says and looking at the Pelosi/Reid group, I see a lot of reasons to believe they won't do one bit better.

We need a national ballot initiative and go after the corruption in our own government. That done, we need to find out what the real economic numbers are for our country, and we better fix it pronto. But immigrant workers? Obviously not.

Yep....America is Blame Central. It's own doing, too!

Ah, I see. If we do nothing, then it's our fault for ignoring the situation.. If we exert the political pressure and economic force required to create stability, then the world will continue to see us as greedy imperialist Americans. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

God forbid these "exporters of labor" do anything to give those leaving a reason to stay. Smart rats go first.

ok, keep them there.