You are all absolutely correct.
The bottom line is every pilot who leaves his/her own country to fly as an expat does it for 2 reasons........money and standard of living. Period. End of story.
Dubai in the past 5 years has gone from a quiet third world country where an EK pilot enjoyed a reasonable standard of living, had a reasonable life and could put away a few dollars/euros/pounds/yen/etc for retirement to a hell bent/corrupt/out of control third world country where EK pilots DO NOT enjoy a reasonable standard of living, don't have a reasonable life due to jet lag/manning/rostering/etc and cannot put away more than a pitance towards any sort of retirement.
The point is why in the hell would anyone outside EK leave his home country for this circus (unless they come from either a worse 3rd world country or are unemployed with no chance of a future in their home country). The answer is obvious in the fact EK CANNOT recruit the numbers of suitably qualified pilots they require. Hence this feable attempt to put "lipstick on this pig" to make it appear to outsiders things are getting better.
As an aside, a big thank you to the moderators of this forum for allowing the word to get out. It probably has saved hundreds of wanna-be's from making probably the biggest mistake of their aviation careers.
Just my thoughts.