The main point is that the UAE (along with Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc.) limits citizenship and government benefits to citizens, and citizenship is basically impossible for immigrants or their descendants to attain. America's immigration model invites in tons of people, but makes it relatively easy for them to become citizens, vote, and become public charges.
An aunt of mine is Indian-origin but has lived her entire life in Dubai; and she will never be an Emirati, legally or culturally. She will always be an Indian from Dubai, as will her descendants
In the meantime, it is a hell of a lot more moral, and makes the overwhelming number of immigrants who do choose to come, better off than their alternative to say in their own country.
Exactly. It’s a temporary arbitrage. It’s completely unworkable as a permanent — not merely long-term, but *permanent* — engine of growth.
Either you accept its impermanence along with the inevitable resulting stagnation, or you pivot to building a more permanent engine of growth that is not dependent on a pair of exhaustible arbitrages (oil and poorer foreigners).
The lack of a path to citizenship is one of the key problems with Brian's account. Those born of foreign parents in the country not citizens. And the workers will be deported if they do not have a job. Not sure the US can even do that.
The other is that the labor market is not free, and I would dispute his argument that the people who come are consistently willing to stay. Menial laborers are often trapped in a form of debt bondage that can be hard to distinguish from slavery. A recruiter tells pretty stories of good working conditions and high pay in a very poor country, the gullible young believe and pay him to get them over there, they actually get terrible working conditions, bad pay, are stuck in debt for the cost to get there, lack resources to get home, and are threatened with prison if they don't pay their debts. And companies often don't pay at all with no legal recourse for these workers. Strikes are illegal.
I lived in another middle eastern country, their health care workers were largely filipina nurses (20+ years ago), and they had serious problems with confiscated passports and salaries that were not paid back then. And they were much better educated than the construction workers building Dubai.
Bryan brushes off the reports of passport withholding as irrelevant since deportation is the punishment for not having a job anyway. But debts are treated very harshly, and that can include the debts incurred to get there or to get home. They can't leave without paying off their debts; people may fear for their lives not working. And there are new suckers to come, so competition does not drive up wages to livable levels. Poor people do not seem to be working and then coming home rich.
So there is a rich native class who can work or not as they prefer, with welfare paid from oil revenues. A middle class of foreign workers with skill and knowledge who have some leverage to get paid and not treated abysmally, but still no long term residence rights. And a working class doing menial labor at very low wages often in some form of debt slavery and limited options to get home.
This is possibly one of the worst cases to use to argue for open borders. It is certainly not a viable option in the US, and most of us would consider it immoral in practice. Unless we could hide it from ourselves as the UAE does so well.
It worked out extremely well for the USofA. - Though Dubai will (mostly) disappear in the sand when the oil is gone. Bahrain (first oil pump in the region, mostly depleted today) is already back to backwater (only place in the region where you can buy lots of booze in a shop) . Saudia's post-petrol-age future: similar; nowadays large source of investments into the UAE. Qatar: Probably a tiny bit over UAE in share of foreigners (ca. 90%), there are more Nepalesi than Qatari in Qatar! "As of 2024, the largest expatriate community is Indian, constituting 21.80% of the population, approximately 700,000 people. Bangladesh and Nepal contribute significantly, each making up 12.50%, equivalent to 400,000 individuals.") and as delusional as Saudia: "Qatar is actively pursuing its Qatarization initiative, aiming to increase the employment of Qatari citizens in both public and private sectors. The target is to achieve 50% representation of Qatari citizens in the core sectors."
And how did "open borders" affect those places before they found ways to export oil and (liquified) gas? As unattractive as legally open Spitzbergen/Svalbard is today.
All that said, I do agree with all of Caplan`s statements. Fun fact: thousands of nurses from Philippines work in Saudia (under less than ideal conditions) for a few hundred $ a months. All would pack this evening to swap their jobs there to work in US/UK/Germany for US/UK/German pay.
Singapore and Hong Kong never embarked on Guest Worker programs at those scales and most of the guest workers were fellow Han ethnics and very skilled foreigners. They build up their populations high value skills and allowed a relatively broad degree of political participation compared to the UAE.
The UAE does not have immigration. It has a guest worker program.
If all immigrants to America had no citizenship rights and were going to go home after a few years, I would have no problem with that, and I think most immigration restrictionists feel the same way.
Sorry Bryan, for a guy who prides himself on clear thinking, this is a clear example of confirmation bias. The Gulf states use oil wealth to buy goods and employ foreigners, that's it. The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.
For countries without gigantic oil reserves, whose main natural resource is the productive native population themselves, importing millions of low-IQ foreigners is not a recipe for success, it's a recipe for impoverishment. See the cost of non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures.
It works because those low-IQ foreigners must have verifiable employment or go home. Period. You lose your job if you get in trouble and the UAE takes crime very seriously, esp if you're non-native.
Sorry, imo you are wrong that it’s just about the oil. Even if that obviously was the source of the initial wealth / seed capital.
I have issues with other of Bryan’s arguments here, but it just ain’t all about the oil as you suggest. If it was, all of the UAE’s neighbors would have equally high standards of living for all of their citizens and immigrants, wouldn’t they?
Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil? Why would migrant workers have moved there? Why would international businesses have set up there? Before oil there was fishing and pearl diving and a population with an average IQ below Haiti and Afghanistan.
It's like if I won the lottery, put it all in an index fund and waited for fifty years. Sure, I could then claim that my wealth derives from my investments and not from my lottery winnings, but without the lottery winnings there wouldn't have been anything to invest.
“Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil?”
Rich country? No. middle income? Possibly, but hard to say. Singapore sure demonstrates the possibility.
I already conceded that the oil is/was the seed capital.
But my counterarguments to the rest of your claim are:
- Venezuela
- Nigeria
- Angola
- Iraq
- Libya
- Gabon
- Republic of the Congo
- South Sudan
- Khazakstan
…and similar but not identical: Russia.
And your index fund analogy is faulty, because to live you gotta spend some of the money each year. Take 7% out the first year, and the same amount in real terms each year thereafter, and your money gonna be gone eventually (and sooner, if you have the bad luck to start near a market top).
Good policies and institutions matter. Having oil wealth is IIRC somewhat negatively correlated with long- term per capita income success for nations.
I think you make a strong point: open borders with extremely limited welfare state options for noncitizens is great, but open borders with lots of welfare state options is bad. I would add “also, you have to enforce basic property laws,” but otherwise I don’t think many people would disagree. I am afraid we are a long way from saying “no state support for immigrants”, however.
That’s a good point as well, although we probably wouldn’t need the level of citizen welfare the UAE has. We seemed to do really well without it for a long time.
I recall Caplan saying in a debate some years ago that many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option, although I can easily see the agreement never being enforced which kind of ruins it. We just can’t have nice things.
Yes, I think the open borders crowd mixes Guest Worker programs with immigrants who within a few years will be full American citizens. They are not the same.
Guest workers may make economic sense, but that is not the same as permanent immigrants.
We tried Prop 187, Jim Crow, and Apartheid. They didn't work.
It's one thing for some Arab dictator city state sitting on a pile of oil to pay central asians and a few white engineers to build ski resorts in the desert, maybe that can work for awhile. It's another to get free democratic societies that have to actually bring out their populations higher skills (you know, the ones generating the real global wealth at scale) to live under such conditions.
Basically no democracy, or welfare state, or chance of ever becoming citizens. Combine that with a strong cultural prerequisite to assimilate and respect the host nation and open borders worked well here. The USA is far too democratic, politically correct, tolerant, generous, and progressive for this model to work (now).
And the USofA has a horrible welfare system. It's broken at every level except the capacity to burn through money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
"The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born." This cannot be *the* key ingredient. Open borders might be *a* key ingredient, even a necessary cause of UAE success, but it is not a sufficient cause. Without oil wealth, all of those foreign-born workers would be pointless.
But I agree that good institutions and property rights are indeed more important than that 88% “key ingredient”.
In fairness to Bryan, he didn’t say it was the most important ingredient. In this case “key” pretty clear meant “a very important ingredient not in most other recipes”.
I am a regular working class Joe and never imagined i would become somewhat of a “world traveler” type. But it happened, albeit the hard way. I became a military contractor working on overseas bases, mostly Afghanistan. It was hard, but the money was good. The companies that hire internationally for these projects (LOGCAP) almost all have a “hub” in Dubai. This is true for me, i worked for two of the big ones. As an American (expat) you are considered “deployed” much like a soldier because many military requirements must be met for one to work “in theater” as they say. So, the first time i left home for overseas work, i was sent to Dubai for a night awaiting my flight to Afghanistan. It was a bit overwhelming that night. I had no experience and literally only an hour or two to peek around. It was relatively fruitless and unenlightening.
However, that ALL changed on my first R&R. The company put us up in a rather opulent hotel for vacations. Typically they provide one night while you wait for your flight to whatever destination, most go home, wherever that might be. I decided to use this opportunity to travel that side of the world and see sights i’d always wanted to see. I had no wife or kids waiting and it’s a LONG ride to and fro. I decided on Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids, but i digress. Upon my return to Dubai, the company again put us up in this wonderful hotel, in the main lobby a grand piano was surrounded by a pair of spiraling marble staircases going up to the next level where the bars, restaurants and meeting rooms were, glorious chandeliers, the whole nine yards! This wasn’t a particularly expensive hotel either. Dubai is FILLED with places like this. It’s five-star for sure, but nothing like the Burj Al Arab, which is considered the world’s first “seven star” hotel.
My second R&R (i spent a total of five years working in Afghanistan, so i had quite a few nice vacations!) i decided to spend a bit more time there exploring. By my third R&R, i decided to simply take my WHOLE vacation just in Dubai. This was especially nice because the company allowed extra vacation days for “travel time” which i simply rolled into my stay. 😎
From that point forward, i always cushioned whatever travel i was taking with a few days before and and after my travel to stay Dubai. This gave me time to decompress from the stresses of work before i hit the airport again, and time to stock up on necessities i might need for my return to the harsh conditions of living and working in Afghanistan on military bases.
Then, i landed my dream job with another company. I got a promotion in my field and a spot on a base in the UAE, just outside of Dubai at the Emirati air base. That was when COVID-1984 hit us all. We got locked down inside the base. Period. Fortunately, i acquired a slight injury at work there that required me to see a therapist weekly. Weird how bad things can be fortuitous, no? So, i was incredibly lucky to be able to leave the base one day a week. This was the case for most of 2020 until the Army closed the base. (The US Army had a tiny corner inside the Emirati Air Base, i don’t really think they did much except provide “presence” in the area tbh). I was denied my scheduled R&R in 2020 due base closure protocols, but i was able to take my R&R after i was released upon base closing.
I took my R&R in place because travel was VERY sketchy at the time. Some folks went home and couldn’t return to work because of the plandemic restrictions. At the end of my vacation i reported to the company hotel for my new assignment in Iraq. I was scheduled for a “movement” with a group of fellow associates that needed to do some COVID-1984 protocols which included a lockdown inside your hotel room for a period of ten or fourteen days (i don’t recall which). But the lockdown for my group wasn’t scheduled for a whole week yet! I got to spend another week in Dubai, on vacation (sort of) on the company dime until the lockdown process started.
So, i was a bit of an expert on Dubai. I even wrote a page long summary for my expat friends of places to see, things to do and restaurant/hotel recommendations. I found your article to absolutely spot-on in every regard.
However, it must be said that Dubai has its dark side. And it’s not pretty. No place is immune to corruption and human trafficking apparently.
The problem is that if you have a family, you are totally screwed if you get laid off (unless you are Emarati). It's like everyone is on H1B's with no path to becoming a permanent resident at all. I was born and raised there and I have nothing to show for it other than what it says on my Canadian passport.
There is no job security and no retirement possibility. You could be laid off because you happen to work for the government and they need to fill their Emarati employment quotas. This is why many non-Emaratis just end up moving to the US/Canada/Australia anyway, especially high skilled people. It's a great place to make money and kick start a career. The lack of bureaucracy makes life much easier. It is very safe. But every day you are reminded that this sort of life is not meant for you, but for the Emaratis.
Even taking your pro-UAE case at face value, I think it’s more convincing to characterize their “success” as an example of two principles:
(1) The power of gerrymandering,
and
(2) the power of greenfield (yellowfield, in their case?) development.
RE 1, one of the things one may notice about places like UAE, Singapore, and HK is that although they are the beneficiaries of vast nearby populations and hinterlands, they’re politically isolated from the suboptimal policies those hinterlands would impose on them if given a vote. Where NYC has NJ, Pennsylvania, and Missi-freaking-ssippi to contend with WRT its national policy, UAE and other free cities simply don’t.
Within the context of other free cities, well, obviously the successful ones are successful because they implemented better policies. Gdansk has been a free city at various points in its history. Plenty of free cities succeed, only to use that success to pursue “national greatness” projects that tie themselves to a hinterland that hates them and leeches off them, while accusing them of being leeches themselves.
The other part of this story is the greenfield, though (RE 2). This applies in both the policy AND actual land-use context. For example, it’s so insanely difficult to build in NYC because of both the sheer number of other things around it AND the bureaucratic red tape. UAE had neither of those things — per your own testimony, it was a region of glorified fishing villages.
When there are exceedingly few rules, it’s indeed amazing what can be built and how fast by modern industry! America itself went through a similar transformation.
The only real lesson here that the UAE can offer us is to be a reminder of what a simpler regulatory state can accomplish, of what it looks like when there are fewer incumbents benefiting from what Noah Smith coined as “stasis dividends”.
100-150 years out from our formative transformation, a lot of America indeed looks spent, tired, and decrepit. 100-150 years from now, UAE will likely look very similar. The difference, democracy means that for every dumb-AF civilizational mistake we inflict on ourselves like NIMBY, we can learn those lessons and move forward from them, hopefully in the direction of recovering the dynamism that made us great in the first place.
But if UAE doesn’t evolve,doesn’t grapple with what happens when today’s growth becomes tomorrow’s incumbent oligarchs, when today’s immigrants become tomorrow’s native born or mixed population, when Dubai runs out of greenfield and the locals turn to NIMBYism… THAT will be the true test of whether they’ve happened upon some truly innovative social formation, or are just having a greenfield boom.
Some love it. Others not so much. There is rampant human trafficking for sex and actual labor. Many people are conned into making the trip then get their passports held for ransom, criminally. Many more, most likely the majority, are experiencing a life-changing opportunity for real. Yeah, they work hard, yeah they don't get to enjoy the best of Dubai, but it's better than what they can find at home.
1) I think the leadership of the UAE played its hand as good as anyone could play it. They deserve praise.
2) I don't think the UAE has any lessons to teach the rest of the world.
I would like to imagine Bryan Caplan going on CNN or speaking in front of Congress and saying:
"I want to turn the USA into a dictatorship apartheid state."
How well would this go over? What are the odds that Bryan could rally political will to pass the necessary constitutional amendments to bring about his dictatorship apartheid state?
Now, let's say we could deal with the obvious and insurmountable political problems. It's one thing for a tiny city state full of oil to hire people to build everything for them while they luxuriate in luxury they never build themselves. It's another to turn the entire world economy into such a model. It is, quite frankly, not even possible.
I would think that Bryan would understand this. Real wealth comes from the mind! It's generated by lots and lots of smart people doing productive work. Those smart people want rights and don't want to be ruled by dictators, which have a terrible track record in most of the world (ask how the Chinese like being ruled by Mao or Xi).
It's nice and all that this tiny oil rich dot on the map to let smart people do stuff for oil wealth and get out of the way, but its not something we could model the world political economy on. The global economy can't all be sky resorts in the desert paid for with dead dinosaurs.
It's not even clear how stable it is. When the next crisis comes, how long will the dictatorship last when 88% of the population feels nothing for them and are practically slaves. South Africa couldn't make that work.
I have lived in Korea for 22 years, married to a Korean for 15. I have to renew my family visa every two years, and I will never be a citizen. I will never get to vote. I get very few benefits, as I also pay very low taxes. I love living here. I could not have made a life like this in my native Canada.
The main point is that the UAE (along with Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc.) limits citizenship and government benefits to citizens, and citizenship is basically impossible for immigrants or their descendants to attain. America's immigration model invites in tons of people, but makes it relatively easy for them to become citizens, vote, and become public charges.
An aunt of mine is Indian-origin but has lived her entire life in Dubai; and she will never be an Emirati, legally or culturally. She will always be an Indian from Dubai, as will her descendants
Yeah, it’s amazing how well the first class of citizens can live when you don’t need to worry about the second class.
You entirely miss the point that the second-class residents come voluntarily because they are better off there than in their home countries.
The differential can’t last forever.
If you say so.
In the meantime, it is a hell of a lot more moral, and makes the overwhelming number of immigrants who do choose to come, better off than their alternative to say in their own country.
We get it. It's still not sustainable or scalable. Apartheid states don't work long term and the world can only support so many petrostates.
Exactly. It’s a temporary arbitrage. It’s completely unworkable as a permanent — not merely long-term, but *permanent* — engine of growth.
Either you accept its impermanence along with the inevitable resulting stagnation, or you pivot to building a more permanent engine of growth that is not dependent on a pair of exhaustible arbitrages (oil and poorer foreigners).
The lack of a path to citizenship is one of the key problems with Brian's account. Those born of foreign parents in the country not citizens. And the workers will be deported if they do not have a job. Not sure the US can even do that.
The other is that the labor market is not free, and I would dispute his argument that the people who come are consistently willing to stay. Menial laborers are often trapped in a form of debt bondage that can be hard to distinguish from slavery. A recruiter tells pretty stories of good working conditions and high pay in a very poor country, the gullible young believe and pay him to get them over there, they actually get terrible working conditions, bad pay, are stuck in debt for the cost to get there, lack resources to get home, and are threatened with prison if they don't pay their debts. And companies often don't pay at all with no legal recourse for these workers. Strikes are illegal.
I lived in another middle eastern country, their health care workers were largely filipina nurses (20+ years ago), and they had serious problems with confiscated passports and salaries that were not paid back then. And they were much better educated than the construction workers building Dubai.
Bryan brushes off the reports of passport withholding as irrelevant since deportation is the punishment for not having a job anyway. But debts are treated very harshly, and that can include the debts incurred to get there or to get home. They can't leave without paying off their debts; people may fear for their lives not working. And there are new suckers to come, so competition does not drive up wages to livable levels. Poor people do not seem to be working and then coming home rich.
So there is a rich native class who can work or not as they prefer, with welfare paid from oil revenues. A middle class of foreign workers with skill and knowledge who have some leverage to get paid and not treated abysmally, but still no long term residence rights. And a working class doing menial labor at very low wages often in some form of debt slavery and limited options to get home.
This is possibly one of the worst cases to use to argue for open borders. It is certainly not a viable option in the US, and most of us would consider it immoral in practice. Unless we could hide it from ourselves as the UAE does so well.
How well (or poorly) does this non-citizen live? Is there trickle-down in the UAE?
Better than where they arrived from, there is a reason they keep coming and telling their relatives about it which induces more arrivals.
"Is there trickle-down in the UAE?"
Economics is not zero sum there.
Any idea how this might have worked out without their oil wells? Or how it might work out in places that don't have that type of advantage?
It worked out extremely well for the USofA. - Though Dubai will (mostly) disappear in the sand when the oil is gone. Bahrain (first oil pump in the region, mostly depleted today) is already back to backwater (only place in the region where you can buy lots of booze in a shop) . Saudia's post-petrol-age future: similar; nowadays large source of investments into the UAE. Qatar: Probably a tiny bit over UAE in share of foreigners (ca. 90%), there are more Nepalesi than Qatari in Qatar! "As of 2024, the largest expatriate community is Indian, constituting 21.80% of the population, approximately 700,000 people. Bangladesh and Nepal contribute significantly, each making up 12.50%, equivalent to 400,000 individuals.") and as delusional as Saudia: "Qatar is actively pursuing its Qatarization initiative, aiming to increase the employment of Qatari citizens in both public and private sectors. The target is to achieve 50% representation of Qatari citizens in the core sectors."
And how did "open borders" affect those places before they found ways to export oil and (liquified) gas? As unattractive as legally open Spitzbergen/Svalbard is today.
All that said, I do agree with all of Caplan`s statements. Fun fact: thousands of nurses from Philippines work in Saudia (under less than ideal conditions) for a few hundred $ a months. All would pack this evening to swap their jobs there to work in US/UK/Germany for US/UK/German pay.
“Or how it might work out in places that don't have that type of advantage?“
Worked pretty darn well in Singapore.
And Hong Kong.
Singapore and Hong Kong never embarked on Guest Worker programs at those scales and most of the guest workers were fellow Han ethnics and very skilled foreigners. They build up their populations high value skills and allowed a relatively broad degree of political participation compared to the UAE.
I don’t think the lack of current enforcement of the death penalty for apostasy is all that comforting.
The UAE does not have immigration. It has a guest worker program.
If all immigrants to America had no citizenship rights and were going to go home after a few years, I would have no problem with that, and I think most immigration restrictionists feel the same way.
Yeah, there's no welfare for foreigners. None. Zip. Nada. If you lose your job, you go home.
Are they really going home "after a few years" though?
You mean like Prop 187?
We aren't a petro city state run by some dictator, and who knows how long that will last. These theoretical are meaningless.
ctrl-f 'Oil' - No results
Sorry Bryan, for a guy who prides himself on clear thinking, this is a clear example of confirmation bias. The Gulf states use oil wealth to buy goods and employ foreigners, that's it. The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.
For countries without gigantic oil reserves, whose main natural resource is the productive native population themselves, importing millions of low-IQ foreigners is not a recipe for success, it's a recipe for impoverishment. See the cost of non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures.
It works because those low-IQ foreigners must have verifiable employment or go home. Period. You lose your job if you get in trouble and the UAE takes crime very seriously, esp if you're non-native.
Sorry, imo you are wrong that it’s just about the oil. Even if that obviously was the source of the initial wealth / seed capital.
I have issues with other of Bryan’s arguments here, but it just ain’t all about the oil as you suggest. If it was, all of the UAE’s neighbors would have equally high standards of living for all of their citizens and immigrants, wouldn’t they?
Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil? Why would migrant workers have moved there? Why would international businesses have set up there? Before oil there was fishing and pearl diving and a population with an average IQ below Haiti and Afghanistan.
It's like if I won the lottery, put it all in an index fund and waited for fifty years. Sure, I could then claim that my wealth derives from my investments and not from my lottery winnings, but without the lottery winnings there wouldn't have been anything to invest.
“Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil?”
Rich country? No. middle income? Possibly, but hard to say. Singapore sure demonstrates the possibility.
I already conceded that the oil is/was the seed capital.
But my counterarguments to the rest of your claim are:
- Venezuela
- Nigeria
- Angola
- Iraq
- Libya
- Gabon
- Republic of the Congo
- South Sudan
- Khazakstan
…and similar but not identical: Russia.
And your index fund analogy is faulty, because to live you gotta spend some of the money each year. Take 7% out the first year, and the same amount in real terms each year thereafter, and your money gonna be gone eventually (and sooner, if you have the bad luck to start near a market top).
Good policies and institutions matter. Having oil wealth is IIRC somewhat negatively correlated with long- term per capita income success for nations.
"non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures"
A country doesn't have to pay out all that welfare as a condition of having low-IQ immigrants. It was a choice the Netherlands made.
“The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.”
Even this statement betrays a lack of understanding.
You can only get to “proven reserves” by investing a ton in drilling, analysis, etc.
I think you make a strong point: open borders with extremely limited welfare state options for noncitizens is great, but open borders with lots of welfare state options is bad. I would add “also, you have to enforce basic property laws,” but otherwise I don’t think many people would disagree. I am afraid we are a long way from saying “no state support for immigrants”, however.
Agreed. And don’t forget massive revenues from fossil fuels and virtually impossible for guest workers to get citizenship.
That’s a good point as well, although we probably wouldn’t need the level of citizen welfare the UAE has. We seemed to do really well without it for a long time.
I recall Caplan saying in a debate some years ago that many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option, although I can easily see the agreement never being enforced which kind of ruins it. We just can’t have nice things.
Yes, I think the open borders crowd mixes Guest Worker programs with immigrants who within a few years will be full American citizens. They are not the same.
Guest workers may make economic sense, but that is not the same as permanent immigrants.
We tried Prop 187, Jim Crow, and Apartheid. They didn't work.
It's one thing for some Arab dictator city state sitting on a pile of oil to pay central asians and a few white engineers to build ski resorts in the desert, maybe that can work for awhile. It's another to get free democratic societies that have to actually bring out their populations higher skills (you know, the ones generating the real global wealth at scale) to live under such conditions.
Basically no democracy, or welfare state, or chance of ever becoming citizens. Combine that with a strong cultural prerequisite to assimilate and respect the host nation and open borders worked well here. The USA is far too democratic, politically correct, tolerant, generous, and progressive for this model to work (now).
True, it's not immigration if they're guest workers who are going to return home after a few years.
…or even return home never.
But it is indeed a win-win economically for all parties. If it wasn’t, the immigrants wouldn’t come.
As long as you have verifiable employment. Otherwise you simply *must* go home.
And the USofA has a horrible welfare system. It's broken at every level except the capacity to burn through money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
"The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born." This cannot be *the* key ingredient. Open borders might be *a* key ingredient, even a necessary cause of UAE success, but it is not a sufficient cause. Without oil wealth, all of those foreign-born workers would be pointless.
…well, Singapore.
But I agree that good institutions and property rights are indeed more important than that 88% “key ingredient”.
In fairness to Bryan, he didn’t say it was the most important ingredient. In this case “key” pretty clear meant “a very important ingredient not in most other recipes”.
I also had a love affair with Dubai.
I am a regular working class Joe and never imagined i would become somewhat of a “world traveler” type. But it happened, albeit the hard way. I became a military contractor working on overseas bases, mostly Afghanistan. It was hard, but the money was good. The companies that hire internationally for these projects (LOGCAP) almost all have a “hub” in Dubai. This is true for me, i worked for two of the big ones. As an American (expat) you are considered “deployed” much like a soldier because many military requirements must be met for one to work “in theater” as they say. So, the first time i left home for overseas work, i was sent to Dubai for a night awaiting my flight to Afghanistan. It was a bit overwhelming that night. I had no experience and literally only an hour or two to peek around. It was relatively fruitless and unenlightening.
However, that ALL changed on my first R&R. The company put us up in a rather opulent hotel for vacations. Typically they provide one night while you wait for your flight to whatever destination, most go home, wherever that might be. I decided to use this opportunity to travel that side of the world and see sights i’d always wanted to see. I had no wife or kids waiting and it’s a LONG ride to and fro. I decided on Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids, but i digress. Upon my return to Dubai, the company again put us up in this wonderful hotel, in the main lobby a grand piano was surrounded by a pair of spiraling marble staircases going up to the next level where the bars, restaurants and meeting rooms were, glorious chandeliers, the whole nine yards! This wasn’t a particularly expensive hotel either. Dubai is FILLED with places like this. It’s five-star for sure, but nothing like the Burj Al Arab, which is considered the world’s first “seven star” hotel.
My second R&R (i spent a total of five years working in Afghanistan, so i had quite a few nice vacations!) i decided to spend a bit more time there exploring. By my third R&R, i decided to simply take my WHOLE vacation just in Dubai. This was especially nice because the company allowed extra vacation days for “travel time” which i simply rolled into my stay. 😎
From that point forward, i always cushioned whatever travel i was taking with a few days before and and after my travel to stay Dubai. This gave me time to decompress from the stresses of work before i hit the airport again, and time to stock up on necessities i might need for my return to the harsh conditions of living and working in Afghanistan on military bases.
Then, i landed my dream job with another company. I got a promotion in my field and a spot on a base in the UAE, just outside of Dubai at the Emirati air base. That was when COVID-1984 hit us all. We got locked down inside the base. Period. Fortunately, i acquired a slight injury at work there that required me to see a therapist weekly. Weird how bad things can be fortuitous, no? So, i was incredibly lucky to be able to leave the base one day a week. This was the case for most of 2020 until the Army closed the base. (The US Army had a tiny corner inside the Emirati Air Base, i don’t really think they did much except provide “presence” in the area tbh). I was denied my scheduled R&R in 2020 due base closure protocols, but i was able to take my R&R after i was released upon base closing.
I took my R&R in place because travel was VERY sketchy at the time. Some folks went home and couldn’t return to work because of the plandemic restrictions. At the end of my vacation i reported to the company hotel for my new assignment in Iraq. I was scheduled for a “movement” with a group of fellow associates that needed to do some COVID-1984 protocols which included a lockdown inside your hotel room for a period of ten or fourteen days (i don’t recall which). But the lockdown for my group wasn’t scheduled for a whole week yet! I got to spend another week in Dubai, on vacation (sort of) on the company dime until the lockdown process started.
So, i was a bit of an expert on Dubai. I even wrote a page long summary for my expat friends of places to see, things to do and restaurant/hotel recommendations. I found your article to absolutely spot-on in every regard.
However, it must be said that Dubai has its dark side. And it’s not pretty. No place is immune to corruption and human trafficking apparently.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
The problem is that if you have a family, you are totally screwed if you get laid off (unless you are Emarati). It's like everyone is on H1B's with no path to becoming a permanent resident at all. I was born and raised there and I have nothing to show for it other than what it says on my Canadian passport.
There is no job security and no retirement possibility. You could be laid off because you happen to work for the government and they need to fill their Emarati employment quotas. This is why many non-Emaratis just end up moving to the US/Canada/Australia anyway, especially high skilled people. It's a great place to make money and kick start a career. The lack of bureaucracy makes life much easier. It is very safe. But every day you are reminded that this sort of life is not meant for you, but for the Emaratis.
Even taking your pro-UAE case at face value, I think it’s more convincing to characterize their “success” as an example of two principles:
(1) The power of gerrymandering,
and
(2) the power of greenfield (yellowfield, in their case?) development.
RE 1, one of the things one may notice about places like UAE, Singapore, and HK is that although they are the beneficiaries of vast nearby populations and hinterlands, they’re politically isolated from the suboptimal policies those hinterlands would impose on them if given a vote. Where NYC has NJ, Pennsylvania, and Missi-freaking-ssippi to contend with WRT its national policy, UAE and other free cities simply don’t.
Within the context of other free cities, well, obviously the successful ones are successful because they implemented better policies. Gdansk has been a free city at various points in its history. Plenty of free cities succeed, only to use that success to pursue “national greatness” projects that tie themselves to a hinterland that hates them and leeches off them, while accusing them of being leeches themselves.
The other part of this story is the greenfield, though (RE 2). This applies in both the policy AND actual land-use context. For example, it’s so insanely difficult to build in NYC because of both the sheer number of other things around it AND the bureaucratic red tape. UAE had neither of those things — per your own testimony, it was a region of glorified fishing villages.
When there are exceedingly few rules, it’s indeed amazing what can be built and how fast by modern industry! America itself went through a similar transformation.
The only real lesson here that the UAE can offer us is to be a reminder of what a simpler regulatory state can accomplish, of what it looks like when there are fewer incumbents benefiting from what Noah Smith coined as “stasis dividends”.
100-150 years out from our formative transformation, a lot of America indeed looks spent, tired, and decrepit. 100-150 years from now, UAE will likely look very similar. The difference, democracy means that for every dumb-AF civilizational mistake we inflict on ourselves like NIMBY, we can learn those lessons and move forward from them, hopefully in the direction of recovering the dynamism that made us great in the first place.
But if UAE doesn’t evolve,doesn’t grapple with what happens when today’s growth becomes tomorrow’s incumbent oligarchs, when today’s immigrants become tomorrow’s native born or mixed population, when Dubai runs out of greenfield and the locals turn to NIMBYism… THAT will be the true test of whether they’ve happened upon some truly innovative social formation, or are just having a greenfield boom.
You should ask the guest workers how much they like it there. It's easy to be all giltz and glam if you're there on a glorified layover.
Some love it. Others not so much. There is rampant human trafficking for sex and actual labor. Many people are conned into making the trip then get their passports held for ransom, criminally. Many more, most likely the majority, are experiencing a life-changing opportunity for real. Yeah, they work hard, yeah they don't get to enjoy the best of Dubai, but it's better than what they can find at home.
1) I think the leadership of the UAE played its hand as good as anyone could play it. They deserve praise.
2) I don't think the UAE has any lessons to teach the rest of the world.
I would like to imagine Bryan Caplan going on CNN or speaking in front of Congress and saying:
"I want to turn the USA into a dictatorship apartheid state."
How well would this go over? What are the odds that Bryan could rally political will to pass the necessary constitutional amendments to bring about his dictatorship apartheid state?
Now, let's say we could deal with the obvious and insurmountable political problems. It's one thing for a tiny city state full of oil to hire people to build everything for them while they luxuriate in luxury they never build themselves. It's another to turn the entire world economy into such a model. It is, quite frankly, not even possible.
I would think that Bryan would understand this. Real wealth comes from the mind! It's generated by lots and lots of smart people doing productive work. Those smart people want rights and don't want to be ruled by dictators, which have a terrible track record in most of the world (ask how the Chinese like being ruled by Mao or Xi).
It's nice and all that this tiny oil rich dot on the map to let smart people do stuff for oil wealth and get out of the way, but its not something we could model the world political economy on. The global economy can't all be sky resorts in the desert paid for with dead dinosaurs.
It's not even clear how stable it is. When the next crisis comes, how long will the dictatorship last when 88% of the population feels nothing for them and are practically slaves. South Africa couldn't make that work.
Besides oil, there is also no mention of how Dubai is a magnet for criminals worldwide.
https://youtu.be/i823AhR8zKQ?si=yJ_Ia4KVZ10_ViOK
" The standard Western migration formula — generous government support for the few immigrants we admit — is a crying shame."
--- I was unaware there is any such program in the USA where immigrants receive generous government support. Can you write more about this?
I have lived in Korea for 22 years, married to a Korean for 15. I have to renew my family visa every two years, and I will never be a citizen. I will never get to vote. I get very few benefits, as I also pay very low taxes. I love living here. I could not have made a life like this in my native Canada.
I would make a good life in any semi-free country. But it would have been harder at home.
Sure you could have made a life like that in Canada.