For example, he could have probed, “If the only way to get open borders was to put power into the hands of a Sheikh Zayed, should we do so?” To which I would have candidly replied, “Probably.”
------------
In the other thread people scoffed when I said that you advocated dictatorship, but I noted that you've advocated for it several times before. Here we are again.
So basically it all comes down to this. You are willing to risk the downsides of dictatorship, in fact dictatorship of a very small group over a very large group they have nothing in common with and under massive inequality, and inherently unstable affair, in order to implement Open Borders.
You know the downsides of dictatorship. For every UAE there are plenty of Maos and the like. Even dictatorships that go well at first often degenerate or collapse later.
I have no clue what your implementation plan is to bring about a UAE style dictatorship in America. How do you plan to get the necessary constitutional amendments passed? What political constituency do you plan to call upon to bring about and maintain these changes?
Are there any differences between the dictatorship in context of the UAE and dictatorship as would have to be practice by large western democracies? Is it inherently easier to run a dictatorship being a city state sitting on a pile of oil in the desert and not needing to unlock any of the productive potential of its citizens because it can just buy such things from abroad?
The conflict in Sudan is between two military dictators who jointly ruled a brutal military junta before splitting over how to divide the spoils. If you think it's "considerably more clear-cut than the situation in Israel" you lost your mind.
Small quibble, but you are thinking of the son, Mohammed bin Zayed. Sheikh Zayed was the founding president, and he died in 2004.
The problem is an important one, though, and the fundamental issue with even a benevolent monarchy. You may get an incredible visionary like Sheikh Zayed. But then what?
Understanding that Mr. Caplan has argued the USA should have stayed a colony of the British King, it reasons that Mr. Caplan is agreeable to living under benevolent dictatorship. And wouldn't we all! What Mr. Caplan does not explain is how does one arrange to be guided by a benevolent dictator, and what does one do when one's dictator is a tyrant?
Unfortunately, because of the woke ideology currently holding sway in the West, such a system would never be politically palatable here.
- in Dubai you are only ever a temorarily tolerated guest
- there is no path to citizenship, no matter how long you live there or how much you invest in the country
- If you lose your job, you have a few weeks to leave the country, unless you own a home there
- they allocate jobs there based on nationality and gender - for example Muslims cannot get visas to be domestic staff, because they don't want Muslims working as servants
- unless you work in one of the free trade zones you are at the mercy of your local sponsor. My Sri Lankan houseboy (cleaner) had been living and working in the UAE for decades and built up a life there with his family, but he had to uproot and return to Sri Lanka with a few days notice because his sponsor didn't file his paperwork and didn't answer his phone
- if you bounce a check you go to jail and/or get kicked out of the country
- if a local takes a dislike to you he can get you in trouble for any number of things, for example it's technically not allowed to cohabit with your partner if you're not married. You have no recourse if they don't want you anymore
- locals and foreigners have totally different rights
- the UAE only takes in people who are useful to them, ie the very rich, professionals (aka "white niggers") and labourers or menial workers, and you're only allowed in AFTER you have have the confirmed job or show the money
This is why the system works so well for the UAE and for the foreigners who fit the bill, but none of this would be remotely acceptable to the craven politicians in the West with their fake morality and virtue-signalling.
Dude you’re literally describing a system where they have less rights than the Jim Crow south or apartheid South Africa. We’re far past “woke” at that point, we are describing a society completely beyond the pale of 99% of the publics Overton window.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I’d like Bryan Caplan to explain why specifically Dubai is acceptable and, say, Jim Crow or Apartheid wasn’t acceptable. Is it because Dubai is much richer? But Dubai has the luxury of sitting on a huge amount of oil, which both the Jim Crow and Apartheid South Africa did not.
So, what is the meaningful difference here? Couldn’t a white Southerner back in, say, 1920 that however bad or unfair Jim Crow might be for blacks, living under it for blacks would still be a much better deal than living in Haiti or Sub-Saharan Africa, with these blacks even having the option of moving to the Northern US, where Jim Crow did not exist (though racially restrictive housing covenants did exist)?
Yes precisely. Which is why "open borders" is really vague here, as this could mean totally different things depending on the place and the citizenship laws. The real issue with immigration, which very few talk about, is the specific egalitarian social texture of western nation states, connected to the idea of territorial sovereignty etc., where the distinction between mere territorial resident and citizen of a given polity is obscured. The premise being that all people residing within a national territory should be formally (legally) equal, and additionally that this formal equality should result in material equality. Now when these ideas rose to prominence in the 19th century the world looked very different indeed.
This is really the weakness inherent in all merely economic analysis of immigration, i.e. it fails to grasp relevant political-social distinctions. I don't disagree with Caplan's main point though, and I would like for the West to become more like the UAE, but that would entail a lot more than simply open borders.
I generally agree that UAE has one of the best and most humane system of immigration in the world.
But it feels disingenuous to ignore the specific model that makes it all work, and calling it "open borders". UAE has very selective migration, both on an individual, and an ethnic level. Ironically, unlike almost everyone else in the world, they discriminate against their own ethnicity; Arabs were disfavoured or expelled in the 1980s and 1990s because of the risks of pan-Arabic political activism and political Islam, higher quality, better behaved workers from outside the Arab world, and intra-Arab tensions around the first Gulf War.
TBH Sohrab Ahmari should have just push back that you aren't comparing likes. UAE doesn't have meaningful immigration, they have an effective open border guest worker program which isn't the same thing. In fact it's extremely hard to immigrate to the UAE to the point of impossibility.
Guest workers aren't immigrants, they go home eventually or become rich enough (extreme minority) to become resident expats. And if you think UAE is ever going to allow jus sanguinis for Filipinos tourist's, I got a bridge to sell you.
PS: That isn't to say I don't agree with your point the US should have an equally robust guest worker program but we don't and it would require not just significant legislation changes but SCOTUS precedent overruling as well to make that happen as first up we would have to get rid of jus sanguinis.
Are you trying to argue that 88% of the population being foreign born is good, but if you waved a wand and made temporary worker status permanent, it would somehow be terrible? What is the causal mechanism there? Do the same people become lazy or violent because their status has changed?
The threat of visa revocation keeps them pliable and because they are employed, they don't suck up social services as the second they become disabled, retire, unemployed, etc they get shipped home. Imagine 88% of Americans paying social security but only the other 12% getting to reap it. Likewise SNAP, Medicare, FAFSA, etc. we could solve our native poverty problem overnight.
Yes, a system where a lot of people work for you and you get all the benefits is quite appealing for you. We fought a whole civil war over it. Then a less hot civil war over civil rights in the 60s.
California also passed prop 187 in an overwhelming landslide only to have a judge stay it three days later and now CA is the sort of place that would never pass such a law.
Westerners just aren’t going to accept living in an apartheid state. It doesn’t matter if the migrants “want to be there” or not. They would certainly want to be there AND get more for themselves, and it’s inevitable that someone is going to come along and harvest that desire when they make up 88% of the population.
Jail isn't a threat hence why nearly half of Americans have spent time there and illegals keep coming. A first world jail is still better than their refuge camp / 17th century fishing village in the jungle back home plus hey, you get to stay after your release from jail. Besides jail gets due process, deportation doesn't.
Why would we give much regard as to the suffering of the Indians in India? Let them suffer, I say. It be none of our business. Our business should be solely that of our own happiness, and how much value we can extract from immigrant workers.
And in the case of America, there is no need to resort to Indians as migrant workers. You can easily import them from China or South-East Asia. There is a vast labour pool aboard in Asia, without needing to draw from India and Pakistan.
You could've mentioned that Ahmari's friend and fellow Integralist, Adrian Vermeule, has advocated for Catholic priority in immigration as part of an express plan to violate the oath he took when appointed to the ACUS, overthrow the US government, and replace it with the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When compared with Vermeule's vision, yours is downright modest.
Do the immigrants to UAE really consider themselves citizens though? Or are most of them just essentially guest workers in a fancy extended stay hotel who have no intention of establishing any loyalty or permanent roots in the country?
Immigration in the UAE, where I have been living for 10 years is highly controlled. Similar to Switzerland. You need a working permit, therefore a job to become a resident. It is not open border per se, it is rightly controlled. Companies are certainly free to hire foreign people are not allowed to enter the country and stay indefinitely without a job. And you don’t live on welfare because there is none.
The welfare argument is bad argument. Immigrants contribute to the economy way more they take out in welfare by making goods and services cheaper for the native population. I don’t care if some of the immigrants are on welfare if my childcare and house services cost are 2x cheaper
Bryan, can you please tell me why exactly Dubai is acceptable but Jim Crow and Apartheid are not? Dubai is much wealthier, sure, but that’s due to its extraordinarily massive oil reserves, which neither the Jim Crow South nor Apartheid South Africa actually had.
Blacks in the Jim Crow South probably lived better than most blacks worldwide did. Thus, couldn’t a white Southerner in, say, 1910 or 1920 have used this argument to defend the Jim Crow system?
While the UAE may have looked unpromising from the outside back in 1971, there were cultural and historical reasons why Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid's vision found fertile ground to bloom.
Before they found oil, they were pearl divers and seafaring traders. They didn't have much, but because of that, for well over a thousand years, they sailed their little dhows all over the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, connecting Indonesia, India, and Tanzania with the Arabian peninsula and everything in between. Sure, they were orthodox Muslims, but that much travel will broaden any mind, and they understood the value of free trade and commerce.
Just look at the symbols they put on their money. Falcons everywhere, a historic market (souq, on the 5 AED bill), and a dhow, on the 20 AED bill.
You can either have an open society or open borders. When people come to the United States, they can become citizens, vote, lobby the government, etc. In the UAE, even your average Emirati can’t do these things. It doesn’t matter how many thirdworlders/Filipinos/Indians the UAE brings in. They will never influence domestic or foreign policy.
I thought you showed enormous patience despite the gross failures of debate moderation and cheap (or irrelevant) shots of Ahmari. Three additional reflections, built in part from your writing elsewhere:
1) As you've written convincingly elsewhere it seems that the surge in Springfield, Ohio housing prices is substantial evidence of an increase in the collective good post immigration. I'd guess Ohio has far fewer housing regulations than most localities. So as I've read from you before re Los Angeles prices: The 100%+ increase is not a function of a need to build baby build so much as it is a sign of a genuine renaissance in Springfield thanks to immigration!
2) At roughly minute 52 you give the devastating rejoinder I was itching for in asking him to evaluate his own life experience. It must be a little socially uncomfortable to press his non-answer, the egregiousness of which was exacerbated when we learn his wife is also an immigrant. Outside of the (potentially?) ad hominem but still illuminating pursuit there, I do wish we would have a definition of "high skilled" versus "low skilled" labor he and others would let in the country and under which he'd exclude. (You touched on this when questioning just how high skilled natives in the US who make it through high school are!)
The fear of short term cultural, maybe even just localized cultural disruption is real and should be addressed and alleviated with a more overt strategy for integration beyond the-kids-will-speak-English. In so doing effectively we could help realize the global gains! But that's a different, very complex, debate topic.
Your writings have moved me to reconsider my positions on among other things: immigration, ADHD, and even whether my household should be using paper plates at dinner to enhance martial harmony. So thanks Bryan, I just upgraded to "Founder", keep up the good work!
Do immigrants to the UAE get to stay indefinitely after repeatedly violating the law? Do they get welfare benefits like immigrants in Europe and the US?
Expats like in any other country if they are permanent residents, guest workers if they are just there to work but not to live . When I worked in Iraq for two years straight putting up infrastructure, I wasn't an immigrant. When I lived in Croatia for three years not working but just relaxing, I wasn't an immigrant. Immigrants move to a country permanently (or intend permanency) and want to get both citizenship and become a member of that nation. That isn't an expat, guest worker, tourist, ambassador, nor an asylum seeker (who also are supposed to go home). Immigrants IMMIGRATE hence the root of the word.
For example, he could have probed, “If the only way to get open borders was to put power into the hands of a Sheikh Zayed, should we do so?” To which I would have candidly replied, “Probably.”
------------
In the other thread people scoffed when I said that you advocated dictatorship, but I noted that you've advocated for it several times before. Here we are again.
So basically it all comes down to this. You are willing to risk the downsides of dictatorship, in fact dictatorship of a very small group over a very large group they have nothing in common with and under massive inequality, and inherently unstable affair, in order to implement Open Borders.
You know the downsides of dictatorship. For every UAE there are plenty of Maos and the like. Even dictatorships that go well at first often degenerate or collapse later.
I have no clue what your implementation plan is to bring about a UAE style dictatorship in America. How do you plan to get the necessary constitutional amendments passed? What political constituency do you plan to call upon to bring about and maintain these changes?
Are there any differences between the dictatorship in context of the UAE and dictatorship as would have to be practice by large western democracies? Is it inherently easier to run a dictatorship being a city state sitting on a pile of oil in the desert and not needing to unlock any of the productive potential of its citizens because it can just buy such things from abroad?
The obvious reason to not empower Sheikh Zayed is because he is sponsoring a genocide in Sudan
https://time.com/7017127/sudan-darfur-crisis/
I can think of a very large democracy that is sponsoring a genocide (by a smaller one). In fact, I live in the large one.
From what I've read about the situation in Sudan, it seems considerably more clear-cut, and considerably more severe, than the situation in Israel.
The conflict in Sudan is between two military dictators who jointly ruled a brutal military junta before splitting over how to divide the spoils. If you think it's "considerably more clear-cut than the situation in Israel" you lost your mind.
I was referring to the genocide aspect.
10k-15k deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masalit_genocide
>100k deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide
Small quibble, but you are thinking of the son, Mohammed bin Zayed. Sheikh Zayed was the founding president, and he died in 2004.
The problem is an important one, though, and the fundamental issue with even a benevolent monarchy. You may get an incredible visionary like Sheikh Zayed. But then what?
Understanding that Mr. Caplan has argued the USA should have stayed a colony of the British King, it reasons that Mr. Caplan is agreeable to living under benevolent dictatorship. And wouldn't we all! What Mr. Caplan does not explain is how does one arrange to be guided by a benevolent dictator, and what does one do when one's dictator is a tyrant?
I agree that the Dubai system works well.
Unfortunately, because of the woke ideology currently holding sway in the West, such a system would never be politically palatable here.
- in Dubai you are only ever a temorarily tolerated guest
- there is no path to citizenship, no matter how long you live there or how much you invest in the country
- If you lose your job, you have a few weeks to leave the country, unless you own a home there
- they allocate jobs there based on nationality and gender - for example Muslims cannot get visas to be domestic staff, because they don't want Muslims working as servants
- unless you work in one of the free trade zones you are at the mercy of your local sponsor. My Sri Lankan houseboy (cleaner) had been living and working in the UAE for decades and built up a life there with his family, but he had to uproot and return to Sri Lanka with a few days notice because his sponsor didn't file his paperwork and didn't answer his phone
- if you bounce a check you go to jail and/or get kicked out of the country
- if a local takes a dislike to you he can get you in trouble for any number of things, for example it's technically not allowed to cohabit with your partner if you're not married. You have no recourse if they don't want you anymore
- locals and foreigners have totally different rights
- the UAE only takes in people who are useful to them, ie the very rich, professionals (aka "white niggers") and labourers or menial workers, and you're only allowed in AFTER you have have the confirmed job or show the money
This is why the system works so well for the UAE and for the foreigners who fit the bill, but none of this would be remotely acceptable to the craven politicians in the West with their fake morality and virtue-signalling.
Dude you’re literally describing a system where they have less rights than the Jim Crow south or apartheid South Africa. We’re far past “woke” at that point, we are describing a society completely beyond the pale of 99% of the publics Overton window.
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I’d like Bryan Caplan to explain why specifically Dubai is acceptable and, say, Jim Crow or Apartheid wasn’t acceptable. Is it because Dubai is much richer? But Dubai has the luxury of sitting on a huge amount of oil, which both the Jim Crow and Apartheid South Africa did not.
So, what is the meaningful difference here? Couldn’t a white Southerner back in, say, 1920 that however bad or unfair Jim Crow might be for blacks, living under it for blacks would still be a much better deal than living in Haiti or Sub-Saharan Africa, with these blacks even having the option of moving to the Northern US, where Jim Crow did not exist (though racially restrictive housing covenants did exist)?
Yes precisely. Which is why "open borders" is really vague here, as this could mean totally different things depending on the place and the citizenship laws. The real issue with immigration, which very few talk about, is the specific egalitarian social texture of western nation states, connected to the idea of territorial sovereignty etc., where the distinction between mere territorial resident and citizen of a given polity is obscured. The premise being that all people residing within a national territory should be formally (legally) equal, and additionally that this formal equality should result in material equality. Now when these ideas rose to prominence in the 19th century the world looked very different indeed.
This is really the weakness inherent in all merely economic analysis of immigration, i.e. it fails to grasp relevant political-social distinctions. I don't disagree with Caplan's main point though, and I would like for the West to become more like the UAE, but that would entail a lot more than simply open borders.
Yeah... blood and soil is the default mode of humanity.
Americans willfully ignore our declaration of independence which says that human rights are universal, and not the grant of the state.
Functionally, only crazy people still believe that. We legislate and act as if rights are something only Americans have.
Which is a laugh, because the guys who wrote the declaration were English when they wrote it.
The guys who wrote it considered themselves Americans. Which is interesting, because it means it has no relation to a state or citizenship.
I generally agree that UAE has one of the best and most humane system of immigration in the world.
But it feels disingenuous to ignore the specific model that makes it all work, and calling it "open borders". UAE has very selective migration, both on an individual, and an ethnic level. Ironically, unlike almost everyone else in the world, they discriminate against their own ethnicity; Arabs were disfavoured or expelled in the 1980s and 1990s because of the risks of pan-Arabic political activism and political Islam, higher quality, better behaved workers from outside the Arab world, and intra-Arab tensions around the first Gulf War.
TBH Sohrab Ahmari should have just push back that you aren't comparing likes. UAE doesn't have meaningful immigration, they have an effective open border guest worker program which isn't the same thing. In fact it's extremely hard to immigrate to the UAE to the point of impossibility.
Guest workers aren't immigrants, they go home eventually or become rich enough (extreme minority) to become resident expats. And if you think UAE is ever going to allow jus sanguinis for Filipinos tourist's, I got a bridge to sell you.
PS: That isn't to say I don't agree with your point the US should have an equally robust guest worker program but we don't and it would require not just significant legislation changes but SCOTUS precedent overruling as well to make that happen as first up we would have to get rid of jus sanguinis.
Are you trying to argue that 88% of the population being foreign born is good, but if you waved a wand and made temporary worker status permanent, it would somehow be terrible? What is the causal mechanism there? Do the same people become lazy or violent because their status has changed?
The threat of visa revocation keeps them pliable and because they are employed, they don't suck up social services as the second they become disabled, retire, unemployed, etc they get shipped home. Imagine 88% of Americans paying social security but only the other 12% getting to reap it. Likewise SNAP, Medicare, FAFSA, etc. we could solve our native poverty problem overnight.
Yes, a system where a lot of people work for you and you get all the benefits is quite appealing for you. We fought a whole civil war over it. Then a less hot civil war over civil rights in the 60s.
California also passed prop 187 in an overwhelming landslide only to have a judge stay it three days later and now CA is the sort of place that would never pass such a law.
Westerners just aren’t going to accept living in an apartheid state. It doesn’t matter if the migrants “want to be there” or not. They would certainly want to be there AND get more for themselves, and it’s inevitable that someone is going to come along and harvest that desire when they make up 88% of the population.
The threat of visa revocation keeps them more or less pliable than the threat of jail?
Jail isn't a threat hence why nearly half of Americans have spent time there and illegals keep coming. A first world jail is still better than their refuge camp / 17th century fishing village in the jungle back home plus hey, you get to stay after your release from jail. Besides jail gets due process, deportation doesn't.
Why would we give much regard as to the suffering of the Indians in India? Let them suffer, I say. It be none of our business. Our business should be solely that of our own happiness, and how much value we can extract from immigrant workers.
And in the case of America, there is no need to resort to Indians as migrant workers. You can easily import them from China or South-East Asia. There is a vast labour pool aboard in Asia, without needing to draw from India and Pakistan.
You could've mentioned that Ahmari's friend and fellow Integralist, Adrian Vermeule, has advocated for Catholic priority in immigration as part of an express plan to violate the oath he took when appointed to the ACUS, overthrow the US government, and replace it with the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When compared with Vermeule's vision, yours is downright modest.
ACUS?
Administrative Conference of the United States
Do the immigrants to UAE really consider themselves citizens though? Or are most of them just essentially guest workers in a fancy extended stay hotel who have no intention of establishing any loyalty or permanent roots in the country?
Immigration in the UAE, where I have been living for 10 years is highly controlled. Similar to Switzerland. You need a working permit, therefore a job to become a resident. It is not open border per se, it is rightly controlled. Companies are certainly free to hire foreign people are not allowed to enter the country and stay indefinitely without a job. And you don’t live on welfare because there is none.
The welfare argument is bad argument. Immigrants contribute to the economy way more they take out in welfare by making goods and services cheaper for the native population. I don’t care if some of the immigrants are on welfare if my childcare and house services cost are 2x cheaper
Bryan, can you please tell me why exactly Dubai is acceptable but Jim Crow and Apartheid are not? Dubai is much wealthier, sure, but that’s due to its extraordinarily massive oil reserves, which neither the Jim Crow South nor Apartheid South Africa actually had.
Blacks in the Jim Crow South probably lived better than most blacks worldwide did. Thus, couldn’t a white Southerner in, say, 1910 or 1920 have used this argument to defend the Jim Crow system?
"if the U.S. allowed it’s foreign-born share to rise until it matched UAE’s, we’d admit an additional 2.4 billion foreigners"
What could possibly go wrong?
https://jclester.substack.com/p/immigration-and-libertarianism
While the UAE may have looked unpromising from the outside back in 1971, there were cultural and historical reasons why Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid's vision found fertile ground to bloom.
Before they found oil, they were pearl divers and seafaring traders. They didn't have much, but because of that, for well over a thousand years, they sailed their little dhows all over the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, connecting Indonesia, India, and Tanzania with the Arabian peninsula and everything in between. Sure, they were orthodox Muslims, but that much travel will broaden any mind, and they understood the value of free trade and commerce.
Just look at the symbols they put on their money. Falcons everywhere, a historic market (souq, on the 5 AED bill), and a dhow, on the 20 AED bill.
You can either have an open society or open borders. When people come to the United States, they can become citizens, vote, lobby the government, etc. In the UAE, even your average Emirati can’t do these things. It doesn’t matter how many thirdworlders/Filipinos/Indians the UAE brings in. They will never influence domestic or foreign policy.
I thought you showed enormous patience despite the gross failures of debate moderation and cheap (or irrelevant) shots of Ahmari. Three additional reflections, built in part from your writing elsewhere:
1) As you've written convincingly elsewhere it seems that the surge in Springfield, Ohio housing prices is substantial evidence of an increase in the collective good post immigration. I'd guess Ohio has far fewer housing regulations than most localities. So as I've read from you before re Los Angeles prices: The 100%+ increase is not a function of a need to build baby build so much as it is a sign of a genuine renaissance in Springfield thanks to immigration!
2) At roughly minute 52 you give the devastating rejoinder I was itching for in asking him to evaluate his own life experience. It must be a little socially uncomfortable to press his non-answer, the egregiousness of which was exacerbated when we learn his wife is also an immigrant. Outside of the (potentially?) ad hominem but still illuminating pursuit there, I do wish we would have a definition of "high skilled" versus "low skilled" labor he and others would let in the country and under which he'd exclude. (You touched on this when questioning just how high skilled natives in the US who make it through high school are!)
The fear of short term cultural, maybe even just localized cultural disruption is real and should be addressed and alleviated with a more overt strategy for integration beyond the-kids-will-speak-English. In so doing effectively we could help realize the global gains! But that's a different, very complex, debate topic.
Your writings have moved me to reconsider my positions on among other things: immigration, ADHD, and even whether my household should be using paper plates at dinner to enhance martial harmony. So thanks Bryan, I just upgraded to "Founder", keep up the good work!
What does Bryan think would happen if the US "admitted an additional 2.4 billion foreigners"?
Assume we could do so gradually in a way that was logistically feasible?
For the US, the Mariel boatlift was the single biggest surge in foreign workers. There were no negative economic repurcussions: https://www.ubs.com/microsites/nobel-perspectives/en/latest-economic-questions/economics-society/articles/immigration-and-labor-market-a-mariel-boatlift-study.html
But no one I've heard is advocating for that. I'm not sure 2.4 billion people even want to come here, though it might be close.
Do immigrants to the UAE get to stay indefinitely after repeatedly violating the law? Do they get welfare benefits like immigrants in Europe and the US?
UAE doesn't have meaningful immigration, that's why using them here is disingenuous.
So what do you call all the non-Emeratis in the UAE?
Expats like in any other country if they are permanent residents, guest workers if they are just there to work but not to live . When I worked in Iraq for two years straight putting up infrastructure, I wasn't an immigrant. When I lived in Croatia for three years not working but just relaxing, I wasn't an immigrant. Immigrants move to a country permanently (or intend permanency) and want to get both citizenship and become a member of that nation. That isn't an expat, guest worker, tourist, ambassador, nor an asylum seeker (who also are supposed to go home). Immigrants IMMIGRATE hence the root of the word.