Bryan Caplan’s latest Substack post, “Reflections on United Arab Emirates,” Bet on It, October 21, 2024, is excellent. It’s all about his experience in the UAE and how it informs his thinking on open borders. His bottom line is hard to summarize but his points #2 and #3 come close.
Point #2:
The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born. That’s the highest share of any country on Earth. Why is the share so high? Because UAE is closer to open borders than any other country on Earth. They don’t just welcome petroleum engineers and architects. They welcome drivers, maids, janitors, waiters, and clerks. They don’t just welcome Europeans and East Asians. They welcome South Asians, Pacific Islanders, North Africans, and plenty of sub-Saharan Africans, too. I chatted with workers from both Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. Yes, would-be migrant workers face a government approval process, so the border is not 100% open. But if you want to work hard to make a better life for yourself, your prospects of landing a work visa are decent no matter how humble your credentials.
Point #3:
Abu Dhabi and Dubai are living proof that Michael Clemens’ “Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk” is literal truth. Both cities look like Coruscant from Star Wars. They are absolute marvels: Gleaming cities of the future where humanity gathers to produce massive wealth. And without mass immigration, almost none of this could have been built! They need foreigners to help them run the petroleum industry. They need foreigners to build their skyscrapers, malls, and mansions. And they need foreigners to run their hotels, restaurants, and stores.
The article, not the title of the article, is literal truth. There aren’t actually trillion dollar bills, except in Zimbabwe. But the article by Clemens argues, successfully in my view, that allowing much more immigration would create trillions of dollars of economic output annually.
The whole piece is well worth reading. It’s Bryan Caplan at his best. It’s informed, filled with data, analytically solid, and completely lacking in social desirability bias.
One new thing I learned: “Homosexuality is illegal… but no one has been arrested for it since 2015.” Think about that. You couldn’t have said that in Britain in, say, 1960. (Cue Alan Turing.) You couldn’t have said in the United States in, say, 1975. (Think about Stonewall.) So that one fact is very striking.
Bryan’s post has received more comments than his usual Substack post. Many of them are informed.
The main thing I learned from the comments, which was missing from Bryan’s post, is that the UAE doesn’t have open borders; it has a guest worker program. Bryan wouldn’t deny this; it’s just that he didn’t mention the term “guest worker.”
Here’s one thing I’m wondering about. One commenter, “Bacon Commander,” said, “If you lose your job, you go home.” Is that literally true? Wouldn’t you be given, say, 2 months, to find another job?
READER COMMENTS
Monte
Oct 21 2024 at 10:25pm
30 days, depending on the particular visa you’ve been issued. I’d all in on UAE immigration policy. Very stringent vetting process. Limited number of visas issued on an annual basis depending on labor needs. Crime at every level severely dealt with at all levels. No welfare for non-citizens.
Matthias
Oct 21 2024 at 11:42pm
30 days is also the limit for Singapore’s employment pass, ie the white collar working visa.
Other visa types here might have different amounts of time you have to find a new job.
(For an employment pass, you’d also need the new employer to sponsor a new employment pass. The employment pass visa is bound to your job.)
Peter
Oct 22 2024 at 12:47am
Having lived in Doha and spending a lot of time in Dubai, “Crime at every level severely dealt with at all levels” is a ridiculous statement. Emirates, and likewise Qataris, can literally get away with murder if it’s a non-citizen. And let’s not even talk about the thousands of royals (Fifth Cousin Fourth Removed to the Sheik, etc). All levels applies only to your class and each class has different enforced laws in practice. For example as a white Western I could openly drink alcohol, rent company, and eat during Ramadan during the day. My Filipino “friend” couldn’t buy alcohol ever, couldn’t eat (but could drink) during Ramadan, and her male equivalents weren’t allowed in many clubs. My Qatari neighbor’s kids used to beat their Sri Lankan maid for fun including forcing her to eat off the floor, hitting her with sticks, and burning her with cigarettes daily while their parents encouraged them. I knew a African construction worker who died on the worksite as they weren’t allowed to even drink water during Ramadan yet still had to work all day in the hot sun.
But sure crime was strictly dealt with if it was across classes upwards or within the same class. Dubai was no different, just better hid.
Monte
Oct 22 2024 at 1:50am
Not having the lived experience that you do, I can only go by what I read as a matter of record. That being said, I’d still prefer to have a U.S. immigration policy like the one presumed in the UAE (absent the mistreatment and violation of human rights, of course).
Jim Glass
Oct 21 2024 at 10:36pm
Quicky researching the UAE immigration policy online indicates it welcomes immigrants to work. Foreigners can obtain a two-month visa to find work. Upon finding work the employer’s name goes on the work residency permit stamped on the worker’s passport, providing right of residency. The worker then can bring in family members, A worker who loses a job can obtain a 6-month job-seeker visa giving time to find another one. If a husband dies or a couple divorce, a wife whose residency was sponsored through her husband’s work status is given a one-year visa to find a job or another sponsor.
This is a long way from an open border of the “everybody welcome!” kind that has led to the dramatic rise of drug running, gang violence and right-wing political parties across the Scandinavian states. Yet again, it’s who is immigrating and why that makes the big difference.
If the USA today had an “open borders to work” policy of the UAE kind, with an employer stamped on each immigrant’s passport, then Trump couldn’t damn them in every speech as being criminal, deadbeat, pet cannibals. They’d just be job stealers.
Peter
Oct 22 2024 at 12:52am
Yeah, Americans like to conveniently overlook there is no birthright citizenship nor a pathway to citizenship, you can work there for 40 years but you are retiring back home unless you are rich enough to buy property (gives you a perm residency visa) or do what most expats do across all of Asia, just take a flight out for thirty minutes and then get back on the same plane every couple months to reset your visa forever as, unlike Europe, they don’t require a cool down period.
Matthias
Oct 22 2024 at 1:06am
Why would having a job keep me from eating pets?
Laurentian
Oct 22 2024 at 2:29am
Ah yes, enlightened despotism will work this time. Well as long as they will do what Bryan Caplan wants and won’t throw him in jail if he complains that they are doing something he doesn’t like. Very sophisticated and modern thinking that this.
This seems awful lot like all those visitors to Stalinist Russia and Maoist China returning with glowing praise.
Also interesting how absolute monarchy is good now.
Also the claim that the UAE is a good rebuttal to nativism bizarre. It is an absolute monarchy with a generous welfare state to the native minority and an overwhelming majority not being citizens. How exactly is the US supposed to become like this? Oh and it is a Petro state supported by foreign governments such as the US.
Doesn’t strike me as very sustainable system. One bad ruler or discontent from the natives or a movement for civil rights from the guest workers could easily topple the system. Also this requires a lot of police state tactics to keep the population in line.
So I guess freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association don’t matter any more.
Fazal Majid
Oct 22 2024 at 3:50am
The UAE ranks higher than Israel on Transparency International’s corruption index, both just below France and well above Saudi Arabia, so the form of government doesn’t seem much correlated with corruption (except for the fact all the top-ranked countries are democracies).
Fazal Majid
Oct 22 2024 at 3:59am
Some self-proclaimed libertarians’ fondness for dictatorships and worse, whether Pinochet or in this case the Emirati long-term-greedy kleptocracies, shows how little actual principle lies behind this mood affiliation.
One of my cousins was Jamal Khashoggi’s widow’s lawyer. He was nabbed by the Abu Dhabi secret police while in transit via Dubai, despite being a US citizen, and spent several months in gulag. He was eventually released (no thanks to the supine Biden administration) after being stripped of most of his financial assets, his health wrecked and unable to work due to PTSD. The Emiratis may be more sophisticated than the Saudis, having learned well from their former British colonial masters, but they run as Orwellian and brutal police state as any.
Mactoul
Oct 22 2024 at 6:03am
But they do attract millions of willing workers. But you must be politically quiet.
It is not a bad deal for the poor Asians and subcontinentals.
You have much better political and civil rights in Europe and America but it is very difficult for a poor Indian to move to these places.
Mactoul
Oct 22 2024 at 2:45am
UAE also seems to select the country of origin of the guest workers. You won’t find many from sub-Saharan Africa or poorer Arab countries. The Emirs select for a docile guest workers.
There is a lot of unemployment in Egypt, not to mention Syria but these people are missing in UAE and missing for a very good reasons. They aren’t likely to be as docile as Sri Lankans or Filipinos and much more likely to claim equality with the natives and likely to get into political mischief.
Kuwait used to have a lot of Palestinians but they rooted for Saddam and were all expelled in 1991.
Fazal Majid
Oct 22 2024 at 4:03am
There’s no reason to think sub-Saharan workers will be any more boisterous than Filipinos or Indians. Arab societies can be very racist towards blacks, and in many dialects the word for black is the same as the word for slave.
Andrew_FL
Oct 22 2024 at 8:29am
I for one do not want to live in a country where eighty percent of residents are foreign national non citizens.
Monte
Oct 22 2024 at 11:37am
Arbeit Macht Frei?
Warren Platts
Oct 22 2024 at 4:36pm
Yes. Nauseating….
steve
Oct 23 2024 at 11:43am
Would like to reinforce what Peter said. Law is selectively enforced based upon your nationality and income status. I lived in Saudi Arabia for a year and that time they had pay scales that were based upon your nationality. It was also very clear that manual labor was not something most Saudis were interested in and it was largely done by foreign nationals. The favorite joke among the filipinos working there was about sex, as follows.
Is sex work or fun?
You get hot and sweaty and the Saudis actually let us do it. Must be work!
Steve
TGGP
Oct 23 2024 at 1:42pm
You couldn’t have said in the United States in, say, 1975. (Think about Stonewall.)
Stonewall wasn’t a matter of people being arrested for homosexuality. It was an unlicensed bar which had operated for a long time via its Mafia owners bribing the police to continue operating, and got raided (unusually, without a tip-off from bribed police this time). Bowers v. Hardwick & Lawrence v. Texas are cases of people being charged with homosexuality, and those were both later than 1975.
David Henderson
Oct 23 2024 at 3:59pm
Thanks. Some history I didn’t know. I was basically thinking about how nasty the cops were to homosexuals.
But your statement, “Bowers v. Hardwick & Lawrence v. Texas are cases of people being charged with homosexuality, and those were both later than 1975” allows me to make the point even more strongly.
I can now say, “You couldn’t have said in the United States in, say, 1984.”
Glenn Ammons
Oct 28 2024 at 11:59pm
Are there any immigrants or children of immigrants who have achieved fame or wealth in the UAE? That story is so common in the US that it’s a cliché.
David Henderson
Oct 29 2024 at 12:12am
Good question. I don’t know the answer.
Comments are closed.