zlacker

I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a US/European passport, so I didn't lead an extra privalaged life there.

Here's what you can hear about the USA.

1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading to mass exploitation

2)Structural racism

3)Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses.

4)Rich consumers pushing environmental and human rights issues to poor countries where people are exploited to build your $1000 phone and $250 shoe.

5)Lots of places where if you go and say "I'm an Atheist, Jesus is not God" will likely result in violence against you

6)Corrupt legal system, heavily favoring corporations and rich people

7)Absurdly hot in parts of it, Absurdly cold in other parts of it.

>I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth.

Lots of people probably feel that way about the USA based on the news.

UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), and other countries in that region, have a lot of issues. I'll be the first to admit it having had second class status there. But I can't help but feel that a lot of Western news outlets love to bash that part of the world because it plays into how a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole.

>>apohn+(OP)
"a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole." I wouldn't say that's my bias - I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. However, clear problems that are different from what I'm used to do make me uncomfortable

>>apohn+(OP)
I don't know about number 7 - most of the USA is actually pretty nicely temperate. There are some exceptions like death valley (3000 sq mi) or the chihuahan dessert (about 25000 sq mi in the USA), or some parts of Alaska, but we're talking about a very small area of a 3.7 million sq mi country. If those aren't your thing, I do recommend skipping them. UAE is only 32000 sq mi and it's all very very hot.

Otherwise that's all fairly accurate. But Disney world is pretty damn great.

>>apohn+(OP)
> Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses.

Some things seem to be universal.

>>ludama+j3
>I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming.

I'm not making any assumptions about you in this post, but just making a comment.

I think the challenge here is that "welcoming" is relative to who you are, including your financial status and skin color.

There are countries people talk about on HN and Reddit which are super welcoming, everybody is friendly, great for remote work, taking an inexpensive vacation, etc.

I once traveled to one of those countries with a white friend. It was comical to see how differently we'd be treated even though we'd be walking next to each other on the road or sitting together at a restaurant. We're clearly friends and hanging out. He'd get his ass kissed and I'd be treated like a non-entity. Our English, human interaction skills, and financial status were pretty much the same. It's not like anybody could tell his passport or mine by looking at us.

Again, UAE and other countries in that region have lots of problems. So this isn't negating what you are saying.

>>apohn+(OP)
I guess the issue for me is that there are places where people greatly exaggerate their claims, and there are places where those seemingly exaggerated claims are legitimate.

Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE, either editorial or comments from expats. Maybe from insta influencers who wanted to pad their hollow "luxury life" existance.

>>apohn+(OP)
In the face of all of this, the US remains the most desirable place to emigrate to. The logical conclusion here is that the impression you have from news is not the complete picture. The US is massive and diverse. If you go by the county level, the US contains the highest HDI areas in the world.

>>Workac+58
>Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE

There are 10 million people living in the UAE, 90% of which are expats. Lots of them live comfortable lives in the sense that they do what most people do - get jobs, have kids, do their daily routine, meet their friends, and all that regular stuff. They live normal regular lives and find fulfillment in those things.

It's no different than anywhere else in the world. If you live in UAE you'll find plenty of positive stories.

One thing I always laugh about is that my parents (who live outside of the USA) will text me asking about housing prices in my area, bad weather (that happened in a different state), some protest downtown (that I didn't even hear about), riots from police brutality and if it affects me, etc. But nobody seems to know that my neighborhood had a pot-luck where all the kids were having fun and the parents got a chance to meet each other and get to know the new people in the community.

It's no different living outside of UAE and hearing about UAE.

>>apohn+(OP)
Also, 8: almost any idiot can own a gun & ammunition, and far too many idiots do.

>>apohn+pf
How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions, is the greater point that ought to be discussed. (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Iraq, you name it).

If 10 percent of the country's population is native, they are surely benefiting from subsidized education, housing, preferential (read: racist) employment, free land, and so on.

It's VERY different from most places in the world, except for other sister nations that depend on oil wealth and have the same luxuries in immigrant exploitation.

>>knownj+ed
there's a curious fact that i see getting overlooked in every one of these discussion. The US - for all its faults, remains a society capable of deep change, confronting its own crimes and one that is fundamentally built around inclusion. all this is to say that the problems of US society as documented and that one is free to read about them if one chooses.

This is not the case in the Arab world, for example. I grew up there and have seen horrors of which there is no documented evidence.

You are correct - despite all its flaws, the USA remains a magnet for talent from around the world.

>>apohn+47
Thanks for this comment. As a white-ish person who has mostly traveled with other white people, I was totally blind to this and made the same judgement: that these countries are just inherently welcoming to foreigners.

>>knownj+ed
Eh - Dubai is a lot more diverse than the US. A similar comment could be written about it.

>>zaphod+m3
Texas is 100+ for three months of the year, and Minneapolis had an average of about 10 degrees this January, with lows in the -10s, I believe. And I think Mississippi in the summer is probably pretty miserable, it's probably as close to 100+ as the humidity will let it. I think most of the American West is about 100 in the summer and cold in the winter, due to not having the ocean to mitigate the temperature.

>>apohn+(OP)
I find it pretty hilarious that point #7 is even a thing. Coming from (assuming UAE) an area that experiences +100 °F weather for half of the year lol…

>>Workac+58
This whole thread is ridiculous. The "I've never heard..." statements are merely statements about the diversity (or lack thereof) sources people get their information from.

I've lived in the Middle East. I know plenty of people who live there, or lived there, and love it. Even those who were forced to leave. I know plenty of others who work very hard to get a good white collar job there, and most who succeed did not regret it.

And this is with full acknowledgment of all the bad things people talk about.

Let it just be a signal that there's more to it than you see. Even more, people don't seem to understand how crappy much of the rest of the world is that Dubai is such a desirable place to live. I know lots of people who would have been stuck in extremely low social mobility situations in their home countries, and who only managed to go up in social class by moving to one of these Middle Eastern countries, and earning good money and by doing honest work - the last of which wasn't an option in their own countries.

>>zaphod+m3
The northern tier of states, especially inland, are quite cold and snowy for months out of the year. If you're a local, you're used to it and likely enjoy aspects of it. But for someone who isn't familiar with it, months of regular temperatures below freezing, ice and snow, and frequent drops to well below zero Farenheit, are pretty miserable.

>>apohn+(OP)
You omitted civil asset forfeiture laws and qualified immunity for police.

>>apohn+(OP)
Qatar is not Dubai, but when was the last time you heard of 6,500 migrant workers dying building a group of soccer stadiums/olympic village/large public works in the USA? That is to say, that region's rep comes from a bit more than stereotypes or a filtering bubble.

>>Beetle+Iy
>I know lots of people who would have been stuck in extremely low social mobility situations in their home countries, and who only managed to go up in social class by moving to one of these Middle Eastern countries, and earning good money and by doing honest work - the last of which wasn't an option in their own countries.

Honestly, I think this is a really difficult topic to discuss on the internet. It's too easy to misinterpret any "Their situation is awful, but was even worse before" as some sort of a justification, rather than seeing it as just being a statement of how things really are for a lot of people on this planet.

Due to where my family is originally from, I know people in the labor class in UAE who basically scarified their lives and bodies so their children could get an education and a white collar job. It was an terrible choice they had to make. Many people are forced to make the same choices in Western countries, but it's not in the news to the same degree. It's hard to have a rational discourse about life when the choices people have are starvation or suicide in their own country, or a lifetime of manual labor in a foreign country for wages that do nothing for them, but a lot for their families back home.

>>apohn+VX
Your example is a good one. However, I must emphasize that there are a lot of examples that are not in the extremes. People who are not as "low" as laborers but, say, school teachers. Their pay can be well enough that it makes a major improvement to the opportunities their kids have as opposed to had they been a school teacher in their own countries.

It's hard to get a visa to move to the US and teach at an elementary school. Yet you can do that in the Middle East.

>>titano+rt
Try dressing like a slob and borderline bum next time you visit the city next to where you live, then do the same dressed in an expensive tailored suit and matching watch(just get some gaudy knockoff on amazon, its not like anyone can actually tell). The difference in how you are treated is just nuts. Its not that these countries are inherently welcoming to foreigners, its that the service sector of pretty much all countries are welcoming to people who are very wealthy. (or rather people who can plausibly fake it)

>>apohn+(OP)
Does the USA:

1) Arrest you without telling you why? 2) Give you no access to a lawyer? 3) Give you no access to translation? 4) Have a debt system in prison, forcing to pay with money you don't have? 5) Retroactively apply laws? 6) Extend imprisonment indefinitely on made-up charges? 7) Ruled by a monarchy?

All the things you list boil down to pointing out the US system is imperfect, not that the system is bad by its very nature and design. UAE cannot be fixed without changing its ruling and legal system. The US can be fixed by improving its existing systems to make them more fair.

Also, the reason you point the failing of the US systems is because media is reporting on those failures. Not foreign media, local ones.

>>Beetle+Pb1
Agreed. My comment was mostly because most of the articles people see about work issues in the Middle East are always about the labor class. At least in the West, you don't really see articles about teachers, shopkeepers, business people, and basically countless other professions where people can make a much better living in the Middle East in comparison to their home countries. Not to mention, it can be much safer.

It wasn't even two decades ago that even professions like doctors, dentists, IT did better economically in the Middle East for many people in comparison to their home countries. Engineers making good money in India/China and not working for a consulting company is a pretty recent thing. A lot of that is changing now as other Asian countries are developing economically, but it's easy to forget how things were even a decade ago.

>It's hard to get a visa to move to the US and teach at an elementary school.

Plus, at least the visa situation in the Middle East is clear. It's not that difficult to get a work visa if you have a job offer and you can work as long as you have a job or until you retire. The visa situation in the US is...no comment :)

>>apohn+47
Out of curiosity, which country was that?

>>fishta+Gm
> How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions

Given that all the Indians I know think positively of Dubai, I'm inclined to think that it's very few of them, because surely they'd hear about slave conditions from people who went there before anyone else.

If you've ever been to Dubai, you'd know it's full of people from the subcontinent. Why would it be so full of them if a substantial fraction of them are kept as slaves? It just doesn't make sense. It's mostly the Western white crowd, as opposed to non-white immigrant populations, who think these sorts of things about Dubai.

edit: example of what I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801

Dismissing all those people looking for a better life as "slave labor" just doesn't make sense.

>>dspill+Hl
Fortunately, we live in a country where idiots have the same rights as those who think are smarter than them.

I, for one, am glad we aren't going back to racist gating of citizenship privileges...behind literacy tests, or economic means

>>apohn+47
If I like to travel I am less likely to focus on "wanting places to be shitholes", that's all I meant in your quoted text

>>zaphod+m3
It's not about whether tge statements are representative. It's about whether people believe them. It just so happens the statements are technically true.

>>IG_Sem+sb2
I wasn't suggesting idiots have different rights to anyone else, or in fact that I myself am not an idiot.

I, for one, am glad I live on a continent where mass shootings are a rare occurrence. One-off shootings too, and people accidentally hurting themselves with the things, for that matter.

>>selest+T52
Under no circumstances did I claim that "all those people looking for a better life" as "slave labor". I asked an open ended and relatively rhetorical question.

Is 1% acceptable in your book vs. the majority of the workforce being in slave-labor-like conditions?

>>fishta+Kk6
> Is 1% acceptable in your book vs. the majority of the workforce being in slave-labor-like conditions?

It's not ideal, but yeah. I definitely wouldn't look down on an entire city for not being able to root out that last 1% of corrupt employers.

>>Beetle+Rw
Dubai is not more diverse than the US. The largest disapora of essentially every other nation on Earth reside in the US.