zlacker

>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+(OP)
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.

>>Beetle+Ud
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 :)