In response to, or inspired by, the commentary by Gavin du Venage about the possible “extinction” of expatriate workers in the developing regions of the world, which we examined in this blog post yesterday, a UAE citizen has done his own “think” piece for The National.

In this piece, an Emirati named Khalid Al Omeri suggests that from its creation the UAE (rather like the United States) has taken in huge numbers of expatriates to help build a country that is in a hurry to develop, and he suggests that a future in which expats are “extinct” here would be unnatural and unfortunate.

Some thoughts:

The author notes that the UAE already features demographics in which 80 to 90 percent of everyone living in the country is a foreigner. The most recent statistics seem to indicate that Emiratis (citizens) make up only about 15 percent of the population, or not quite 1 million of the 7 million or so people living here.

He concedes the role that expats have played in vaulting the country from, essentially, a hand-to-mouth existence half a century ago … to the current status as one of the richest countries in the world.

I find both of those notions remarkable. Consider, for example, how U.S. citizens would feel if they were swamped by foreigners in a matter of a few decades — to the tune of 85 percent foreigners to 15 percent citizens. Consider, too, how grudging we Yanks often are to recognize the contributions of immigrants — from building railroads to digging coal and picking fruit.

Two areas of disconnect between a direct UAE-vs.-USA comparison spring to mind.

1. Nearly all people who entered the United States legally (and many who did not) were able to become citizens with all the rights of someone whose ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. Here in the UAE, citizenship is given out so rarely — even among those who have lived and worked here for decades — as to be newsworthy. Man-bites-dog sort of stuff.  Thus, the Emirati “acceptance” of foreigners always has an undertow of “but we can throw you all out tomorrow, if we make that decision.”

2. The second aspect of what is an otherwise liberal view of expats is, at root, intelligent pragmatism. The modern Emirati may aspire to (and may soon take) the managerial or high-tech jobs currently held by foreigners, especially Westerners. Al Omeri does not specifically address the issue of Emiratis and blue-collar jobs in his piece, but the idea of Emiratis working on the scaffolds of rising skyscrapers or staffing the service industry … well, that is not going to happen. Middle-class America will pick strawberries before Emiratis will work in construction or as waiters and taxi drivers — the sorts of jobs that sponge up perhaps half the population of the country. All of them expats.

He concedes that certain categories of expats may become “extinct” in this country, and I think he has in mind in particular the eager-beaver entrepreneurs who arrived with grand ideas (some of them actually sound) and a slick line of patter in the pre-2008 boom.

Ultimately, he suggests that the UAE without expats would be a less interesting place, and a downright unnatural one. Certainly, any Emirati born in the past 30 years would have to concede that, even grudgingly.

So, expats in the world … expats in the UAE. All of this is food for sober thought and analysis, especially among those of us in the expat community here in the UAE.