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Comment by telesilla | Hacker News Reader

I've spent time in Qatar. It was weird, as a western woman I felt completely alien. Not just because of the desert dust and the stark stark glassy steel city that suddenly rises from it. Mostly we shuttled between a compound and fancy hotels, malls and yacht clubs. And my friends I was visiting were not even rich, just working regular expat jobs (in petro or gas of course, helicopter to work some days..). Those I know who stay there are going just a little mad. But slowly rich. Is it worth it?

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This describes my time with expats in Venezuela pretty well (~2000?). At some point, you realize every place you visit is surrounded by 12' walls topped with razor wire. I guess you wilfully ignore the strangeness if you have to live there, but it was really disquieting to visit.

I was born to an expat family in neighbouring Bahrain, it was a similar experience. Overall, I would say it is worth it if you are poorer or looking to make money. It's a place where you can grow rich but later on your family leaves for a better place.

Off topic but are expat and immigrant the same concept?

Expat is a Western immigrant in non-Western country

From what I understand (not native speaker) yes but from different points of view. You are an expat out of a country. You are an immigrant into a country.

So usually you are both.

You are confusing expat with emigrant.

expat has the implications that you're only there for a while and will return home.

The true concept for immigration would be emigrant (emigres) but this doesn't seem to have popular English usage nowadays.

We would describe people by their packages:

1. Sent by company to work in another country with a full package: expat

2. Decided to work in another country doing white collar skilled or semi-skilled labor without a package but with no intention of (or ability to) staying: half pat

3. Poorer version of 2 doing less skilled or unskilled labor: migrant worker (not a lot of difference, actually)

4. Working in a foreign country on an actual visa that leads to at least permanent residency: immigrant

Note that China (where I was) doesn't really allow for 4, but there are definitely people who move there with the intention of staying (though their chance of ever getting a green card is very slim if they are not Han or a famous basketball star). I was in the 2 bucket, had a few lucky friends in the 1 bucket. The 3rd bucket was handled by migrant workers from out of province/city (so not technically migrant workers like we have in the states, but without residency via the hukou system they are exploited roughly the same).

Incidentally, the engineers China sends to Africa and south east Asia and other countries are definitely expats (though their packages aren't that big), the workers they send to do construction in the same areas are more like migrant workers. So it is not just a distinction made for westerners.

Mad in which way? The people I've heard about (professionally) who went to continue their career in Dubai, I couldn't really respect anymore. It's hard to understand choosing to work in that place.

Mad in the way I imagine any colonialist ex-pat going mad, as empires threaten each other around you and you put on a white shirt and suffer through the heat. The same that happens and has happened since merchants and wealth-seekers have isolated themselves so much from reality (protected by the butlers and maids and drivers and security guards, never setting a foot in a local's house, neither a rich nor poor one) that finally they go all in and become regime apologetics.

Reminds me of Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant"

People I know who’ve done it:

• getting a drink (alcohol) is a major pain. Either underground, or some elite venue where rules don’t apply - and the jeopardy that goes with that. Really want to spill wine on a Prince? And there are a lot of princes.

• feeling of underlying state level threat if you mess up

• some workers are treated as literal slaves openly

• getting your money home can be troublesome. Check out Dubai airport and abandoned super cars

People who tend to fare better are very career focused and can ignore the above. Also if you or your partner are into the five star life.

Edit: formatting

To be fair, wasn’t the fancy-car abandonment thing just a result of people taking on crazy debt in a country that still has debtors prison, and then bailing out when they were predictably close to that jeopardy?

Seems like rational behavior from both sides in the end.

For sure. With a healthy percentage of “I have £100k and I can only bring £10k before I need to declare tax and my employer canned the project and my visa. Allow the car”

those who left their supercars at the airport didnt have any money to send home - they were virtually bankrupt.

also, "there are a lot of princes" sure youre not mixing saudi with qatar here?

4000 Princes, over 10k members of the royal family, Saudi.

> getting a drink (alcohol) is a major pain. Either underground, or some elite venue where rules don’t apply - and the jeopardy that goes with that. Really want to spill wine on a Prince? And there are a lot of princes.

In Dubai you can get a drink just about anywhere.

> getting your money home can be troublesome. Check out Dubai airport and abandoned super cars

It’s really not difficult to transfer money out of Dubai.

Those cars are abandoned by people who couldn’t make their payments and fled the country.

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