The Gulf States Fill Jobs Overnight: The UK Can't Fill Them at All. Here's Why
The UK has turned immigration into a political battleground - The Gulf has turned it into an economic engine
For years, the United Kingdom has been having the wrong conversation about immigration. The debate is loud, angry, and dominated by slogans about “taking back control.” Meanwhile, in the Gulf - across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman, the conversation is much quieter, much more practical, and much more effective.
The Gulf states have built their modern economies on the backs of foreign workers. Over 30 million expatriates live and work in these six countries. In some of them, foreign nationals make up more than 85% of the private sector workforce. They come from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Egypt, Europe, and North America. They fill every role imaginable, from construction labourers to hospital consultants to AI engineers.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: the system works, at least in terms of getting jobs filled. The Gulf states do not have the chronic staff shortages that plague the UK’s hospitals, hotels, and tech firms. They do not have endless political rows about whether migrants are “taking” jobs or “straining” public services. They treat immigration as a tool - a practical, unglamorous tool, for keeping the economy moving.
The UK, by contrast, has turned immigration into a weapon. Politicians use it to win votes. Newspapers use it to sell copies. And in the process, British businesses struggle to find staff, productivity stays flat, and the economy loses ground to competitors who are less squeamish about hiring from abroad.
This is not a moral argument. It is a practical one. And if the UK wants to fix its productivity problem and fill its millions of vacancies, it needs to look at what the Gulf does differently, and learn a few hard lessons.
Two Different Ways of Seeing the Same Problem
The first thing to understand is that the UK and the Gulf start from completely different places.
The UK: Immigration as a Threat to Be Managed
In the UK, immigration is seen primarily as a political problem. The goal of policy is not to help businesses grow or to improve public services. The goal is to show that the government is “in control.” That means reducing net migration numbers, raising visa fees, making it harder for skilled workers to bring their families, and generally sending a message that Britain is not as open as it used to be.
This approach is popular with certain parts of the electorate. But it comes at a cost. The Home Office has made the visa system so expensive and complicated that many employers have simply given up trying to hire from overseas. A hospital that needs nurses, a tech startup that needs coders, a hotel chain that needs chefs—all of them face the same barriers. They have to pay thousands of pounds in fees, wait months for decisions, and then watch as talented candidates decide to go to Australia, Canada, or the UAE instead.
The result is a labour market that is permanently short of the people it needs. The UK has over 900,000 job vacancies at any given time, many of them in critical sectors like health and social care. At the same time, productivity—the amount of economic value produced per hour worked—has barely grown in over a decade. Part of the reason is simple: you cannot produce more if you do not have enough people to do the work.
The Gulf: Immigration as a Solution to Be Deployed
Now look at the Gulf. These countries have tiny national populations. Saudi Arabia has about 37 million people, but nearly a third are foreigners. The UAE has around 10 million people, but almost 9 million are expatriates. The local workforce simply does not have enough people to build skyscrapers, run hospitals, teach in universities, or develop software.
So the Gulf states do the logical thing: they bring people in. They do not apologise for it. They do not treat it as a failure of national identity. They treat it as a straightforward economic necessity. If they need 100,000 construction workers, they arrange visas for 100,000 construction workers. If they need 5,000 nurses, they recruit 5,000 nurses. The system is not always perfect, and it has real human costs, but it is ruthlessly efficient at matching labour supply to labour demand.
Crucially, the Gulf states are now competing aggressively for high-skilled talent as well. The UAE’s Golden Visa programme has granted long-term residency to nearly half a million professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs. Saudi Arabia’s Premium Residency scheme is designed to attract the kind of people who can lead its ambitious economic transformation. These countries are not just opening doors; they are rolling out the red carpet.
The Paradox: More Workers Doesn’t Always Mean Better Productivity
Before going any further, it is important to acknowledge a complication. The Gulf’s model is not perfect. In fact, in some ways, it has created its own problems.
For decades, these countries relied on cheap, temporary labour from South Asia and Southeast Asia. Construction workers, cleaners, domestic helpers - they came on short-term contracts, worked long hours, and then went home. This system kept costs low, but it also discouraged investment in machinery, automation, and training. Why buy an expensive robot when you can hire a human being for a fraction of the cost?
As a result, the Gulf has not always been a model of high productivity. In many sectors, it is still catching up. The reliance on cheap labour has created a kind of economic trap: it is hard to move up the value chain when you are used to cutting corners on labour costs.
However, and this is the crucial point - the Gulf is now trying to fix that problem. The same countries that once imported millions of low-skilled workers are now aggressively trying to import high-skilled ones. They are shifting from a model of quantity to a model of quality. They want the engineers, the data scientists, the financial analysts, and the medical specialists. And they are willing to make it easy for those people to come.
The UK has the opposite problem. It already has the universities, the research institutes, and the financial infrastructure to support a high-skill economy. But it is actively making it harder for the people who run those institutions to stay. The UK is pushing away the very talent it needs to escape its productivity trap. The Gulf, for all its faults, is pulling that talent in.
Lesson One: Stop Letting Politics Drive Hiring Decisions
The first lesson the UK can learn from the Gulf is this: let the economy, not the politicians, decide who gets a visa.
In the Gulf, visa policy is closely linked to economic strategy. When Saudi Arabia decided to diversify away from oil, it changed its visa rules to attract more tech workers. When the UAE decided to become a global hub for healthcare and finance, it streamlined its visa processes for doctors and bankers. There is a direct line between what the economy needs and what the visa system delivers.
In the UK, the connection is broken. The government sets arbitrary net migration targets based on political promises, not on labour market data. The Home Office raises fees and tightens rules without consulting businesses or industry groups. Employers are left scrambling to fill roles that the system has made almost impossible to fill from abroad.
The fix is straightforward. The UK should scrap its net migration target and replace it with a real-time “skills dashboard” that tracks vacancies in critical sectors. If the NHS needs 50,000 more nurses, the visa system should make it easier, not harder, to hire them. If tech companies are crying out for software engineers, the government should be asking how to bring more in, not how to keep them out.
This is not about being “open borders” or “soft on immigration.” It is about being practical. The UK has a labour shortage. It has a productivity problem. It needs workers. Pretending otherwise does not solve anything.
Lesson Two: Separate Temporary Workers from Permanent Settlers
One of the main reasons immigration is so politically toxic in the UK is the fear that every migrant who arrives will stay forever. People worry about pressure on housing, schools, and the NHS. They worry about cultural change. They worry that they are being replaced.
The Gulf model offers a different approach. In most Gulf countries, the vast majority of foreign workers are on temporary contracts. They have the right to live and work in the country only as long as they have a job. There is no pathway to citizenship for most of them. They are expected to go home when their contract ends.
This is an extreme system, and it is not something the UK should copy directly. It creates a two-tier society where foreign workers have few rights and little security. That is not a model to emulate.
But the underlying principle—that economic migration can be temporary—is worth considering. The UK could create a new category of “key worker” visa that is time-limited, sector-specific, and does not automatically lead to permanent residency. This would allow the country to fill urgent vacancies without triggering the same political backlash.
At the same time, the UK needs to stop mixing up different types of migration. Asylum seekers, who are fleeing persecution, are a humanitarian issue. Economic migrants, who are coming to work, are an economic issue. By treating them as the same thing, the government makes both problems worse. Separating them - in policy and in public debate, would help restore trust and clarity.
Lesson Three: Stop Making It So Expensive and Difficult to Hire from Abroad
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the UK’s current system is the cost. Visa application fees, the Immigration Health Surcharge, legal fees for sponsorship - all of it adds up. For many employers, hiring a foreign national is now prohibitively expensive. For many workers, the cost of moving to the UK is higher than the benefit.
In the Gulf, the cost of hiring a skilled expatriate is minimal. Visas are processed quickly. Fees are low. Employers do not have to jump through endless hoops. The system is designed to be frictionless because the countries involved understand that every delay is a lost opportunity.
The UK needs to adopt the same mindset. If it wants to attract global talent, it needs to make the process faster, cheaper, and simpler. That means:
Reducing visa fees to match other developed countries.
Guaranteeing fast-track processing for high-skilled applicants.
Offering incentives for families to move, rather than penalties.
Creating a dedicated “talent team” within the Home Office that works with employers, not against them.
The UK is currently playing defence, trying to stop people from leaving. The Gulf is playing offence, trying to attract the best. In a global economy, offence wins every time.
The Hard Truth: Why Change Is Difficult
None of this is easy. The Gulf model works in part because those countries have a different social contract. Their citizens are guaranteed public sector jobs and generous welfare benefits. Foreign workers do not compete with locals for most roles. That is not the case in the UK, where public services are under strain and many voters feel left behind.
Politicians who promise to “control” immigration are responding to genuine anxiety. But they are also ignoring the economic reality. The UK’s working-age population is shrinking. Its productivity is falling behind its competitors. Its public services are chronically understaffed. These problems will not be solved by building higher walls.
Sooner or later, the UK will have to choose. It can continue to treat immigration as a political problem and watch its economy stagnate. Or it can treat immigration as an economic tool and use it to fill gaps, boost growth, and raise living standards.
A Practical Choice, Not a Moral One
The Gulf states are not perfect. Their approach to labour has real human costs, and no one should pretend otherwise. But they are honest about their needs. They do not waste time pretending they can run modern economies without foreign workers. They bring people in, put them to work, and get on with it.
The UK has a choice. It can keep having the same angry, unproductive conversation about immigration, or it can learn a few lessons from a region that has solved the practical problem of filling vacancies. The lessons are simple: let the economy drive policy, separate temporary workers from permanent settlers, and make it easier, not harder, to hire from abroad.
This is not about being “soft” or “hard” on immigration. It is about being smart. And right now, the UK is not being smart. The Gulf is. That needs to change.
Sources
Expatriates make up over 78% of the GCC's workforce
BMJ Careers special investigation
The Royal Society, Summary of visa costs analysis (2024), conducted by Fragomen LLP