Omar’s view
Saudi Arabia and the UAE have recently started offering elite expatriates the opportunity to secure naturalized citizenship, following the example of points-based immigration systems like those in Australia and Canada. Building a pool of genuinely loyal, globally recognized superstars may require deeper investment, however — in more earthbound immigrants, and their children.
When policymakers imagine the benefits of naturalizing elites, they cite the example of Albert Einstein. His loyalty to his adopted nation — demonstrated by his pivotal role in advising on nuclear policy and in training the next generation of scientists — highlights the power of immigration. But Einstein is the wrong example. He naturalized in 1940, nearly two decades after winning the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine winner, Victor Ambros, offers a better case. Ambros is the son of a Polish refugee, making him a second-generation immigrant. This is important because there’s no immigration criteria seeking elite talent would have allowed his father to become an American citizen. The US has long assimilated foreign talent and has been arguably uniquely successful in its capacity to transform an adult who doesn’t know the language into a rousing patriot.
Across sectors — in technology, sports, politics — the same pattern emerges: People who rise to prominence after spending their formative years in their adopted nations are more likely to develop deep loyalty. Sergey Brin of Google was a child when he migrated to the US with his parents, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was the son of a Cuban immigrant who fled to the US. Basketball superstar Klay Thompson’s father moved to the US from the Bahamas, while the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the daughter of an immigrant from Odessa.
This long-term immersion is crucial to developing a profound connection with one’s adopted homeland. The Gulf countries’ attempts to woo elite talent in their prime may overlook this critical generational aspect.
The Gulf’s own historical parallels offer further context. Under the Abbasid Empire — though there was no such thing as citizenship in the 9th century — naturalizing elite talent was on full display. Many of the leading scholars of the era, such as the mathematician Al-Khwarizmi and the philosopher Ibn Sina, were non-Arabs who migrated to Baghdad and other centers of scientific excellence, attracted by the intellectual environment.
If a country like the UAE wants to get the next Brin, Ginsburg, or Ibn Sina, it could wait for someone to reach the pinnacle of their profession and then try to woo them with the offer of Emirati citizenship. The difficulty is that the UAE will face stiff competition — from that person’s home country as well as rivals in the region and around the world, including the US which also tries to lure global superstars. People around the world — influenced by US movies and culture — dream of becoming American, and this unique appeal won’t be matched by any other nation in the near future.
In response, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing in the educational and economic reforms aimed at fostering the next homegrown Bezos or Ambros. The approach, however, is potentially hampered by the Gulf’s relatively small population and restricted immigration policies, driven by security concerns and a focus on elites. As a pure numbers game, rapid success may require loosening restrictions on naturalized citizenship. Since there’s no empirical method to determine whose children will become the next global superstar, Gulf countries must roll the dice.
So far, Gulf countries aren’t willing to take those chances, favoring a more cautious approach. All six Gulf countries have expatriates who have grown up in the country and regard it as their home in every sense except for their lack of formal citizenship. The risks of naturalizing some of these individuals are potentially lower than handing out a passport to a foreign superstar with little prior connection.
A key barrier that needs to be overcome is the technocratic belief that elite talent can solely be determined through a rigid points system. As Australia and Canada have demonstrated through the limitations of their own points-based systems, casting a wider net — even if it runs counter to traditional top-down policymaking — may be necessary to cultivate the loyalty and talent that these countries seek.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have demonstrated remarkable levels of policy agility in the last decade, confirming their readiness to try something radical when a compelling case emerges. It is likely that their current forays into naturalizing foreign talent are experimental in nature, laying the groundwork for further reforms and evolutions. Success may ultimately hinge on the recognition that loyalty and excellence emerge not in the first, but in the second generation of immigrants.
Omar Al-Ubaydli (@omareconomics) is an affiliated associate professor of economics at George Mason University, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center in Washington, DC, and a contributor to Semafor.