Extended anecdote from My Willing Complicity In “Human Rights Abuse”, by a former doctor (GP) working at a Qatari visa center in India to process “the enormous number of would-be Indian laborers who wished to take up jobs there”:
Another man comes to mind (it is not a coincidence that the majority of applicants were men). He was a would-be returnee—he had completed a several year tour of duty in Qatar itself, for as long as his visa allowed, and then returned because he was forced to, immediately seeking reassessment so he could head right back. He had worked as a truck driver, and now wanted to become a personal chauffeur instead.
He had been away for several years and had not returned a moment before he was compelled to. He had family: a wife and a young son, as well as elderly parents. All of them relied on him as their primary breadwinner. I asked him if he missed them. Of course he did. But love would not put food on the table. Love would not put his son into a decent school and ensure that he picked up the educational qualifications that would break the cycle. Love would not ensure his elderly and increasingly frail parents would get beyond-basic medical care and not have to till marginal soil at the tiny plot of land they farmed.
But the labor he did out of love and duty would. He told me that he videocalled them every night, and showed me that he kept a picture of his family on his phone. He had a physical copy close at hand, tucked behind the transparent case. It was bleached by the sun to the point of illegibility and half-covered by what I think was a small-denomination Riyal note.
He said this all in an incredibly matter-of-fact way. I felt my eyes tear up, and I looked away so he wouldn’t notice. …
I asked him how well the job paid. Well enough to be worth it, he told me. He quoted a figure that was not very far from my then monthly salary of INR 76,000 (about $820 today). Whatever he made there, I noted that I had made about the same while working as an actual doctor in India in earlier jobs. … He expected a decent bump—personal drivers seemed to be paid slightly better than commercial operators.
I asked him if he had ever worked similar roles in India. He said he had. He had made a tenth the money, in conditions far worse than what he would face in Qatar. He, like many other people I interviewed, viewed the life you have the luxury of considering inhumane and unpalatable, and deemed it a strict improvement to the status quo. He was eager to be back. He was saddened that his son would continue growing up in his absence, but he was optimistic that the boy would understand why his father did what he had to do. …
By moving to the Middle East, he was engaged in arbitrage that allowed him to make a salary comparable to the doctor seeing him in India. I look at how much more I make after working in the NHS and see a similar bump. …
… “exploitation” is a word with a definition, and that definition requires something more than “a transaction that takes place under conditions of inequality.” If we define exploitation as taking unfair advantage of vulnerability, we need a story about how the worker is made worse off relative to the alternative—and the workers I spoke with, consistently and across months, told me the opposite story. … They are adults making difficult tradeoffs under difficult constraints, the same tradeoffs that educated Westerners make constantly but with much less margin for error and no safety net.
I do not recall ever outright rejecting an applicant for a cause that couldn’t be fixed, but even the occasional instances where I had to turn them away and ask them to come back after treatment hurt. Both of us—there was often bargaining and disappointment that cut me to the bone. I do not enjoy making people sad, even if my job occasionally demands that of me. I regret making them spend even more of their very limited money and time on followups and significant travel expenses, even if I was duty-bound to do so on occasion.
Zooming out to the author’s main argument:
The argument generally goes: This job involves intense heat, long hours, and low pay relative to Western minimum wages. Therefore, it is inherently exploitative, and anyone taking it must be a victim of coercion or deception.
This completely ignores the economic principle of revealed preferences: the idea that you can tell what a person actually values by observing what they choose to do under constraint. Western pundits sit in climate-controlled pods and declare that nobody should ever have to work in forty-degree heat for $300 a month. But for someone whose alternative is working in forty-degree heat in Bihar for $30 a month with no social safety net, banning Qatari labor practices just destroys their highest expected-value option. …
The economic case for Gulf migration from South Asia is almost embarrassingly strong when you actually look at it. India received roughly $120 billion in remittances in 2023, making it the world’s largest recipient, with Gulf states still accounting for a very large share, though the RBI’s own survey data show that advanced economies now contribute more than half of India’s remittances. For certain origin states—Kerala being the clearest case, alongside Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu—remittance income is not a rounding error in household economics; it is the household economy. The man sending money home from Doha is participating in a system that has done more for South Asian poverty alleviation than most bilateral aid programs combined.
It’s a bummer that this situation is hard to improve affordability-, accessibility-, and safety-wise. CE-incubated Rahi Impact tried, but after deeper and frankly disheartening-to-read investigation concluded this was neither tractable nor cost-effective for them due to inability to source jobs at scale from Gulf employers due to their commitment to ethical recruitment disadvantaging them—folks are so desperate to work in the Gulf that the resulting huge labor oversupply gives Gulf employers significant leverage which they use to monetise visas by demanding bribes from recruiting agents for access to job slots, which then get passed on to workers as exorbitant fees or garnished pay (worth 2.5 years of wages in their home country, a lot of this paid upfront). The recruiters also screw over the workers often enough to drive a ~30% migration failure rate, here’s a real case study from Rahi’s investigation:
Case Study: Fraudulent Practices in Migration
Asif (name changed), a 34-year-old from India, faced mounting debts that forced him to seek work abroad. In March 2023, he left behind his small garment shop, lured by the promise of higher wages and stable employment in the Gulf. However, his journey soon turned into a costly ordeal.
Through a recommendation from his in-laws, Asif found an agent in a nearby city who charged $1,440 for a job as a helper in the GCC. Trusting both the recommendation and the apparent seniority of the agent, Asif paid the amount and traveled to Mumbai to complete the required migration steps. Once there, he was stranded—his agent disappeared, and phone calls went unanswered.
Desperate to recover his losses, Asif sought advice from a family friend, who recommended a different agent. Acting on this recommendation, he paid $920 for a two-month visitor visa to Dubai, with the promise that it would be converted into a work visa. In Dubai, he was put to work in a laundry, packing clothes, but he faced severe exploitation. Although promised $290 per month, he received only $220 and worked 19-hour shifts without overtime pay. Since he was on a visitor visa, he had no legal recourse. When Asif could no longer endure the conditions, he paid for his own return ticket home. Unfortunately, at the airport he discovered he had overstayed his visa by 20 days and incurred a $290 fine.
In total, Asif believes he wasted two years and suffered a financial loss of over $2,300. Like many, Asif fell victim to false promises and desperation. Yet, with no opportunities at home and debts still unpaid, he remains willing to take the risk again—highlighting the dire reality for many low-skilled workers in South Asia.
Asif will still try it again, damn.
As a silver lining, Rahi’s cofounders list many other potential impactful solutions to be trialed for improving Gulf migration from South Asia for the >1.2 million workers who make the journey every year. But I think the ex-GP’s point stands that taking away the option to work in the Gulf, exploitation and fraud and elevated death risk included, is a non-solution, it would make things even worse than not doing anything at all.
Extended anecdote from My Willing Complicity In “Human Rights Abuse”, by a former doctor (GP) working at a Qatari visa center in India to process “the enormous number of would-be Indian laborers who wished to take up jobs there”:
Zooming out to the author’s main argument:
It’s a bummer that this situation is hard to improve affordability-, accessibility-, and safety-wise. CE-incubated Rahi Impact tried, but after deeper and frankly disheartening-to-read investigation concluded this was neither tractable nor cost-effective for them due to inability to source jobs at scale from Gulf employers due to their commitment to ethical recruitment disadvantaging them—folks are so desperate to work in the Gulf that the resulting huge labor oversupply gives Gulf employers significant leverage which they use to monetise visas by demanding bribes from recruiting agents for access to job slots, which then get passed on to workers as exorbitant fees or garnished pay (worth 2.5 years of wages in their home country, a lot of this paid upfront). The recruiters also screw over the workers often enough to drive a ~30% migration failure rate, here’s a real case study from Rahi’s investigation:
Asif will still try it again, damn.
As a silver lining, Rahi’s cofounders list many other potential impactful solutions to be trialed for improving Gulf migration from South Asia for the >1.2 million workers who make the journey every year. But I think the ex-GP’s point stands that taking away the option to work in the Gulf, exploitation and fraud and elevated death risk included, is a non-solution, it would make things even worse than not doing anything at all.