I remember watching the show on the artificial islands they made in the gulf. They spoke with the emir and he said something that kind of stuck........they were going for the tourism dollars as the “oil revenue” would run out by the year 2016.........:o)
The expatriates there as the foreign workers are called are sponsored by locals. The expats must pay a percentage of their income to their sponsor . If these folks were laid off then they no longer had a sponsor and were thus thought of as illegals.
Better to leave than be put in chains , lose all they had to their sponsor and still be deported.
Normal life over there as I saw it for a few years !
Stay safe !