In terms of the numbers, were the trend of the last decade to continue, the number of the
expatriates would grow in the next 10 years by another 10 million or so (between 1995 and 2004 the
number of the expatriates went up from 7 million to 12.5 million, that is by 80 percent). There are also
indications that the percentage of foreigners in the population may grow as well, at least in some
countries.12 Most of the newcomers will be Asians, as employers in the GCC states will probably
continue to prefer them to Arab workers.13 It is unlikely that in the near future the wage rate in such
Arab countries as Egypt or Jordan will fall low enough to make the non-Gulf Arab labor wagecompetitive
with the Asian labor. Moreover, the Arab labor will remain less attractive for foreign
employers due to the non-Gulf Arabs’ inferior level of education and technical training as compared to
that of many Asians.1