Why years of living somewhere give no status at all

There are two kinds of country in this field, and confusing them is the largest planning error people make.

Accumulating systems

Most of Europe, the Americas and the older common law countries. Time spent lawfully resident counts: after a period you become a permanent resident, and after a further period you may naturalise. The clock runs while you live there, and the status ratchets — permanent residence generally survives changes of employment and, within limits, absences.

Non-accumulating systems

The Gulf states, Thailand, and much of Asia. Residence is a permission renewed on a basis, and the basis is employment, a company, a property or an investment. Ten years of renewals leave you exactly where one year left you: holding a renewable permit.

• There is no permanent residence to accrue towards in most of these systems, and where something like it exists it is narrow and discretionary.
• Citizenship is not on the path. In the Emirates it is granted by exception; in Qatar and Kuwait it is effectively closed; in Thailand it is theoretically reachable and practically rare.
• The status ends when the basis ends, at any age, after any number of years.

What that means for a life plan

• There is no retirement into the system. A person who spent thirty years in a non-accumulating country and stops working must still hold a basis — which is exactly why property and investment routes matter there.
• Children born and raised there do not become nationals of it. They hold their parents' citizenships and, at adulthood, need their own basis.
• The exit needs planning at the start. Somewhere has to be the country you can always go to, and for most families in a non-accumulating system that is still the country they came from.

The way to use both

The common arrangement among people who have thought about this: a base in a non-accumulating jurisdiction for the tax position and the working life, and a slow, parallel accumulation of a status somewhere that ratchets — through ancestry, through a European permit maintained properly, or through a child's education creating a route.

The mistake is assuming one of them will turn into the other. It will not, and the moment that becomes urgent is a moment when nothing can be started.