"My personal belief however, is that this whole situation is a butterfly effect. It started with something unrelated, and snowballed. That unrelated thing IMO, and to the best of my knowledge, is the hiring practices of oil companies in Saudi Arabia. Their government doesn't protect its people."

Saudi Arabia had a huge welfare state. Saudi Arabia if anything was over protecting it's people. They have had a large popualation growth and their oil reserves won't last forever, so they have been trying to encourage private enterprise- one aspect of this is getting their citizen working rather than simply largely depending on imported people to do the work.