This chapter explains how migration and security come to be interlinked in the UAE, illustrating why it becomes increasingly difficult to inhabit an ambiguous legal status over time. While the precise contours of the citizenry were left unresolved as the UAE became an independent state in 1971, the federal authority’s prerogatives quickly shifted after national independence to focus on newer flows of noncitizens – “guest workers.” From early on in the UAE’s history as an independent state, massive influxes of migrant workers led ruling elites to allocate significant resources toward securitizing national boundaries at the territorial borders and inside the state. It may have been the national dilemma (contestations over who is a citizen) that led to the creation of a gray zone of people, but it is the security dilemma (the mobilization of resources toward documenting the entire population and checking legal statuses at all times) that makes precarious citizenship real. As a vast network of private and public institutions that check identity documents in the UAE was built over time, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone with an ambiguous citizenship status to continue living and working in the state.