This paper explores the promises and limits of technical and vocational educational programs in addressing the obstacles faced by Pakistani workers in the Persian Gulf. The paper argues that racial ideologies have played a lasting role in shaping the mutual construction of skills, nationality, and race in the Gulf – ideologies that translate into entire immigration and bureaucratic structures. Providing empirical materials drawn from fieldwork in Pakistan, the paper demonstrates how individuals and the Pakistani state attempt – and fail – to transcend racialized structures of limited inclusion and opportunity in the Gulf. The vast majority of Pakistani workers in the Gulf are single male migrant workers who populate jobs in the lower tiers of the labor market. The Pakistani state promotes technical education as a means to bridge the divide between the educated and uneducated, the elite and the masses, the global supply and demand for “unskilled” workers. The paper central focus is on the paradox of how multiple actors (the state, transnational labor recruiters, technical training facilities, civil society etc) promote technical education as a means to create the “perfect” Pakistani migrant amidst ambivalent demands that this labor needs to be more skilled, yet also still willing to endure economic and social precarity. Even when migrants do possess the requisite skills, immigration and bureaucratic structures in the Gulf continue to devalue Pakistani labor. The paper shows how the Pakistani state actively participates in these racial structures by sending migrants abroad to work and promoting labor migration as a key development strategy for the domestic economy. Through this case I attempt to shed light on some timeless questions: What power do states and individuals have to navigate a global labor landscape where racial categories are essential for hierarchically organizing and valuing bodies for the global market? How does a labor sending country like Pakistan maintain its position as a provider of cheap labor while at the same time maintaining its ostensible commitment to modernization, development, and progress? How does technical education become a site on which the promises of laboring “freely” for the global economy is taught and valorized while simultaneously attenuated and subverted?