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Those of us who believe in the rightness and the benefits of
free markets spend a good deal of time defending free trade
between countries. But aside from the free movement of goods and
services across international borders, augmenting the free
movement of people across those borders would, I believe, greatly
increase the peace and prosperity of people the world over.
Opening up our borders to increased immigration is in fact demanded both
by considerations of economics and of justice.
Unfortunately,
immigration is not very popular. The Economist
reported last year on a November 2007 poll of Europeans
showing that only 55% of Spaniards and 50% of Italians
considered migrants a boon to their economies—and that’s the
good news. The number for Brits and Germans was only 42%, and
for the French it was a dismal 30%.
One reason we
fail to appreciate the economic benefits of immigration is that
we are predisposed to see the world in zero-sum terms. We
assume, for instance, that there are a limited number of jobs
available. Immigrants, we worry, will steal “our” jobs and
depress the wages of those who manage to hang on to theirs. This
worry is especially prevalent with regard to the poorest, least-skilled
workers. In fact, there is little evidence to support this worry.
Even the least-skilled migrants do not just suck up jobs; they
also help create jobs, since as consumers they raise demand
which itself gets translated into more jobs. They can also free
up skilled workers to re-enter the workforce by providing
childcare, for instance. According to The Economist, the
numbers tell a similar story: “Studies comparing wages in
American cities with and without lots of foreigners suggest that
they make little difference to the income of the poorest.”
We humans also seem predisposed to fear those who are different
from us, and events in recent years have not exactly been
reassuring. From riots in France to devastating terrorist
attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere causing massive damage and
loss of life, we see people from different cultures causing
various levels of mayhem, and our natural xenophobia is
reinforced.
But the unrest in France
is not so much evidence of a deep cultural divide between
Western hosts and Eastern immigrants. There do exist important
cultural differences, but it is also the case that France’s sclerotic employment
regulations deserve much of the blame for recent unrest. By making it extremely difficult to fire employees,
those regulations discourage the hiring of employees—especially
the hiring of foreigners of whom one might already be suspicious.
Sky-high rates of unemployment in an immigrant population, while
not excusing violent demonstration, surely help to explain it.
As for terrorism, it is
clearly just a fanatical fringe of Islamists who are so fervent
in their beliefs that they would commit suicide and murder
hundreds or thousands of innocents for their cause. There is no
reason for a free society to fear the average Muslim immigrant.
Nevertheless, the War on Terror will continue to be used to
justify such projects as the building of fences along the
Mexican border, despite the lack of Hispanic suicide bombers and
fact that the September 11 terrorists did not sneak across the
Rio Grande. And while fences will not keep many out, they might
keep many in. As The Economist points out, “After all,
the more costly and dangerous it is to cross, the less people
will feel like leaving. Migrants quite often return home for a
while—but only if they know it will be relatively easy to get
back in. The tougher the border, the more incentive migrants
have to stay and perhaps to get their families to join them
instead.”
If there is little chance that developed countries will just
throw their borders open anytime soon, guest worker plans seem
like a practical compromise. For one thing, our Ponzi-style
welfare schemes, to which we are still very much attached,
cannot support the whole world. Temporary migration, in which
foreign workers come for a limited time just to work without
drawing on government benefits, would still be appealing to
those workers while alleviating concerns about breaking the
welfare bank. So why are they not more popular?
Well, there is the
concern that some guests might overstay their welcome. As The
Economist Report reminds us, “The old joke that there is
nothing so permanent as a temporary migrant has more than a
grain of truth in it.” The historical record is mixed, with some
countries running guest worker programs that function smoothly,
and others failing to enforce the temporary nature of their
arrangements.
The more serious problem
is that even supporters of more open immigration,
especially those to be found among well-intentioned elites, as
often as not oppose guest worker programs. These critics
lament the creation of a second-class of citizens. It is not
right, they argue, to withhold welfare benefits from guest
workers. They worry also about the possibility of those
second-class citizens being taken advantage of and abused by
unscrupulous employers. But is the answer to keep people out
altogether, holding out for true open borders some day?
Harvard economist Lant
Pritchett is the author of Let Their People Come. In
an interview with Kerry Howley in the February 2008 issue of
Reason magazine, he addresses concerns about second-class
citizens: “The world now is divided into first-class citizens of
the world and fifth-class citizens of the world.” He adds that,
ironically, in places like the Middle East where people are not
so concerned about denying migrant workers all the benefits of
citizenship, immigration is high but far less controversial.
“One of the awkward paradoxes of the world is that Bangladeshis
and Pakistanis and Nepalis are enormously better off precisely
because the Persian Gulf states don’t endow them with
political rights.” [Emphasis in original.]
There are in fact some libertarians, most notably Hans-Hermann
Hoppe,
who argue against opening the borders to greater
immigration. Hoppe has a case to make, but I don't think it gets
him nearly as far as he thinks it does. First, he points out
that a truly free society would have no single, national
immigration policy. Rather, the many private owners of land
along the "border" would decide who to allow onto their land,
resulting in a patchwork system in which some areas would tend
to restrict entry and others would throw their gates wide open.
Under current conditions, though, Hoppe sees immigration as "forced
integration" because, given existing anti-discrimination laws,
people are forced to associate with others they might not wish
to associate with. In a truly free society, people would be free
to choose with whom they wanted to associate.
Until they are, however,
governments should come up with second-best, least-bad national
immigration policies. Hoppe argues that in order to minimize the
harm to the rightful owners of the land in America (i.e., the
current American population) the American government should
follow a policy "of strict discrimination." Immigrants should
have "an existing employment contract with a resident citizen"
and demonstrate "not only (English) language proficiency, but
all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and
character structure as well as a compatible system of values—with
the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration
bias."
Of course, we all have an
interest in keeping out hardened criminals and terrorists. The
main problem I see with Hoppe's logic, though, is that if
America (or Canada) were a truly free society, many hard-working
foreigners (and not necessarily Europeans or those of above-average
intellect, either) would have bought into ownership of some of
the land in North America. A system that tries to minimize harm
to the rightful owners of the land should also minimize harm to
these multitudes who would have been owners if the
society were truly free. This suggests to me far more
immigration than Hoppe envisions, and far more than is currently
allowed into sparsely-populated North America.
Lant Pritchett asserts that holding out for more sweeping change is
the wrong way to go. “I think we’re going to move ahead on
migration; people are going to become more and more exposed to
the fact that people from other places in the world are, in very
deep ways, human beings exactly like us; and eventually, in an
unpredictable way, the attitude toward this will shift.” Small
changes will beget more changes—with the added benefit of slower
change being less disruptive for host countries.
Removing immigration
restrictions, even if only a little at a time, is an excellent
way to help the world’s poor. Immigrants themselves benefit, of
course, but so do their families back home, through remittances.
Says The Economist, “For most poor countries
remittances are more valuable than aid. For many they provide
more than aid and foreign direct investment combined.” And
because money is remitted directly to families, it neatly
sidesteps the problem of corrupt government officials siphoning
off aid money to enrich themselves.
In the end, those who
oppose more open borders must ask themselves by what right they
would deny the freedom of movement of others? Put differently,
by what right would they deny the freedom of association of
those of us who want more open borders? Increased immigration
would help the world's hard-working poor, and without entailing
the negative consequences we fear. But most of all, it's just
the right thing to do. |
