“Immigration is both essential and impossible.”
2024 07 26
Martin Wolf has a thought-provoking op-ed in the Financial Times with a title appropriate title for his thesis (unusual for the Internet!), “Immigration is both essential and impossible.” https://www.ft.com/content/811f1b29-af5f-404c-a3a0-b28c5db4dec0?emailId=427eaaa6-aeb0-4336-a98c-5e4f1e59f6eb&segmentId=7d033110-c776-45bf-e9f2-7c3a03d2dd26
He outlines the paradox (probably stronger in Europe than in the US and hardly present at all in Canada/Australia) of popular and organized political opposition to greater flows of immigration and the economic benefits or “need” for more immigration. His resolution is long-term temporary residents.
I am skeptical of the resolution but more so his narrow view of the need that he identifies as helping to pay the costs of pensions and medical care for older people who are no longer working and workers to provide care for them. There are too many free parameters in his assessment of the need.
1) At what age do people begin to receive pensions?” Even in the US where the full pension age is higher than in Europe, the age implies many more years of receiving pensions than it did when pension systems were first developed. The pension age is a policy variable.
2) How do people receiving pensions participate in the labor force and how is that income taxed? Even if their earnings are not subject to a tax earmarked for paying pensions, their income makes their consumption less a burden on others.
3) How are pensions (and in the US, medical care) for superannuated workers financed? Even without taking demographics into consideration, paying for these transfers with a tax on wages (and, in the US for pensions, a capped tax) makes little sense compared to a broader based consumption tax like a VAT. For a fuller discussion, See, [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/socia-insurance-20]
And without wishing away the very real opposition to immigration in many places, here too there are policies to reduce the paradox by increasing the benefits (of which ameliorating the economic effects of population aging is just a subset) and decreasing the costs of higher immigration.
1) How are immigrants selected? In addition to greater selection on “merit” (roughly their expected income), countries could add “assimilability” criteria like some prior knowledge of the national language, history and customs, the kinds of things normally required for citizenship. Allowing greater involvement of employers in recruitment would also help.
2) How are immigrants assimilated once in the country? [Yes, “assimilation, not “multiculturalism.” N years after a person immigrates, where they or their parents or grandparents were born should be socially invisible.] Admittedly, getting there is this is tricky and more social than policy although removing obstacles of occupational licensing is one policy.
3) How responsive is the supply of housing and other infrastructure to demand created by more immigration and how can it be made more responsive? See, Razib Khan: [https://www.razibkhan.com/p/aria-babu-pro-natalism-in-the-shadow]
OTOH, as Wolf suggests, establishing systems to make it easier for people who would not be, or not wish to be, admitted as permanent residents to come to work temporarily, would be highly desirable.
But OTOOH, would any of these ideas be of help in dealing with people fleeing conflict situations and political repression as in Syria, Sudan, and the Sahel or Venezuela and Haiti when the issue is not how many and which immigrants to admit for the benefit of existing residents, but compassion for the suffering of the prospective immigrants?
Image Prompt: Person standing at a gate, signaling “come in” with one hand and “stay out” with the other. Outside the gate are a multitude of people trying to enter through the gate.
[Standard bleg: Although my style is know-it-all-ism, I do sometime entertain the thought that, here and there, I might be mistaken on some minor detail. I would welcome comments on these views.]
"But OTOOH, would any of these ideas be of help in dealing with people fleeing conflict situations and political repression as in Syria, Sudan, and the Sahel or Venezuela and Haiti when the issue is not how many and which immigrants to admit for the benefit of existing residents, but compassion for the suffering of the prospective immigrants?"
Venezuelans could integrate relatively well in the US other than their descendants likely being a long-term welfare burden, I would think, at least similarly to the Mexicans. The other groups, I'm more worried about, other than their cognitive elites and liberals. Western Europe hasn't exactly had a great experience integrating Muslims and Africans. Thus maybe facilitating their mass resettlement in more culturally compatible countries would be much better? With the occasional exception, Syrians would probably integrate better in Turkey than in the West, for instance. Or in Jordan. Or in the oil-rich Gulf Arab states if they could actually be persuaded to accept them en masse. Arab hospitality is unfortunately sometimes notoriously lacking.
"1) How are immigrants selected?"
Yes, rich and successful people have always found it easier to migrate. I'm skeptical of the social benefits of effectively keeping the lower classes enserfed to their countries of origin while the elites can leave.
"In addition to greater selection on “merit” (roughly their expected income)"
I'm not a utilitarian, per se, but from a strictly economic sense wouldn't you want to encourage people to immigrate to where the *differential* in their expected productivity (or income) is the greatest?
"2) How are immigrants assimilated once in the country?"
I don't know. The inability of immigrants to what would become Texas or Hawaii to assimilate into their new country certainly benefited the US.
"would any of these ideas be of help in dealing with people fleeing conflict situations"
This is a completely separate class of immigration (refuge and asylum), and is dealt with separately. It *might* help to include cultural similarity when countries figure out who goes where, as not even immigrants want too much culture shock.
OTOH, my spouse wouldn't be here if her parent wasn't granted asylum, and her parent wouldn't have been here if the grandparent wasn't denied immigration.