Every day, screens around the world are filled with stark images from Gaza, where almost 2 million Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes. In the Congo, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine, the number of displaced people is even higher. Most people feel compassion when they see others fleeing bombs, bullets or machetes. However, many also experience another emotion: fear.
Seen through a screen, the world can seem violent and frightening even to those who live in wealthy and safe places. Many are concerned that increasing numbers of refugees and other migrants are crossing their borders. Nativist politicians talk about “invasion.”
Fear has damaged rich world politics. Someone who once advocated banning the Koran could be the next Dutch prime minister. The British Conservative Party is trampling constitutional rules to try to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Donald Trump tells vociferous crowds that illegal immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
It is useful to have a little perspective. The vast majority of people who emigrate do so voluntarily and without drama. As much as we talk about record numbers and unprecedented crises, the proportion of people who live outside their country of birth is only 3.6%; it has barely changed since 1960, when it was 3.1%. The numbers of forcibly displaced people fluctuate greatly, depending on the number of wars being fought, but in the long term they do not show any clear upward trend. The total has increased alarmingly in the last decade and has gone from 0.6% in 2012 to 1.4% in 2022. However, this percentage only represents one sixth of what occurred after the Second World War.
The idea that refugees pose a serious threat to rich countries is also far-fetched. Most people who flee from danger do not go very far. Of the 110 million people classified by the United Nations as forcibly displaced by mid-2023, more than half remained in their own country. Only 10% had reached the rich world; something more than the population of London. This is not a trivial figure, but it is clearly manageable if governments cooperate. Altogether, the poorest countries host nine times more displaced people with fewer resources and less hysteria.
The populist right stokes fear of overwhelming numbers to win votes. On the left, some inflame the issue in different ways. Lavishing benefits on asylum seekers while they struggle to find work ensures that they become a burden, which is why Sweden’s anti-immigration party now has a bit of power. Calling for the abolition of border controls, as some American radicals do, terrifies the average voter. Insisting that everyone must be defined racially and establishing a hierarchy in which the majority group is last, and then demanding that the United States admit millions more members of minority groups, is a recipe for guaranteeing the re-election of Trump.
A more sensible approach to migratory movements would take two things into account. First, emigration often results in people ending up in a much better situation than they would have had if they had stayed. Those who flee danger find safety. Those looking for a new beginning find opportunities. Emigrants from poor countries to rich countries greatly increase their own wages and affect the natives very little or not at all. Mobility also allows families to spread the risks. Many make a common fund to send a family member to a richer city or country, to have at least an income that does not depend on the local climate.
Second, receiving countries can benefit from immigration, especially if they manage it well. The most desirable destinations can attract the most talented and entrepreneurial people in the world. In the United States, immigrants are almost twice as likely to create a business as natives and four times more likely to win a Nobel Prize in science. Less-skilled immigrants fill gaps in an aging workforce and free up natives for more productive tasks (for example, when a foreign nanny allows two parents to work full-time).
A more mobile planet would be richer: according to one estimate, full free movement would double global GDP. These formidable gains remain unrealized because they would primarily benefit emigrants, who cannot vote in the countries to which they want to move. Still, rather than not taking advantage of all those trillions of dollars, sensible governments should find ways to share at least some of it. That means persuading voters that migration can be orderly and legal, and demonstrating that immigrants not only pay their fair share, but enhance the collective good.
Therefore, border security must be strict, while streamlining the slow process of denying or granting entry. A realistic number of workers should be admitted, selected mainly by market forces such as visa auctions. Immigrants should be able to work (and pay taxes), but not receive the same social benefits as natives of the country, at least for a time. One day the creaking global asylum system will have to be modernized and the task of providing refuge will have to be shared more fairly. The European Union’s interim agreement announced on December 20 is a small step in the right direction.
Pessimists on the right maintain that more immigration will fuel disorder, because people from foreign cultures do not assimilate. However, studies do not find strong evidence that diverse countries are less stable: contrast homogeneous Somalia with heteroclite Australia.
Pessimists on the left say the West will never let in many people or treat newcomers fairly because it is incorrigibly racist. However, although racism persists, it has decreased more than many think. When Barack Obama was born, mixed-race marriages were illegal in much of the United States, and many Britons still believed they had the right and duty to govern other countries. Now, a fifth of new American marriages are mixed, and the British do not find it strange that their prime minister is a descendant of colonial subjects. British Indians, Chinese Canadians and Nigerian Americans earn more than their white compatriots, indicating that racism is not the main determinant of their life opportunities.
In the future, climate change may prompt people to travel more. However, it will be a gradual phenomenon, and two forces can have the opposite effect. The movement from the countryside to cities (a mass movement much larger than cross-border migration) will slow down, since most of the world is already urban. And humanity will become less mobile as it ages. Today, rich countries have a wonderful opportunity to import youth, brains and dynamism. It may not last forever.
© 2023 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
