Free exchange

Border follies

Liberalising migration could deliver a huge boost to global output

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Readers' comments




Points raised in the article are all true - even modest arbitrage in labour productivity could easily increase global GDP by an extra 10% in the next 10 years.

Just think: a bigger world market for pharmaceuticals, computers, etc - wouldn't that in itself spur on higher R&D and a faster pace of growth (i.e. continuation of exponential growth from a higher base)?

In other words, we should expect that migration would raise the rate of productivity growth and boost our own wages and our living standards over the next several decades.


Reality check: labour productivity arbitrage in the form of mass migration from low skill economies without liberal & secular cultures, to high skill economies with low crime & low inequality, risks undermining social institutions which are central to living standards (it isn't all GDP). It shouldn't be allowed to happen, and won't be allowed to happen.

What we can do:
- we can allow completely free migration between developed countries, where the scale of migration will be low enough (and the migrants sufficiently skilled & culturally adept) as not to disrupt existing societies. That is, we can and should extend the EU model of freedom to work to the whole developed world: EU, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, etc. Between developed countries, there really is no need to retain the bureaucratic mess of work visas & residency - just let people work & do business.

- we can allow immigration from developing countries providing there are constraints on the volumes coming from each country (no concentrations from individual countries - ghettos are not good for society), providing migrants are sufficiently skilled (language, etc), providing migrants have work places with expected income above the median (no individual welfare dependency), and providing workers have no right to bring massive unskilled & welfare dependent families in behind them (each immigrant gets in on own merits).

Certainly, we can and should have higher levels of migration, and we should eliminate bureaucracy where possible. But constraints on concentrated mass migration from developing countries must be retained.

Reginald Charleston

The truth is that massive third-world immigration and forced integration is being demanded of EVERY White country and ONLY White countries, and according to the United Nations this is GENOCIDE. Many who say they are anti-racist are really just anti-White. Anti-racist is a code word for anti-White.

George Wells

So we won't starve if we open all the borders?
That might help Haiti, but how about the Whites?
All White countries would be the object of the quest for a better life at White expense.



We have fewer and fewer White people.




Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-white.

Ohio in reply to HarryFlashman

Israel is a country founded on the nativist belief that Jews are different than everyone else, and need their own space to live. That is understandable, given their history pre-1948, but that nativist bias to their constitution will eventually tear that country apart, just as surely as slavery threatened the United States. Israel will never be a 'normal' modern country as long as they judge people based on their religion and their mother's religion. And they will never find peace.

What makes Israel a prosperous free country has nothing to do with Jewishness. Until they open their borders (external and internal) to those who would live by their (secular) rules, they will be forever at war.

Brussels Resident

I am sick to death of reading about immigration in this paper.

It is the same article continually re-written with some "new" insight.

Why don't you save every one's time and just have a banner on the front page spelling out your position - immigration every where and as much as possible.

Or better still rename the paper The Weekly Immigrant. Or even better the Middle Class Weekly Immigrant and Screw Every One Else.


Mass immigration from poor countries will inevitably result in more left wing voters.

Milton Friedman said that a country can’t have a welfare state AND free immigration at the same time. The blind spot for The Economist seems to be that illiterate poor world immigrants will be attracted to the West, not for doing menial work, but for sneaking into the rich worlds' generous welfare systems.

The cultural norms in many poor traditional countries are that work is a humiliation and that a man of self respect doesn’t work for others. In particular if it is menial. The immigrants are not like “us”. They don’t have a Lutheran work ethic and our cultural norms. They don’t feel morally ashamed of being welfare leeches, competing for resources with poor and sick citizens from the host country.

It is true that moving to a rich country will improve the living conditions for the movers (working/living on welfare). But their gain is at the expense of the bottom 20-25 percent of the population living in the rich world. In an economy where low skilled jobs disappear and we have a reserve army of unemployed, more influx of low skilled workers will inevitably depress the salary levels of poor people in rich countries. This is 101 textbook free market economics. The academics who try to disprove this are just exposing their ideological bias in their flawed research. It is so easy to manipulate outcomes in social science. I don’t believe their findings for a second.

But the major flaw in the neoliberal free immigration creed is that they overlook the fact that low skilled immigrants will eventually be voters. And once they have the vote they will vote for generous welfare and the left wing parties. All opinion surveys across the US and EU show this clearly. Continued mass immigration from poor countries will inevitably lead to political structural left wing majorities in the US/EU/California/Australia etc. This will draw the curtain on the free market economy and lead to higher and higher taxes.

Is that the outcome free marketers and TE wants?


The gravest folly is mistaking Man for an economic unit. Economism is a travesty, and leads to the reification of petty interests over the great life interests which truly matter to and exercise men.

For example, open borders is a people-killing idea. If peoples cannot control their own living spaces, but are replaced by endless millions of incomers, then a gene-killing has taken place. We should never be under the slightest doubt that the good resides with the survival of peoples. Ethnic continuity is the ultimate human interest. Economics and the profits of international financiers and dateline corporations are not interests of peoples at all.

Neoliberalism and economism are, by their attachment to open borders, ideologies currently gene-killing the European peoples of the West. That must end. That will end.


One day a politician will say something like:

"A century ago, people could move freely across borders to seek a better life for themselves and their families. Travel was hard and expensive, so only the most ambitious and motivated made those journeys, and each country benefited greatly from their contributions, none more so than the USA. Today, travel is cheaper, communication is easier, and not every potential immigrant is as ambitious and motivated to learn our ways and contribute to our society. But we welcome all who will work to provide for themselves and pay taxes, all who value a free and fair society and will work to preserve it, all who value their heritage yet are willing to learn our culture and language. We will charge a fee to all immigrants as a sign that they are willing to invest themselves in the betterment of this country, but we welcome all who wish to come, and are flattered that they value our country enough to pay to get in."

And that might be politically palatable enough to sell, especially if unemployment goes down some. Making immigrants pay the Treasury for the privilege of entry refutes most of the non-nativist arguments against immigration. As for the nativists, the clearer their message is, the uglier it sounds. Let them defeat themselves.

HarryFlashman in reply to GeoffPiggott

To see people as nothing more than economic units is proof of a total lack of understanding of the world and pure ignorance of reality in favour of utopian ideology. I'd say it's incompetence at a level bordering insanity.

Ohio in reply to Brussels Resident

This paper is also for free trade, the efficacy of markets, and the value of universal human rights. Some things bear repeating. Slavery was opposed by liberal activists for a century before it became unacceptable by popular consensus, and lingered a further century until it was illegal everywhere. Open borders will be worth talking about until they are universal.


What developing countries lack, for the most part, is political systems, laws, and institutions that allow productive people to claim most of the commercial rewards for their ideas, their effort, and their time. Only people who have ideas, effort, and time to contribute, i.e. those who work very hard, makers not takers, have any realistic hope to improve their lot by moving to a new country where they will face many obstacles of language and culture. Anyone brave and productive enough to make that leap of faith will almost certainly be a net gain for their newly adopted country. Almost everything that is good about the US and Canada can be traced back to it being a country populated by immigrants. (Yes, I know what happened to the native Americans, and I'm sorry, but that's another topic).

The rush of migration that would greet open borders is only because of pent up demand after a century of partially closed borders. We can't change that fact, so it would behoove any country to erect a barrier to entry for smooth transition. As the pent up demand decreases, the barrier can be lowered, but it's probably good to leave some barrier there to discourage non-serious immigrants. Charge a flat fee for admission, payable up front or through a hefty slice of an immigrant's earnings until he pays it off. If he's not paying it off, turf him out. This includes those who would bring non-workers to the country; same fee for all. But no quotas, and no favoritism (we can still do the security check). A fee is the fairest barrier to immigration.

Closing borders to immigration (not just barriers, but closing) can only be justified by using the nativist argument that people from other countries and cultures are inferior or superior to natives of your country. One has to argue that even the best and bravest of immigrants will drag a country down, or that those immigrants are so superior to natives that the natives' precious (yet defenceless) culture will be changed negatively through the culturual infusion from outsiders. Nativism is an ugly thing (cf. George Wells earlier comment).


Many of the statements in the article just aren't true. Wages decrease slightly with 1 to 10% immigration and unemployment increases slightly. This is from one of the references (Pekkalla Kerr and Kerr) at the bottom of the article. things can be even worse if the immigration program is not widely accepted and well managed by the host country, with the well educated and language proficient immigrants. That doesn't even take into account the social and environmental problems. Not a useful article.

Ohio in reply to George Wells

Why so much fear, George? And how white do you have to be to be in the white race? I'm pretty pale in the winter, but sometimes I darken up in in the summer. Just how white is your race, George?

The 20th century saw the clash of different cultures and economic systems. Guess what, George, your side won. Hands down. It wasn't close. Because the country you were born in turned out to have the most seductive, compelling philosophy the world has ever known, the world has become much more American/western European. One side effect of that is that many want to come and integrate with you, to taste the freedom and prosperity that you were handed as a birthright. Yes, that's right, George, they want to integrate to your culture, they want to be like you. They would also prefer it if you didn't treat them like dog shit under your heal, let them build a church to worship in, and try not to get upset if their cousin opens an exotic restaurant in the neighborhood. Those immigrants have abandoned their home, their extended families, and their way of life to adopt yours. Why? Because you won the cold war, and you won the culture war. They're coming 90% of the way to meet you, and they're hoping you might have the simple courtesy to move the other 10% out of some sense of human decency and respect. But you don't have to, George. You can sit on your porch with your shotgun and complain about the foreigners. Make sure you keep the kids off your lawn while you're at it.

But there's no White genocide, George. You'll live a long life, and die a crabby old SOB with those immigrants paying for your Medicare, and you'll hate them for it. Good luck with that.

HarryFlashman in reply to George Wells

It's only when non-whites are victims that it counts as genocide. Whites, as we all know, don't matter and have no right to self-determination or their own countries.

I think we all understand the Economist's agenda by now.


There is more than economics when it comes to migration. All nations have a particular culture and even in multicultural ones the degree of tolerance for newcomers depends on their volume. A large number of newcomers will invariable have a bigger cultural impact than a smaller one and that is almost always not welcome by the residents. Given that the richest destinations are democracies where those residents vote, the idea of open migration is foolish even if it brings economic benefits. Modest amounts of migration are more easily tolerated and create less upheaval so a pragmatic solution is to aim for that, rather than a truly open system.

Right on the mark!
If you read the article of TE it seems as if there has been no immigration into Western Europe in the past 65 years to speak of. Countries like China, South-Korea and Japan (their GDP per person is still going up) are doing quite well without actual immigration. One of the best countries to live in, Switzerland, has extreme tough immigration policies. I can predict easily that the EU and the USA will keep lagging behind compared with Far Eastern economies simply because of the deadly burden caused by millions of useless and often dangerous immigrants into our countries.



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