I was up late last night for the results of the EU elections. In the UK, the UK Independence Party came first with 27.5% of the vote (Labour second with 25.5% and Conservatives third with 24%). In France, the Front National came first with 25%.
Both UKIP and the FN want to withdraw from the EU and reduce immigration (they differ in other respects). Since the UK is not part of the Euro, and is not likely to adopt the Euro in the near future, it is unlikely that the ECB's monetary policy had any big effect on the UK results. Neither party is fully "respectable" in the eyes of the establishment, but UKIP is more respectable than the FN.
When I first teach international trade theory, this is what I do:
I teach Comparative Advantage as an explanation of why individuals trade with each other. I then draw a circle, representing the world. I then draw lots of little dots in the circle, representing individuals. I then draw little arrows between some of the dots at random, representing gains from trade between two individuals. I then draw a horizontal line across the circle, representing the border between Canada and the US. Some of the arrows cross the horizontal line, and some of them do not. We call the former arrows "international trade". I then say it doesn't make any difference whether an arrow does or does not cross the horizontal line. Except that two different currencies will be involved if an arrow crosses the horizontal line. And governments may impose extra taxes and other restrictions on arrows that cross the line.
I don't teach the economics of migration, but if I did I might use a similar diagram, except the little arrows would now represent individuals' gaining from moving from one location to another. Some little arrows would cross the horizontal line, and some of them would not. Would it matter whether they did or did not cross the horizontal line?
Chris Dillow sends me to a good post by Ben Cobley on what the immigration debate misses.
Suppose you lived in a house with your family. That house is your home. Now suppose a stranger moves in, and shares the house with you. Even if that stranger paid his fair share of all the household expenses, would you always be indifferent to a stranger moving in? And if you did object, how would you feel if the rest of your family said that your objections were not respectable?
Are countries homes?
How would we do the economics of migration if we modelled countries as homes?
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
You’d have to take into account physical proximity and establish how much utility each member (prior to the new entrants arrival) derives from the amount of space available (even though immigrants tend to cluster in low income neighbourhoods) , and the net utility derived from the externalities imposed by the presence of others. For example if the new entrant is a very neat person, who’s also mechanically apt and he does more cleaning than would have otherwise been done – fixes everything – it’s entirely different than a slob who plays loud , bad music.
Both the pieces you link to make a reference to elite opinion, but I wonder if elite opinion is skewed by “elite immigrants”. If you’re an academic or some other high status individual, you’ve almost certainly had plenty of contact of other academics who happen to be immigrants, who all have advanced degrees, speak near perfect conversational English, and who are culturally quite similar to you, simply because elite cultural is similar wherever you go. If that’s your reference point for who an immigrant is, even tough it’s likely to be entirely subconsciously, the cultural issues people raise will seem to be much more intolerant then they are because when you try to apply those objections to someone like the German academic you may work with, it seems ludicrous.
Nick,
From a Georgist (or geolibertarian) perspective “your house” consists of your structure plus your right to exclude others from a piece of land. You have that right of exclusion by virtue of paying the market price of exclusion (the land value tax is the price at which everyone else is indifferent to occupying the land and receiving the tax on the margin). From that perspective, your right to exclude foreigners from “your country” is in proportion to the extent to which you share the nation’s land rents with the global population (i.e. pay them their price for staying out).
Vladimir: take me as an example. I immigrated to Canada (from England) 35 years ago. And then moved to Quebec 25 years ago. (I live on a mostly francophone street in a historically mostly anglophone municipality in a mostly francophone province of a mostly anglophone country.) Nobody knows I’m a “stranger” until I open my mouth. There are (nowadays) few English immigrants living in Quebec. They probably see me as an interesting curiosity, with no serious negative externalities. But suppose a million immigrants just like me had arrived in Quebec at the same time. “Don’t worry, we will pay more taxes then we get in benefits, will create as many jobs as we take, and will pay you good money to build us houses, and there’s lots of space here in Quebec for a million extra Brits, so we are a net gain for Quebec!” I don’t think that argument would fly. A million people like me would get a much frostier reception than the good reception I have got. Because Quebec wouldn’t be the same any more. It wouldn’t feel like home in the same way, to those who had always lived here. And language would be just one of the changes.
Joseph: I think you are right. And academics are just one example of how the elites (what I called “the establishment”, echoing an older concept) are nowadays more similar (more “western”?) across countries than the non-elite.
Anon: But suppose you view a country as a common property resource.
“How would we do the economics of migration if we modelled countries as homes?”
Good question. And how would we do labor economics if we modelled places of employment as homes?
“But suppose you view a country as a common property resource.”
Common to whom?
That is the Georgist point. Is your land the common property of your family or do you rent the right to exclusive use from the greater common? Same with the country. Does it belong to the citizens or should they be viewed as renting it from all the people of the world? What makes any a priory definition of “common” (i.e. the citizens own the country) the economically correct one? What, ultimately, gives any group of people the right to exclude any other group from any given piece of land?
This seems like a very… “unstable” analogy. Why “houses”, why not “neighborhoods”? That “small” change in analogy would involve a fairly large change in implications and analysis.
Sandwichman: dunno. Maybe something like the economics of partnerships? They seem to work OK in some cases.
Majromax: good comment. Nothing to add.
notsneaky: Yep. Houses, streets, neighbourhoods, towns, provinces, countries, and then those entities that don’t have a geographic expression. But perhaps we don’t draw the lines, but watch where people draw them.
I don’t like that “good post by Ben”. Even in a democratic society we do dictate that it is legitimate for people to consider certain things as important and illegitimate for them to consider other things important. “I don’t want a black person moving into my neighborhood” is a illegitimate view, even if the majority of individuals in a neighborhood feel that way. Keep in mind that we are not talking economics here – the view we are discounting is not “I don’t want people who don’t contribute their fair share to move into my neighborhood”. We are talking about extra-economic reasons. That’s why discussing the economics of immigration is a “conversation we can have”, while there really isn’t much point in discussing the fact that some people “feel” a certain way. So the strawmen “liberal-left” voices which supposedly “shut down” those discussions actually have a point (and we’re not talking strategy either, so this isn’t about whether they should or should not address these feelings)
And of course there’s a very likely strong correlation between those “feelings” and the non-random error that people make in how they asses the purely economic impacts of migration.
notsneaky: “…the purely economic impacts of migration.”
The boundary between “economic” and “not-economic” is what is at issue. It feels strange to be told that a narrow-minded “economic” focus is the only legitimate conversation we can have. Do “left-liberal” voices say that dollar values are the only legitimate values? They normally argue the opposite. Strange bed-fellows.
Surely a country is a club good? And there are a reason clubs have membership rules and rights to exclude.
It seems fairly obvious that immigration can be handled more or less well. I come from a country (Australia) which handles it comparatively well and has a very high rate of foreign born residents by Western standards (around 23%)–for example, our migrants actually do better in school on average than locally-born, which is not a normal pattern. But we are a prosperous, English-speaking island-continent, so border enforcement is relatively easy and we can cherry-pick migrants (which we do quite effectively).
We also have diverse migrants, which helps greatly. Indeed, the most problematic migrant community are Lebanese Muslims in Sydney because:
(1) Sydney is our least socially-functional metropolis.
(2) Unlike Maronite Lebanese, they do not plug straight into well-established Catholic networks.
(3) They were brought in an unusually large “lump” with minimal selection procedures.
(4) There are specific issues for Middle East Muslims settling into Western countries.
The US has much less difficulty with Muslim migrants than Europe does because the US is set up as a settler country, its migrants are relatively diverse, its Muslim migrants are generally better educated, “God-discourse” is much more conventional part of public life while organising through your local mosque just replicates established patterns of organising through your local synagogue or church.
Nick, if you take your excellent way of teaching comparative advantage and add in issues with costs of communications and different expectations across language, cultural and religious groups, would it work quite the same? Especially if there is geographic clumping of same? Adding in history, in other words, can shift the analysis some.
In Australia, opinion polling had become somewhat hostile to migration since the mid 1970s. The polls improved dramatically after the Howard Government (1996-2007) made a big play of “stopping the boats”. It’s slogan of “we will decide who will come here” seriously resonated. The costs and benefits of migration are not evenly distributed, and giving voters a sense they have no say or control is not healthy. It is that sense of powerlessness which is a very big driver of popular responses, I suspect.
Lorenzo: ” It is that sense of powerlessness which is a very big driver of popular responses, I suspect.”
I strongly suspect that too. And if even discussion is shut down, the sense of powerlessness only escalates. And the UKIP argument is that leaving the EU and controlling immigration go together. You can’t do the second while in the EU.
I think (not sure) that Canadian and Australian immigration policies are roughly similar. Voters generally think they have a reasonable degree of control, and there’s a points system, and “we will decide who comes here”, and so it’s not so much of an issue as in the EU. (Aboriginals might view things differently, of course.)
Some people come into your house and abide by your rule. Some others tell you that your rules don’t suit them and they won’t obey them. Some others tell you that from now on you obey them and you will live in the basement.
We know how we behaved in the past and have no confidence that newcomers will be kinder…
As a Huron-Wandat chief from Wendake ( a reservation in Québec City suburbs) once said: “We had a bad immigration policy.”
“The boundary between “economic” and “not-economic” is what is at issue. It feels strange to be told that a narrow-minded “economic” focus is the only legitimate conversation we can have. Do “left-liberal” voices say that dollar values are the only legitimate values? They normally argue the opposite. Strange bed-fellows.”
Well, I am not one of the “left-liberal” voices myself so I can’t comment on any of the logical inconsistencies those voices commit. The reason I don’t like that blog post is because it reads like Ben is trying to have his cake and eat it too. These “left-liberal” voices shout down certain arguments about immigration by crying “racism”, and that’s bad. But this isn’t about economics, it’s about “feelings” and these feelings need to be taken into consideration! Well, calling those “feelings” “racism” IS a a way of taking them into consideration. It’s not the kind of consideration or conclusion that he wants, but that exactly what it is. Once you say that it’s about the “non-economic” aspects of immigration, the issue regarding whether opposition to immigration is motivated by racism (or some other “anti-ism”, whichever one is relevant) is a very big part of that discussion. Ben just wants certain people to come to different conclusions about those “feelings”… or else, they shouldn’t talk about it at all!
Actually it’s not really about the boundary between “economics” and “non-economics”. It’s really about the question about what kind of individual preferences should find a place in a social welfare function and when the hypothetical benevolent social planner should just say “those preferences are sort of messed up, uhh… I will just ignore them”. Should we take racist preferences into account when evaluating social outcomes? Both Ben’s post and to a small extent yours sort of tries to write around and skirt this issue. Which is why I don’t like it. In other words, the boundary is not between “economics” and “non-economics” (come on, we all know it’s really all economics in one way or another) but about the boundary between “I like a particular (my own) culture” and “racism”.
That’s also the difference between the “house” and the “neighborhood” analogy. If you frame immigration in terms of “you should get to decide who moves into your house” that sort of immediately prejudices it in favor of “anti-immigration”. Of course you should have that right! But if you frame immigration in terms of “you should be able to keep “undesirables” out of your neighborhood” then most people will think segregation, racism, discrimination etc. and object to it. You have no such right!
Problem with analogies is that, though often useful (and yours are usually very useful!) they can easily slip into manipulative rhetoric.
Jacques Rene: “We know how we behaved in the past and have no confidence that newcomers will be kinder…”
Yep. The anglo saxon immigrants (probably) ethnically cleansed the ancient brits from most of England. And so it goes on.
notsneaky: “Problem with analogies is that, though often useful (and yours are usually very useful!) they can easily slip into manipulative rhetoric.”
Fair point. But if I drew my picture on the board, with little dots and arrows, where a “country” is nothing more than an are north of an arbitrary horizontal line, we might say that is manipulative rhetoric too. “Countries as homes” is designed to provide a contrasting rhetoric.
Nick: yes, our immigration policies are similar.
Another element is the so-called Curley Effect–using migration to attract in folk like to vote in a particular way and the results to drive away folk who vote differently. See this paper by Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleiffer:
Click to access curley_effect_1.pdf
The sense that your rights will be under threat if a particular group gets sizable is another factor. Gay folk are not likely to be keen on large scale Muslim migration, especially if the fight for equal protection of the law is not yet fully won or is otherwise precarious.
The effect of new entrants on the rules is another way polities are club goods
Lorenzo: I think I agree that countries as club goods is a good way to start. Notice something a bit strange about the membership criteria for countries though: it’s mostly some sort of mixture of “blood and soil”: Children of existing members (usually) get membership; those born on club grounds (usually) get membership. (“Usually”, because it varies by country, and how many generations born outside.) All others have to apply for membership. This tends to make countries a bit more like families than other clubs, where everyone has to apply for membership, rather than getting membership at birth. Ancestry matters (and hence “race” inevitably crops up).
I think immigration is an easy scapegoat.
The world economy has changed massively in the last 20 years: China, India, Soviet bloc, etc… had no impact a few years ago. Any such change will disrupt old patterns. Immigration is just a (small) facet of such an event. Even trade in services (call centers, software developments, etc…) has bloomed… No industry is unaffected.
People here are talking about social capital being eroded by immigrants, but I think a much larger part of social capital is eroded by trade and technology. And thank god for that as those are the forces that have taken us away from subsidence agriculture.
Countries might be houses, but earthquakes tend not to respect property rights…
We talk about countries as stable cultural entities, but they vary all the time even without immigration. Are you going to tell me that the 1960 generation saw eye to eye with the previous one? Or that the current generation sees eye to eye with its parents? Stability is an illusion…
Blaming immigrants for changes that would happen anyway is illogical.
acarraro: “…but I think a much larger part of social capital is eroded by trade and technology.”
How do you see that happening? Is it that any change in the pattern of trade will disrupt trading relationships between people, and so erode social capital? (We learn to trust the people we trade with).
I am not exactly sure that you mean by social capital, but I mostly think of trust. You are more likely to trade with people you know as you have a history with them. But a new pattern of trade or a new technology might enter into the equation and make the cost of trading with someone new small compared with the potential benefit. As time goes by, people start forming new relationships and capital goes back up…
Physical capital gets obsolete all the time, I struggle to see why it wouldn’t apply to social capital. Even political system require pretty constant changes through time… A person born in 1870 would hardly recognize the US political system and that’s the most stable system is some way.
I just read an article about the US nurse association starting a media campaign to stop automation in the health system. They are claiming we should experiment with AI diagnostic tools as they are dangerous and unreliable. Or about taxi drivers in Europe fighting Uber as “unfair” competition…
Wouldn’t you agree that such a technologies would destroy nurses/drivers human capital?
Every person is a little brand. It helps us sell our skills in the marketplace. It protects us from competition as a small barrier of entry. But sometimes something new comes along and our brand gets devalued.
It should say stop experimenting…
Not sneaky,
First, I think we have to be careful about characterizing anti-immigrant sentiment as “racist”. To be sure, racists are generally anti-immigrant (or anti- certain kinds of immigrants), but it doesn’t follow that all xenophobes are racist. My sense is that a large part of the anti-immigrant sentiment in countries like France or Holland is primarily cultural, rather than racial. Their objection to recent generations of immigrants is not that they’re brown, but that they’re perceived to embrace a culture, namely Arabic Islamic , that is alien to (and in certain respects inconsistent with) French culture.
Now, one can argue whether that concern is well-founded, or whether it has been exploited by people like the Le Pens (my own view is that France should have concerns about how poorly it has integarated Muslim immigrants into both the job market and the broader society, but that this is as much the fault of lousy French policy – notably its disastrous labour market practices – as it is an unwillingness of Muslim migrants to integrate), but it certainly is legitimate to be concerned about the impact of migration on the host country. And I think the liberal-left does a great disservice to itself when it dismisses those concerns (as it is wont to do) as the antics of racists, since the effect is to alienate a good chunk of their voters (often working class voters who, in the none-too-recent past, would have voted for left wing parties). Better that those concerns be addressed head-on than to dimiss them as illigitimate, because they’re not going to go away.
As to your claim that:
“if you frame immigration in terms of “you should be able to keep “undesirables” out of your neighborhood” then most people will think segregation, racism, discrimination etc. and object to it. You have no such right!”
That’s not correct. Sovereign countries do have the right to keep “undesirables” (however defined) out. Canada has a fairly liberal immigration policy, but we keep “undesirables”, defined as people who (a) aren’t legitimate refugees, (b) can’t satisfy our immigration requirements, or (c) are criminals, terrorists or otherwise dangerous, out. Thankfully, we don’t define “undesirables” in racial terms, but we could (and used to) if we wanted to (subject to our own domestic legal restrictions embedded in the Charter, although that too we can amend, albeit with difficulty), and certain other countries have their own definitions of “undesirables” – try migrating to Japan). Granted, EU countries can’t do that amongst themselves without giving up EU membership (they couldn’ however, give up EU membership), but nevertheless if we’re talking about countries as “neighbourhoods”, clearly they do have that right.
The question really is, how should they exercise that right and define “undesirables”.
acarraro: what you say makes sense to me. It may be difficult to test empirically, because high trust societies may be more likely to implement change, so we get reverse causality too.
Bob: “Better that those concerns be addressed head-on than to dimiss them as illigitimate, because they’re not going to go away.”
That, to me, is the main lesson of the recent EU elections, and one that seems to be be slowly dawning on the establishment (from my reading of the news). The attempt to delegitimise has failed, and maybe even backfired. The illegitimates won the election. (Sure, low turnout and all, but who knows which way the non-voters would have voted?)
And in France, where the FN did particularly well, voter turnout was up from prior elections.
I think the analogy works pretty well. People can be very emotional about their countries, much like their homes. They won’t necessarily be pro-immigration or pro-trade just because they think it’s good economics.
Hey, check out my own blog about the Canadian and world economies — http://future-economics.net
“Better that those concerns be addressed head-on than to dismiss them as illegitimate, because they’re not going to go away.”
They have been addressed head-on for decades now, which is to a large extent how the FN became so successful. The idea that immigration is a problem in need of a solution has been the dominant discourse in France for as long as I remember, and it’s in fact a great triumph of marketing for far-right parties to have convinced people that they are the lone voice in the wilderness.
What we are witnessing now is the end result of twenty years of validating the perspective of the far-right, to the extent that I’ve never heard a genuine defense of immigration in the mainstream media. The FN party leader is a mainstay of French political shows and the two hitherto main parties (PS and UMP) are both firmly restrictionist. No party is calling for an increase in non-EU immigration: they have bent over backwards to accommodate the far-right, they have stressed that Le Pen is asking the right questions but giving the wrong answers, and they have put a virtual end to economic immigration and immigration in general.
Let’s have a look at non-EU immigration to France. In 2012, 200,000 people received a residence permit for the first time. That’s 0.31% of the French population, hardly an immigration crisis. This number is probably the lowest the French can go while still pretending that they care about human rights and/or the place of France in the world. Let’s break it down further:
– Work-related reasons: 15,827. You could slightly reduce this number, but that would for instance mean preventing foreign scientists, scholars and executives from working in France, which is hardly a good strategy.
– Students: around 60,000. More viable. But inconsistent with the desire that French remain an international language and France a cultural beacon. Plus most of them (3/4) go back home after their studies and I suspect that most FN voters don’t think “foreign students” when they think of immigrants they don’t like.
– Family reasons: 84,747. The only large category. I guess you can decide that people will not be allowed to marry foreigners anymore, or at least that they won’t be able to live with them. But, in today’s world, does it really make sense? People travel, study, work abroad and some of them are bound to meet people and get married to them.
– Humanitarian and miscellaneous reasons: the remainder. Sorry, you’re not allowed to kick refugees out. That leaves people who are sick and have no access to treatment in their country of origin. I guess we can kick them out.
To go back to the “country as a home” metaphor, at least in terms of how it’s used by far-right:
– Your computer has broken down and you need to finish an article. You’ve found a computer specialist, but one of your roommates (that you’ve never actually met, it’s a big house) prevents her from getting in, insisting that since he’s unemployed he’ll just take a couple months to learn how to fix computers and will eventually help you. But you certainly don’t want an outsider to fix your computer (which is of course not xenophobic at all).
– Your daughter has met someone from outside the house and wants to live with him. But you decide that she can either leave the house forever, because you won’t have someone from outside the house be part of your family. But, of course, that’s not xenophobic.
– While walking on the street, someone from outside the house suffers a heart attack, makes it to your front door and collapses, clutching his chest. There’s a fully staffed hospital inside the house, and you know that the person will die if they’re not allowed to enter. But, since they’re from outside the house, you leave them there. But, of course, that’s not xenophobic.
Damien: good comment, with data. (I take it that the 0.31% figure is gross inflows, from the context? I.e. some of those 0.31% will leave France again, when they have finished their studies, or work, or whatever.) Was non-EU immigration to France higher in the past? Is EU immigration to France bigger or smaller than that?
But saying “But, of course, that’s not xenophobic.” doesn’t really get us very far. (And maybe irony should best be avoided here.) OK, let’s say it’s xenophobic. What next?
Relevant: Crooked Timber just started an online symposium on Joseph Carens’ recent book, The Ethics of Immigration. The first post in what will be a series of posts from various authors, going up over the next few days: http://crookedtimber.org/2014/05/26/book-symposium-on-joseph-carenss-the-ethics-of-immigration/
In my experience, these CT symposia are uniformly excellent, so anyone interested in these issues will want to give it a look. In particular, it looks like the latest post in the series hits pretty directly on the issue of why we might (or might not) distinguish between movement or trade within vs. between states: http://crookedtimber.org/2014/05/28/the-ethics-of-immigration-symposium-movement-within-and-between-states/
Damien: “They have been addressed head-on for decades now, which is to a large extent how the FN became so successful.”
Sorry, but this is palpably untrue, if for no other reason than that no government in France has addressed any significant issue head on in a generation. THAT’s why the FN has been successful.
Look, the immigration debate in France really doesn’t have much to do with immigration, it’s a proxy for two distinct, and bigger, problems.
The first is the abject failure of France’s political class to address France’s failing labour market. The reality is that France has had to deal with high rates of unemployment for decades. In 1993 Kim Campbell was excoriated, rightly, for suggesting that Canada might have double digit unemployment for the balance of the decade. Happily we didn’t. France did. France is a great place to work if you have a job, with cushy benefits, great job security, and four day work weeks. But it’s a lousy place to hire people, so employers don’t. And it’s a lousy place to be looking for work if you’re not one of the insiders.
This first failure has played out in two ways. First, it create an angry pool of un- or under-employed population resentful of their loss of economic stature who lash out against immigrants either on the contradictory grounds that they’re stealing “our jobs” and abusing “our welfare system” or merely as scapegoats for their inchoate rate (along with other “outsiders” like the EU, multinational corporations, the “Anglosphere” – not for nothing are those targeted by the FN alongside immigrants). But, because immigrants have largely been the principal victims of lousy French labour market policies (resulting in higher levels of unemployment and greater exclusion from the labour market amongst France’s migrant population), it has also served to alienate France’s immigrants from the broader French society.
Which leads to the second failure, namely France’s inability to integrate recent – principally, but not exclusively, Muslim – immigrants into the broader French society. The French certainly have grounds to be fearful of the rising Islamist sentiment amongst portions of their Islamic communities, and certainly, no one would wonder into the “banlieu” of Paris and think “gee, this is good”. The problem is that the French are also largely responsible for breeding that Islamist sentiment by excluding French Muslims from more fulsome participation in the broader society (of which unemployment is merely one, albeit a big one, symptom). I mean, let’s face it, the ban on hijabs in public (much less the earlier, and in some ways infinitely stupider, ban on head coverings in public schools – can you imagine a more effective way to isolate France’s Muslim population than by denying their children access to schools?) wasn’t the handywork of FN troglodytes, those measures found widespread support across the political spectrum. It’s no wonder young French Muslims might reject France and its values, given how thoroughly France has rejected them. That is a problem, but it’s not a problem with immigration, its a problem with France.
And here, looking at annual migration flows really doesn’t do justice to the picture as seen by the French. Sure, annual migration flows may only be ~200k a year (almost half of which is from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa – this is almost certainly what the FN voters have in mind when they think of immigration). But if you look at the stock of immigrants, that perspective changes. In 2008, there were ~1.6 million migrants from the Maghreb living in France, toss in their kids, that number more than doubles to ~3.5 million (and, note, this in a country whose native population long since stopped having children), with another half million from Turkey. True, the 2nd generation “migrants” aren’t migrants in any meaningful sense of the word, but the FN supporters don’t see it that way and, more to the point, due to France’s failure to integrate them and their parents, neither do they. Moreover, it’s not the numbers, it’s the distribution. In large swaths around Paris and Marseilles, the “migrants” represent a decidedly visible majority. See in that light, it’s hard to dismiss this as a non-issue.
If, as you suggest, “the idea that immigration is a problem in need of a solution has been the dominant discourse in France for as long as [you] remember” it’s because no one has addressed either of the above problems. If there hasn’t been a genuine defense of immigration, it’s because immigration isn’t the problem, economic and integration policies are. Immigration is just a proxy for those problems. But France’s political leadership is too gormless to address those underlying problems head-on, so they’re content to fight the proxy battle over immigration. But since immigration isn’t the issue, even if you reduced it to zero, that doesn’t address the real problems. Mind you, the FN won’t address the real problems either, since they are as backwards as the rest on France’s labour market, and their solution to the integration of recent migrants is to cure the disease by killing the patient (not literally, one hopes). But then, I’m not sure we want to be in a position to find out that the FN emperor has no clothes.
“Humanitarian and miscellaneous reasons: the remainder. Sorry, you’re not allowed to kick refugees out”
No, but I doubt France’s international treaty obligations vis-à-vis refugees carry much weight with your average FN spear-carrier (any more than France’s treaty obligations vis-à-vis the Euro, the EU, the WTO, well, you get the point). Almost certainly they would kick refugees out if they had the power to do so. In any event, while refugees may be entitled to protection, that doesn’t mean that they can’t be a major pain in the ass to their host countries, as any country on the border of a refugee source country can readily attest (to this day, many Jordanians and Lebanese loath Palestinians and blame them, with some cause, for the unrest in their countries over the years). If a refugee population isn’t integrating well into its host country, that’s a problem, it’s just not clear that the FN’s preferred solution, of kicking them out, is the only, much less the best, solution.
I would suggest reading ‘Trillion Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk’ by Michael Clemens in the Journal of Economic Perspectives to get a sense of how much the world stands to gain from free migration. Please look at Tables 1 and 2.
Next, please look at the wages and lives of the global poor. I believe (and I think Brad DeLong, Miles Kimball, and Alex Tabarrok have made similar statements) that someday in the distant future we will look back at our current migration policies with the same horror that we currently experience when we think about slavery in the antebellum era or segregation prior to the civil rights movement.
Nick, on a personal tangential note, your house analogy is compelling (although I can also see the validity of Damien’s, the Georgist Anon’s, and notsneaky’s arguments) and that’s what makes me absolutely despise myself every minute I live in the U.S. as an immigrant. I would be loath to stay in a house if some household members dislike my living there (even if the other members have collectively agreed to let me in based on existing laws). Am I so utterly lacking in self-respect that I shamelessly continue to live in a house where some people (even if only a minority) want me out?
Each time I talk about this issue, my many American friends reassure me that I am not unwelcome in the U.S. and my employer has even applied for a permanent residency on my behalf. But it really comes down to whether I consider a country to be a neighborhood or a house. If a country is a neighborhood, I am happy to stay even if (say) some of the racists in the neighborhood don’t like the color of my skin. If a country is a house, I would hate to stay or even visit even if (say) just one of the principal members of the household were racist and found me unwelcome. What makes a neighborhood different from a household and which of these two entities does a country resemble more?
Your blog post gives an excellent reason for people to re-read Friedman. Carefully follow the logic of “Capitalism and Freedom” and you will see that the issue here is the welfare state.
Countries should not be though of as houses or clubs. The people of the country might share a some basic common values, but for the most part, in countries like The United States, the population is so diverse there is little agreement on most social issues. Society is composed of individuals with the family unit making up the basic atom.
Using Friedman as our starting point, immigration is about trade, and in that sense it is better to think of the country as a giant market. (In fact, all history, if read correctly, is the story of human migration.) Suppose we think of Canada as a market and some poor person comes up to our gates and says, “I would like to trade with people on the other side of the fence. I have goods (actually, my basic unskilled labour) which some people on the other side are willing to buy at a price that I am willing to accept. This will make the people I trade with on the other side of the fence better off and it will most certainly make me better off. Can I please pass?” The answer we say is “No! You need to go through some point system or some other nonsense before we will think about accepting you. And since you are unskilled, the answer will be no.” This is demeaning, awful, and cruel.
Of course the problem we point out is that allowing vastly more immigrants into Canada would bankrupt our social programs and that is almost certainly true. A welfare state must carefully control immigration. But the worst part of this issue is that the welfare state precludes gains to trades from the poorest people on this planet and for that we should be deeply ashamed. I am Canadian, but I care far more about human beings than some silly transient notion of nationality (Does anyone seriously think that Canada will exist in 1000 years?). If a person from China or India feels that the best she can do in life is to come to Canada to seek employment, why should anyone stop her? At its heart, the welfare state is about guns – point them at the people from whom you want redistribution. And when potential immigrants get in the way of that, point the guns at them too. It’s sad.
Nick, that makes them territorial clubs. Like gated communities, really. The family analogy bothers me a bit, because I feel some connection to fellow citizens, but not that intense a one. Also, talking about countries as being like families is a favourite rhetorical ploy of both socialists and fascists, so has a collectivist association I do not resonate with.
I don’t really agree that the welfare state requires immigration control.
You need to assume that the average immigrant is more likely to claim benefits than the average native in order to get to that result. Most immigrants are in their prime as well: human beings are not very productive in their first few years. Leaving your family/country requires a large amount of initiative and is likely to be a predictor of dynamism. In the UK, immigrants are less likely to claim benefits or be in jail.
Most western countries have programs to increase birth rates. Are we arguing that natives are innately better? Even if you have to spend several years waiting for them to mature physically and emotionally?
I think the war on immigration is like the war on drugs. It doesn’t achieve the stated aims and it costs more than it is worth… You will not stop determined people unless you are willing to live in a police state and the costs in a liberal democracy are just too high… As with drugs, people implicitly assume that no barriers would imply a very large increase… I find it very unlikely that would be the case as a large percentage of people willing to move have already done so…
Migration within the same country is much lower than the “optimal” amount. The north of England (or the south of Italy, etc…) have much higher unemployment rates than other parts of the country. Do all people living in those areas move away? Even if they have no legal or cultural barriers? Usually we actually argue that we need to subsidize movement. Why would foreigner be different?
This is definitely one of my posts where the best part is the comments.
“Countries should not be though of as houses or clubs. The people of the country might share a some basic common values, but for the most part, in countries like The United States, the population is so diverse there is little agreement on most social issues.”
I don’t think that statement is correct. Yes, there is a great deal of diversity in countries like the United States or Canada and significant disagreement about many social issues. But that understates the high degree of common values, assumptions and beliefs that are shared by most Americans (or Canadians). Those common values, assumptions and beliefs typically aren’t the focus of public discussion or subject to public dispute precisely because they are universally accepted. That they are fundamental to American society only becomes apparent when you look at other societies. Drop a hard-right Republican and a hard-left democrat into France, Egypt or India and it becomes pretty apparent that, despite their superficial difference, they are uniquely American and will have more in common with one another than with their new neighbours.
In countries like Canada or the US, there is a great deal of diversity or disagreement, but it’s at the surface level. We disagree over the little things, but the commonalities are much more important,
I havent’t had time to read all comments, so somebody may have brought this up…
If we think of a country as a house, then I’d guess that residents would be more likely to welcome a new housemate (whether they pay their way or not) if the existing members of the household all have good jobs, their own room nicely furnished, bills all paid, etc … If quarters are cramped, in need of repair, and money tight, people are going to be grumpy and unlikely to welcome someone new, regardless of where they come from.
Avon: if we didn’t have a welfare state, we would care a bit less about who immigrated. “Will they pay more or less in taxes than they cost in benefits?” would be less of an issue. But immigration would still matter. Again, suppose one million Brits, just like me, all immigrated to Quebec at the same time, and we all paid more in taxes than we cost the public purse. Quebec would be a very different place, and it might start to feel less like home and more like a foreign country. As tourists we deliberately seek out foreign parts, that are different from home, for the experience. And some of us might like that experience all our lives. But not everyone would like that. We can also feel the joy of returning home after a trip to foreign parts.
Plus, even a minimalist state has some responsibilities. Will the people living around me fight alongside me or against me in a war? Will we all help each other protect our property rights because we are all part of the same group, or will they see me as “the other” with no joint responsibility to protect our rights?
Bob: In some respects, like jobs for immigrants, the UK has done better than France. But whether that will be enough for integration remains to be seen.
Lorenzo: “Also, talking about countries as being like families is a favourite rhetorical ploy of both socialists and fascists, so has a collectivist association I do not resonate with.”
Thinking as an economist, a “country” might seem to be no more than an area of land enclosed by arbitrary lines on a map, like in my pictures i describe in the post. But any normal non-economist would laugh at our incredibly “thin” concept of “country”, and say it is much more than that. I remember the Canadian Free Trade debate (about an FTA between Canada and the US), where economists seemed to be arguing from a very different perspective from the nationalists and socialists who opposed the FTA. And I think at root it was about a different concept of “country”. On free trade, I think we were largely right, and that the FTA was a good thing even with a richer concept of “country”. For free migration, I am not so sure. I think we need to try and get our heads around how those nationalists and socialists conceive of a “country”, whether we agree or not, and also recognise the thinness of our own concept, and try to make it a bit thicker.
primed: I take my hat off to you for that comment.
Let me try to articulate something about the global benefits from free migration. I have been thinking of ways to try to say this clearly, and I’m not sure I have succeeded yet. But let me try:
There are three things distributed around the world: people; land; and laws (understood widely). With closed borders it is unlikely we will bet the optimal combinations of the three. It is likely that moving some of the people, while leaving the same combinations of land and laws as they are now, could improve things. But we could also argue that moving some of the laws, while leaving the people and land as they are now, could improve things too. Put crudely, US imperialism could seem to work as well as migration to the US. What is so very special about US land (natural resources)? But that is a reductio ad absurdam, because imperialism has very mixed success (imposing your laws on other people+land usually doesn’t work that well in practice). We can’t just shuffle around any one of those three things independently of the other two.
That wasn’t very clear. My mind is not yet clear. I am trying to say something about two triads: people, land, and laws; and immigration, imperialism, and colonialism.
Nick, the welfare state is the root of this problem. Prior to WWI the US had a de facto open door immigration policy. If you showed up at Ellis Island, congratulations, you were American. At that time, the welfare state did not exist and total government expenditures accounted for less than 2% of GDP. There was no grand redistributionalist agenda. It didn’t matter how poor an immigrant was. Most were the poorest Europe had to offer. Immigration at this time transformed the US. New York in particular changed from being a largely white, British city to a wonderful cosmopolitan place filled with Italians, Jews and everyone else. The US became wealthier, especially compared to Europe. Few would argue that immigration in this period harmed the US.
Today, it is a different story. Politicians know that if we allowed immigration at the levels of the 19th century, we would be flood with poor people, just like NYC in the last half of the 19th century. We could not afford to extend our social programs to all of them and this is why we restrict immigration. The zeitgeist of our time tells us that the state should actively redistribute about half the economy (total government expenditures in Canada once tax deductions are included is over 50%). You cannot live like this if you will accept without reservation the planet’s tired, poor, huddled masses. We are not interested in freedom so much as we are interested in redistribution – when the two collide, we give up on freedom in a heartbeat.
No, Nick, imperialism is not the answer. If you let people migrate, it sends the strongest possible message back home to change the rules of their economic system – people are voting with their feet.
Jeremy: good find. Right on this very topic, about the ethical difference between the little arrows that do or do not cross the horizontal line. Link to Crooked Timber post.
Avon: “New York in particular changed from being a largely white, British city to a wonderful cosmopolitan place filled with Italians, Jews and everyone else.”
Hey, what’s not also wonderful about a city full of Brits? 😉
Avon:
“Prior to WWI the US had a de facto open door immigration policy. If you showed up at Ellis Island, congratulations, you were American. At that time, the welfare state did not exist and total government expenditures accounted for less than 2% of GDP. There was no grand redistributionalist agenda. It didn’t matter how poor an immigrant was. Most were the poorest Europe had to offer. Immigration at this time transformed the US. New York in particular changed from being a largely white, British city to a wonderful cosmopolitan place filled with Italians, Jews and everyone else. The US became wealthier, especially compared to Europe. Few would argue that immigration in this period harmed the US.”
I think the actual experience of US immigration prior to WWI in fact disproves your point. The 19th century US saw the rise of powerful nativist anti-immigrant movement (e.g.,the “Know-nothings”) in response to, respectively, Irish, German , Chinese to say nothing of Jewish, Eastern European, and Italian migration, reflecting both concerns about the impact of migration on wages (unions were prominent players in the nativist movement) and concern about racial, cultural and religious “purity” (reflected, for example, in the rise to prominence and influence of organizations like the KKK) and in the successful introduction of anti-immigrant laws (the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1885, the closing of immigration following WWI).
One can certainly argue, with the benefit of hindsight, that the US open-door policy pre-1921 was beneficial for the US, but at the time, that was far from obvious, and many Americans were quite vociferous in their view that it harmed the US. More to the point, no one would deny the point that migration did impose costs on natives (if, in nothing else, in lower wages) – and my recollection is that there is an abundance of literature on the point. While those costs were almost certainly outweighted by the benefits, as with trade, its far from obvious that the benefits and costs of immigration are evenly distributed.
Bob Smith: too busy to post a rant as long as yours but on banning hidjab as a cause of discontent: both my muslim family and my muslim colleagues ( and as backwood as where I work is, there are 5 within 10 meters of my office…), all of them are in favor of banning it, sometimes in terms far more forceful than I would use. Banning it remove the pretense that “we wear it from our own will in a feminist way.”
Majromax: ” Instead of a trinity of land, people, and laws, we really have one of land, people, and custom.”
Yes. My “law” is too narrow a concept. “Custom” maybe works better.
Avon, whether you are correct or not (and personally I do think there’s something to your arguments), the issue you’re discussing is a different one than the one address with Nick’s analogy. Suppose the welfare state is not important, whether because it doesn’t exist, because immigrants do not qualify, or because immigrants pay more in than they take out. The question remains about whether “natives” can oppose immigration on purely… “cultural” or “custom” – non economic – grounds.