a special report on migration january 5th 2008planned to settle permanently, more than half of them...

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Open upA special report on migrationJanuary 5th 2008

Despite a growing backlash, the boom in migration has been mostlygood for both sending and recipient countries, says Adam Roberts

new force that is reshaping our world. Yetthere are now signs of a serious backlashagainst immigration on both sides of theAtlantic. In 2007 activists in Americasmashed a bill to make immigration easierthat had the backing of the president andthe leaders of both big parties in Congress.In France, Nicolas Sarkozy won the presi-dential elections partly thanks to his anti-migrant rhetoric. But this is still a far cryfrom Mr Powell’s doom-mongering.

Politicians in rich countries may tinkerwith migration policies. They will cer-tainly, under public pressure, put extra re-sources and energy into building morefences and walls to keep people out. Andby making a connection between immi-gration and terrorism, they may causetheir societies to become more heavily po-liced. But the basic forces driving migra-tion are unlikely to ebb.

Counting the waysPeople who cross international borders areoften categorised by their motives, andsome of these categories are seen as lessdesirable than others. Most migrants movefor economic reasons, many in search ofjobs, some to be united with relatives.Most appear to be doing so legally. Amer-ica in 2002-06 allowed in an average of justover 1m legal immigrants a year whoplanned to settle permanently, more thanhalf of them sponsored by relatives. An-other 320,000 a year entered temporarily.

Of bedsheets and bison grassvodkaRich economies gain from high levels of mi-gration, but the bene�ts are unevenly spread.Page 3

The politics of the gunMigration has once again become a touchypolitical issue. Page 5

Keep outVoters like the idea of tougher borders, butthe cost is high and the bene�ts are limited.Page 6

Send me a numberMigrants’ remittances help ease poverty backhome, but they are not a cure-all. Page 8

You don’t have to be richDeveloping countries attract migrants too.Page 10

Circulate or integrate?A choice of migration policies. Page 11

The long termToo much or not enough? Page 13

The Economist January 5th 2008 A special report on migration 1

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Open up

ENOCH POWELL had a point. The Con-servative British politician gave warn-

ing, nearly four decades ago, that immi-grants were causing such strife that �likethe Roman, I seem to see the River Tiberfoaming with much blood.� That proved tobe nonsense, as did his advice that mi-grants should be encouraged to leave. Hadthey done so, Britain and other rich coun-tries that depend heavily on foreign labourwould be in a dreadful state. But one pre-diction he made was spot on: that by aboutnow, one in ten people in Britain would bemigrants. And indeed, at the last count in2005, the foreign-born made up 9.7% of theBritish population.

By historical standards, that is high. It isa lot more than a decade ago, and the trendis resolutely upwards. Yet it is not dissimi-lar to that in many other rich countries,which have mostly seen equally rapid in-creases. And it is still lower than in Amer-ica, where the proportion is now about13%, not far o� the 15% peak reached justbefore the �rst world war, in the previousgreat era of migration. What is particularlystriking in Europe is that many countrieswhich until recently had known only emi-gration, such as Ireland or Greece, are nowseeing the sort of in�ux more typical ofcountries such as Australia and America.

This special report will argue that bothemigration and immigration countries, aswell as the migrants themselves, havebeen coping remarkably well with this

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AcknowledgmentsIn addition to those mentioned in the text, the authorwould like to thank: Alan Winters of the World Bank; PeterSutherland of the Global Forum on Migration and Develop-ment; Sarah Wilson of Christian Aid; congressman Ed Perl-mutter of Colorado; William Somerville, Doris Meissner,Margie McHugh and Michael Fix of the Migration Policy In-stitute; Michael Friel, Vince Bond, Dove Haber and RichardSmith of the US Border Patrol; Jorgen Carling of the Inter-national Peace Research Institute, Oslo; Louka Katseli, for-merly of the OECD; Binyamin Smith (not his real name) ofEthiopia; Abraham Hailezgi of Somalia; Panagiotis Tsia�disand Stavridopoulos Thrasivoulos of Greece; Alicia St.Legerof Cobh, Ireland; Mohammed Benjaber, Youssef Amrani,Amina Bouayach, Fadlallah Mohammed Fellat and FehriNouredine of Morocco; and Sally Peberdy of the SouthernAfrican Migration Project.

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2 A special report on migration The Economist January 5th 2008

2 The number of illegal migrants is by de-�nition hard to ascertain, but likely to besmaller than the legal sort. The illegals alsogo for economic reasons, and they proba-bly make up the bulk of people seen �oat-ing on rafts in the Mediterranean or scrab-bling over the fence from Mexico toAmerica. Many illegal migrants do not riskthe high seas or physical borders but in-stead enter under some other guise, per-haps as tourists, and then stay on. In thatsame period of 2002-06, America’s popu-lation is thought to have seen a net gain of500,000 illegal migrants every year. With-in the European Union it has become im-possible to keep a tally because people canmove legally among most of the membercountries without asking anyone. Britain,as an island, should �nd it easier than mostto know how many foreigners it has al-lowed in, but its statistics on migrants haverecently turned out to be way o� the mark.

Lastly, there are refugees and asylum-seekers, strictly de�ned as those escapingpersecution but often including anybodyforced to �ee, for example from a war. Ac-cording to the UN’s refugee agency, at theclose of 2006 some 10m people fell intothis category. Many go through legal chan-nels, applying for refugee status and thenasylum. But others join illegal migrants intrying to reach host countries by raft or byjumping over a fence. Genuine refugeesmay have no alternative.

The 200m questionThe number of migrants in the world to-day, both legal and illegal, is thought to to-tal perhaps 200m (though many of the �g-ures, even those used by governments, areat best educated guesses). That sounds alot, but it adds up to only 3% of the world’spopulation, so there is great potential forgrowth. Migration has turned out to be a

successful strategy for the world’s poor tomake their lives a little better. Nor is it thevery poorest who travel. You need moneyto move to another part of the world. Thusas Africa, China and other emerging coun-tries become less poor, many more peoplecan aspire to travel in search of a better life.

In the 100 years to 1920, such prospectsencouraged some 60m Europeans to up-root themselves and move to the NewWorld. A European who crossed the Atlan-tic could expect to double his income. To-day the incentives are even more enticing.Those who move from a poor country to arich one can expect to see their income rise�vefold or more. As long as such di�eren-tials persist, the draw will continue.

These days, too, demography is playinga big part in migration. Not every migrantis aiming for America or Europe: perhapstwo in every �ve move to another poor ormiddle-income country. But those who goto the richest parts of the world do their in-habitants a favour. Without migrants, thegreying and increasingly choosy popula-tions in much of the rich world would al-ready be on the decline today. That mat-ters for their fast-changing economies,which increasingly demand either highlyskilled workers or people willing to do un-pleasant and tiring jobs.

One reason why much of the world hasenjoyed a sustained economic boom withlow in�ation in the past decade is that thee�ective global workforce is expanding sofast. The IMF says it has quadrupled since1980 as China and India have pluggedtheir huge young populations into theworld economy. It is likely to keep ongrowing, though at a slower pace, with a40% increase in the world’s working-agepopulation forecast by 2050. According tothe UN, the global stock of migrants hasmore than doubled in the past four de-cades. Not enough young natives have theright skills or motivation, so the rich musthope that outsiders will keep coming.

And they will. Luckily for Europe andAmerica, there are huge pools of eagerworkers ready to jump on the next plane,train or leaking raft to work abroad. Thiscan be bene�cial for their home countriesas well, at least as long as the population isgrowing fast. The IMF says that emigrationfrom Belize, El Salvador, Guyana and Ja-maica, for example, may have led to higherwages and less poverty. Some Chinesefrom the heavily populated east coast aremoving out, despite a fast-growing econ-omy. Researchers in Africa report a recentrapid in�ow of Chinese workers.

If exporting brawn generally makessense for a poor country, sending its betterbrains away may not. Most, perhaps all,poor and middle-income countries facechronic shortages of skilled workers. InSouth Africa, although universities churnout graduates at a fast clip, many well-quali�ed people promptly depart for Brit-ain or Australia, leaving tens of thousandsof jobs un�lled at home. In Morocco thosewith science and engineering degrees,computer skills and languages go toFrance, the Netherlands and Canada,whereas the students of literature andpublic administration stay at home. Pro-fessor Mohamed Khachami, of AMERM, amigration think-tank in Rabat, lamentsthat his country lacks people to build bet-ter internet connections, yet Paris now hasan association for Moroccan IT engineers.Hospitals and clinics in southern Africastruggle to cope with huge public-healthproblems as doctors and nurses pack theirbags for jobs in the Gulf, Europe and else-where. It is a similar story for schools.

Those in demand abroad are the hard-est people to keep at home. Some Euro-pean countries tried, and failed, to stop ar-tisans emigrating to America in the early19th century. In fact it is almost impossibleto block the exit for the highly skilled if thelure is strong enough. Small countries suchas Jamaica, Trinidad and Senegal have

1Coming and going

Source: OECD, “Labour Force Statistics 2006”

Net migration rate in OECD countries as % of resident population

1956 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 2000 05

0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

+

–

Traditionalemigrationcountries

Traditionalimmigrationcountries

All

1


2 seen half to three-quarters of all their grad-uates move abroad.

Rich countries have taken in morehighly skilled migrants than ever before.The World Bank looked at a sample drawnfrom 52m migrants in 20 rich countries in2000 and found that 36% of them had acollege education, a sharp rise on a decadeearlier. Yet emigration of skilled workersmay be a consequence rather than a causeof problems in the sending country. For ex-ample, nurses may be quitting Malawi be-cause their salaries are not being paid orbecause hospitals are crumbling; entrepre-neurs may be moving abroad because thebusiness climate back home is wretched.Stopping emigration, even if you could,would not solve the problems. The nursesmight still leave their jobs, the would-beentrepreneur might sit on his hands.

Indeed, some argue that emigrationcan help to add to the stock of brainpower.Migrants who go abroad may spend moretime studying, pick up more skills and ex-perience and then bring them all homeagain. Remittances are often used to fundschooling. And the prospect of emigration

and prosperity abroad may be an induce-ment for many more to get an education.All this suggests that the consequences ofskilled emigration are di�cult to calculate,even if they are not negligible.

Governments of sending countrieswould do well to tackle whatever factorsare pushing their skilled people out in the�rst place. Malawi, which exports a lot ofnurses, should of course worry that it lacksmedical sta�. It is said that there are moreMalawian nurses in Manchester than backhome. But, perhaps with donors’ help,more investment in public health could becombined with a strategy of training manymore nurses than are needed, allowing forfuture emigration and the other bene�tsthat brings. If migrants can be temptedback home, even for short spells, all thebetter. Ghana, for example, has raisedwages for some medical sta� and o�eredincentives to the highest-skilled to comeback. Money is not the only concern: sta�are also allowed parts of the year to workabroad, giving a boost to their careers.

There is no guarantee that migrationwill carry on at record rates. It is possible to

seal borders tightly enough to keep morepeople out if those inside are ready to paythe price. An earlier period of great migra-tion came to an end, for example, whenAmerica some 90 years ago shut its doorsto immigrants for a while.

But easier movement of capital andgoods has helped to make the world amuch richer place in the past decade ortwo, and more human mobility has bothcreated wealth and helped to share it outmore equally. The billions sent around theworld in remittances each year is testi-mony to that. The price of keeping peopleout would be high.

And unexpected things keep happen-ing. Wars can suddenly displace millionsof people who may start o� as refugees butend up as migrants. Some people thinkthat climate change might force tens ofmillions of people to get moving withinjust a few decades. Misguided policies, abacklash over terrorism or a failure to inte-grate migrants could all cause serious pro-blems. All the same, it seems clear, 40years on, that Mr Powell got everythingbut his sums completely wrong. 7

FOR the past two decades or so, highrates of immigration into OECD coun-

tries have coincided with prolonged econ-omic growth in much of the Westernworld. Consider Cobh, a bustling touristtown in southern Ireland which used to befamous for exporting people. Some 2.5mIrishmen and women embarked for Amer-ica from its quayside, and its great andgloomy neo-gothic cathedral was paid forby remittances.

Now, like the rest of Ireland, Cobhheaves with foreign workers. There arePoles on building sites, Latvians who owna shop selling dumplings, sauerkraut andother continental delicacies, a South Afri-can in the tourist o�ce and another driv-ing a taxi, Chinese in restaurants, a Bangla-deshi managing a �shing business, and soon. A hotel owner says that he could notdo without the migrants: when he recentlyadvertised for a receptionist, none of the200 applicants was Irish.

Migration can be both a consequenceand a cause of economic well-being, butmany people in host countries with lots of

migrants have yet to be convinced of theeconomic bene�ts. A poll in November2007, for France 24, found that 55% ofSpaniards consider migrants a boon fortheir economy, and so do 50% of Italians,but only 42% of Britons and Germans anda mere 30% of French respondents.

Some of the hostility towards immigra-tion seems linked to worries about theeconomy. If recession looms, locals aremore afraid that outsiders will take theirjobs or scrounge on their welfare systems.The last time that immigration in Americawas as high as it is now, just under a cen-tury ago, xenophobia rose as recessiontook hold. Today, amid concerns that ahousing slide could lead to a general econ-omic slump, American anxiety about mi-gration is rising again. But the poor worryabout immigration even when the econ-omy is thriving.

Legal migrants usually have better jobprospects than illegal ones, and the moreeducated outdo the rest. Not all of themstay. Nearly a third of those who crossedthe Atlantic to America between 1890 and

1914�and as many as half the Spaniardsand Italians�re-emigrated. Similarly, sur-veys today show that a majority of Poles inBritain plan to go home within a few years.

Some migrants do better not only thanthose left behind but also than those intheir destination countries. The Institutefor Public Policy Research, a British think-tank, found in 2007 that the foreign-bornof many ethnic groups are both morelikely to have a job and to be better paidthan the average Briton. In America, overthe past century, studies have shown mi-grants’ wages catching up with, and thenoften surpassing, those of average Ameri-cans. Migrants’ children do well too. This isnot surprising. Migrants need health,skills, determination, a willingness to takerisks and some entrepreneurial nous totake the plunge, which marks them out asspecial people.

Assuming that migrants are in work,they are bound to bene�t the economy ofthe host country as a whole. Most simply,an expanding workforce permits fastergrowth. More people can do more work,

Of bedsheets and bison grass vodka

Rich economies gain from high levels of migration, but the bene�ts are unevenly spread

1


2 and many migrants are young adults whoare particularly productive. Moreover, mi-grants increasingly alleviate speci�c la-bour shortages in rich economies. Someeconomies could not function without for-eign workers. In the United Arab Emirates,for instance, they make up an astonishing85% of the population.

For the moment few other countriesrely so heavily on outsiders (see chart 2),but in a number of rich countries, includ-ing Britain and America, foreigners typi-cally make up 10-15% of the labour forceand their share is rising. Around half of thenew jobs created in Britain today are �lledby migrants, often because they have skillsthat locals lack (from plumbing to bank-ing) or because natives scorn the work(from picking fruit to caring for the elderly).

Low jobless rates in Ireland, Sweden,Britain, America and other countries withhigh migration suggest that, so far, foreign-ers are not squeezing out natives. Migrantsalso help to create jobs, because a goodsupply of labour encourages those withcapital to invest more. For example, the ho-tel owner in Cobh, knowing he can �nd af-fordable sta�, has added an extensionwith extra rooms. In contrast, countrieswhere migrants have been kept at arm’slength, such as Germany, complain abouta chronic shortage of skilled workers suchas engineers, scientists or programmers.

Just say the wordForeign workers are often more �exiblethan native ones, too. Having alreadymoved from Mexico to California, say,they are probably willing to take a job inChicago. Migrant labour helps to keepeconomies on an even keel. At times ofstrong growth, an in�ux of workers re-duces the risk of wage pressures and risingin�ation. If growth weakens, migrants cango home or move to another country, orchoose not to come in the �rst place. For ex-ample, the �ow of Mexicans to America isprobably slowing as the housing slumpworsens and construction jobs disappear.

Migrants can also release skilled na-tives to do a job (for example by providingchild care that allows a parent to go back towork). And they are consumers, too, rent-ing accommodation and buying goodsand services. The owner of the o�-licencein Cobh is delighted by his Polish custom-ers, who are fond of bison grass vodka andeast European lager. Cobh’s supermarket,fast-food restaurants and other shops are�ourishing too.

Quantifying the impact of all this istricky. A 2007 report by Pricewaterhouse-

Coopers concluded that a surge in migra-tion has helped to lift Britain’s growth rateabove its long-term trend. Alexandros Za-vos, of the Hellenic Migration Policy Initia-tive in Athens, reckons that immigrationinto Greece has recently added as much as1.5-2.0% to its GDP every year. For coun-tries that have long had high rates of immi-gration, such as America, sustained econ-omic growth partly re�ects an ever-growing workforce.

Sceptics say that migration may boostthe economy as a whole, but on a per-headbasis the bene�ts for the natives are lessimpressive. Migrationwatch, an anti-mi-gration group in Britain, reckons that forthe average Briton the in�ow of foreignersprovides just a few extra pence a week.Roy Beck, an anti-immigrant activist inAmerica, suggests that countries with age-ing workforces should try to make theireconomies less labour-dependent. Hiscountry is �addicted to foreign labour�, hesays, and more capital investment andmore training for locals would reduce theneed for foreign workers. But some jobs(such as cleaning or nursing) cannot besent abroad or mechanised. And even ifmore natives can be trained to do highlyskilled work, shrinking native workforcesin many countries could mean economiccontraction.

Some of the sceptics’ arguments touchraw political nerves, particularly when itcomes to the least well-o� natives in thehost country. In America the share of na-tional income that is going to the pooresthas been shrinking in recent decades. In-equality has increased and the real wagesof the least skilled have fallen. Circumstan-tial evidence suggests that foreigners, whotypically work in less skilled jobs, might bepartly to blame. According to one estimate,

they make up around 28% of legal con-struction workers in America and over athird of maids and housekeepers. If the il-legal workers could be counted, the �gureswould probably be much higher still.

Cheap and cheerfulDo migrants make life worse for poor na-tives? Studies comparing wages in Ameri-can cities with and without lots of foreign-ers suggest that they make little di�erenceto the income of the poorest. George Bor-jas of Harvard University, who comparedwages for di�erent kinds of jobs where mi-grants most obviously compete with na-tives, estimated that immigration in Amer-ica in the two decades to 2000 may havekept wages 3% lower than they would oth-erwise have been. For the least skilled thedi�erence may have been as much as 8%.But Mr Borjas also calculated how a rise inthe number of migrants might have en-couraged the creation of jobs, which re-duced the impact on wages.

This tallies with the outcome of naturalexperiments in recent history, such as thein�ux of 610,000 Russian Jews into Israelin the early 1990s, the return of 900,000Frenchmen from Algeria in 1962 or thehomecoming of 600,000 Portuguese afterthe collapse of their empire in Africa in1974-76. Each time the in�ux of workers ex-panded the workforce and wages droppedslightly, but subsequently recovered.Given prolonged immigration, argues Ste-ven Camorata of the Centre for Immigra-tion Studies, the impact is sustained. Hethinks that �it’s the poorest 10% [of Ameri-cans] who seem to lose out, cutting theirwages by perhaps 5%.�

Worse, say the sceptics, migration maylimit poor natives’ chances of moving upto better-paid jobs. With changing econo-

They need her

2IndispensableForeign-born population in selected OECD countries% of total population, 2005

0 5 10 15 20 25

Australia

Switzerland*

Canada*

Germany*†

United States*

Sweden

Ireland*

Britain*

France Total, m

4.8

1.8

5.9

10.6

38.3

1.1

0.5

5.8

4.9

Source: OECD, “International

Migration Outlook 2007” *Estimate †2003

1


2 mies that reward skills, it is anyway gettingharder to move up the ladder from low-wage jobs to better-paid ones. Now mi-grants, especially those with skills anddrive, are making life even harder for theweakest natives.

A second worry is that migrants willput a strain on public services and the taxsystem. It is in schools, public housing anddoctors’ surgeries that natives come face toface with migrants and it is often at the lo-cal and state level, where responsibility forsuch services usually lies, that hostility tomigrants seems strongest. Local councilsin Britain complain that clinics andschools are overloaded and central gov-ernment is slow to dish out help, and localpolice in areas with many immigrantsblame foreigners for a rise in crime.

In Greece, as new illegal immigrants ar-rive at remote spots on the border, o�cialscomplain that they lack funds for policingand social services. The prefect of Samos

laments that �we are given a short bed-sheet to cover our body.� In America hos-tility to migrants is greatest where theyhave recently been arriving in large num-bers, not where their absolute number arehighest (near the borders or in big cities,such as New York). Several states havepassed tough new laws banning illegal mi-grants from using their public services.

But crowding, although likely to causeresentment, results from the unexpectedarrival of those migrants, with bureaucra-cies taking time to allocate resources to theright places. In itself, it does not prove thatmigrants are a drag on public services as awhole. Indeed, migrants often make alarge contribution to the public purse.When a foreign worker �rst arrives, usu-ally as a young adult, fully educated and ingood health, he makes few demands onschools or clinics. A legal immigrant willpay taxes just like any native; even an ille-gal one will contribute something (if only

through the tax on those bottles of bisongrass vodka). If the immigrant stays on(and quite a few do not), the bene�ts willdiminish as he ages, but at least he hasgiven his host country a breathing space.

To complicate matters, highly skilledmigrants contribute much more to tax andsocial-security systems than do less skilledones. A study in America by the NationalResearch Council suggests that migrantswith an education beyond high schoolcontribute an average of $105,000 to thetax co�ers over their lifetime. By contrast,the least educated migrants are reckonedto leave the taxman with a $89,000 hole.But migrants as a whole, in the long termand counting the contribution of their chil-dren when they grow up and get jobs, arenot a drain on public services. For richcountries with ageing workforces in par-ticular, gains from importing the young,the energetic and those willing to take riskscomfortably outweigh the costs. 7

UNTIL recently, politicians who in-veighed against immigration could

expect support from an angry minority ofvoters in many Western countries. Some,like Australia’s Pauline Hanson, won mo-ments in the limelight and then fadedaway. Others got closer to political power:in France in 2002 the anti-immigrant Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the run-o� stage ofthe presidential election; Denmark’s cen-tre-right government has been kept in of-�ce with support from an anti-migrantparty; and in Austria in 2000 Jörg Haider’sfar-right party joined a coalition govern-ment. On each occasion this was contro-versial, but could be explained as a quirkof the electoral system, not a re�ection ofwidespread anti-migrant sentiment.

Today, however, hostility to immigra-tion is becoming mainstream. Britain’sprime minister, Gordon Brown, whose La-bour government has allowed remarkablyhigh rates of immigration for years, re-cently called for �British jobs for Britishworkers�, a meaningless slogan previ-ously used by the far-right National Front.The opposition Conservatives’ leader, Da-vid Cameron, says he wants to see �sub-stantially lower� immigration. Both gov-ernment and opposition say they will

keep out workers from Bulgaria and Roma-nia, along with those from any other newEU members, for as long as possible.

In France Nicolas Sarkozy campaignedfor the presidency in 2007 sounding ashostile to foreigners as Mr Le Pen, andswept to o�ce. He is now proposing immi-gration policies that have liberals quiver-ing with anger. Most controversially, anew law passed in November will allowDNA testing of immigrants’ relatives whoapply to come to France under a familyreuni�cation programme.

Italian politicians whipped up violenceagainst migrants after the death of awoman in Rome last October, allegedly atthe hands of a Romanian Roma (gypsy).O�cials ordered the expulsion of Roma-nians with criminal records and set aboutbulldozing migrants’ camps. Local thugstook that as a cue to beat up foreigners inthe streets.

In countries where proportional repre-sentation gives a say to small parties, sup-port for anti-immigrant populists has grad-ually risen. The second-largest grouping inNorway’s parliament is the misnamedProgress Party, which wants to discouragethe entry of �far-foreigners� (migrantsfrom beyond the Nordic region, especially

dark-skinned ones). The right-of-centrePeople’s Party in Switzerland, which hadcampaigned with a crude poster showingwhite sheep booting out a black one, got29% of the vote in elections last October.

Across the Atlantic, mainstream candi-dates for the 2008 presidential elections

The politics of the gun

Migration has once again become a touchy political issue

Woolly thinking

1


2 are lining up to talk tough about bordercontrols and cracking down on illegal mi-grants. The dramatic collapse of an immi-gration-reform bill in the Senate in June,despite the support of President GeorgeBush and the leaders of both the Demo-crats and Republicans in both houses ofCongress, signalled that many ordinaryvoters are troubled by high rates of immi-gration. A coalition of radio hosts and in-ternet activists arranged for opponents ofreform to send 1.5m faxes to senators andcongressmen in June.

Roy Beck, who heads NumbersUSA,one of the internet activist groups, saysthat membership of his organisation hasgrown from just 3,000 active members in2001 to more than 490,000 today. He alsoclaims an e-mail list of 1.6m sympathisersfrom across the political spectrum. Someof the anxiety may be explained by wor-ries about economics, language, crime anda general fear of the outside world raisedby terrorism. More important, he suggests,is anger about the presence in the countryof perhaps 12m illegal immigrants. Hewants to see the number reduced by thingslike deportation, stronger fences and �nesfor employers who use illegal labour.

The camel’s noseOpponents condemned the Senate reformbill as an amnesty: �It teaches aliens thatall they have to do is get in and wait. It is let-ting the camel’s nose into the tent, the restfollows,� says Mr Beck. But the bill wouldnot have been a soft option. It envisagedhigher spending on border defences and

an obstacle course on the way to legal resi-dence. Applicants for legal status wouldhave had to pay $5,000 and return hometo await a decision. Yet the bill damagedthe presidential chances of John McCain, aRepublican senator who supports reform.

Immigration is likely to prove a divisivefactor in some states in the 2008 presiden-tial election. Republican strategists thinkvoters are especially troubled by migra-tion where there have been big new in-�ows, for example in the south-east (seemap). Democrats are divided. Some areanxious not to alienate their traditionaland growing support among Latinos andnew migrant voters who might help toswing states such as New Mexico, Utah,Nevada and Arizona. But others want toget tough in places like Virginia, a formerlysolid Republican stronghold that might beup for grabs, where rapid immigration has

provoked anger. For Mr Beck this is anopportunity to push Democrats to take aharder line on immigrants, just as theyhave done in other policy areas: �To wincompetitive elections, Democrats now of-ten oppose gun control,� he says. �I wantimmigration to be an issue like guns.�

Perhaps the surprise is not that Ameri-can voters are now reacting to high immi-gration, but that it has taken them so long.The last time the share of foreigners inAmerica’s population was anything like ashigh as now, in 1913 (when it was 15%, in-cluding illegals), the public demanded,and eventually got, tough limits on migra-tion that slowed the in�ow for decades.Nearly a century on, a similar dramaticclampdown seems unlikely, but hostilitycould slow the �ow of legal migration, andgreater e�orts will be made to crack downon undocumented migrants.

Yet public hostility to migration shouldnot be overstated. In Spain and Greece, forexample, natives seem relatively at easewith a big in�ux, at least as long as theireconomies are doing well. For some an-alysts the backlash against immigration ispart of a wider response from hard-up ac-tivists who feel that elites do not properlyrepresent their interests. But many peoplein host countries also see the gains frommigration�and indeed some of them try itout for themselves. Some 5.5m British na-tionals, for example, currently live abroad,many in Spain, Australia and Greece. Thatamounts to nearly a tenth of the popula-tion back home, putting Britain on a parwith Mexico as an exporter of people. 7

ILLEGAL migrants risk their lives to betterthemselves. Europeans are more aware

of Africans drowning in the Mediterra-nean in the summer holiday season, butboats are wrecked all year round. In mid-December 51 migrants drowned o� theGreek island of Samos, one of the worstsuch incidents in recent memory. Mexi-cans dying in Arizona’s desert rarely makeheadlines any more. And not a lot is heardabout the 600,000 people a year, perhapsmore, who the UN says are tra�cked andoften forced into prostitution. Bonded la-bour, too, is dismally common.

Europe and America are both making

big e�orts to control their southern bor-ders. The EU’s system, run by its membercountries, is called Frontex. In 2006 mostsea-borne African migrants washed up onthe Canaries; in 2007 it was the turn of thecentral Mediterranean, especially Maltaand Italy. In the coming year watch Greeceand Cyprus, where a trickle of boat peoplefrom Egypt and Turkey may turn into a�ood. With some 100 patrol craft, plusspotter planes, land-based radar and othertechnology, Frontex does seem to be mak-ing it more di�cult to get in.

A trip with a night patrol on a Greekcoastguard vessel from the island of Sa-

mos shows how. The boat, with tinted andbullet-proofed windows, acceleratesabove 30 knots as a searchlight illuminatesa 350-metre radius and a radar scans thenearby Turkish coast. Six guards aboard,some brandishing M4 ri�es, peer into thedarkness. Fishing and tourist craft appearin the gloom. Spotting a raftload of immi-grants would be easy, though those onsmall rubber dinghies or swimming withsnorkels and �ippers would be harder to�nd. The boat is kept busy. In the 24 hoursbefore this patrol several dozen illegal mi-grants were plucked from the sea and therocky shore and taken to a detention centre

Keep out

Voters like the idea of tougher borders, but the cost is high and the bene�ts are limited

1


2 in Samos. Greece has 30 such boats, plusfour aeroplanes for air-sea surveillance.

Even the bright and well-educated riskmisery. An Ethiopian law student inGreece tells of his wretched trip to Europe:he bribed Ethiopian border o�cials, hid ina truck carrying co�ee in Sudan, enduredseven days in the Sahara, spent months ina grim camp in Libya, su�ered a terrifyingvoyage across the Mediterranean, hitcheda lift in a frozen-meat lorry in Turkey, scav-enged in a forest for days and feared hewould drown in a �shing boat that carriedhim into the EU. He paid several thousanddollars for the journey and ended uplocked in a cramped and stinking ware-house on the island of Samos, crammedwith asylum-seekers. Dejected, he says hewants to go home.

America’s frontier with Mexico haseven more gear, gadgets and manpoweron display. Unmanned Predator Beedrones �oat at 12,000 feet, helping to guideo�cers in bulletproof helicopters, in jeeps,on horseback, on mountain bikes and onall-terrain buggies towards any would-bemigrants. Seismic sensors catch footfalls,magnetic ones notice cars, infra-red beamsare useful for tunnels. Some 18,000 o�cersman the border crossings and a further15,000 (due to rise to 18,000 by the end of2008) patrol in-between them.

Perhaps the best way to look at the bor-der is from the air. As an A-star helicopterlurches into the late-morning haze aboveSan Ysidro, southern California, it be-comes obvious that crossing from Tijuanaon the Mexican side is no longer easy. Run-ning a dozen miles inland from the Paci�cocean is a wide double fence, one to blockcars, the other to stop pedestrians. Watch-towers and surveillance cameras, tall wiremesh and lots of border guards line thefrontier. Occasionally migrants still scam-per over the fence with improvised lad-ders. From the air a series of concrete pathsbecomes apparent, running crossways.These are tunnels, regularly dug from thesouthern side, regularly �lled in again bythe border patrol. Some have stretched forhalf a mile, complete with lighting, venti-lation and a track for rolling carts.

After 12 miles the fence becomes a sin-gle line, and two miles after that it stops.From here on the hills rise, providing a nat-ural barrier. Now the �virtual fence� takesover�drones, helicopters, sensors. By theend of 2008 some 670 miles of fencing willbe erected along the 1,969-mile border. Inmany places the fence is made of Vietnam-era concrete slabs designed for runwaysand turned on their sides.

Europe and America are not alone intheir taste for well-policed borders. SouthAfrica, deluged by migrants from north ofthe Limpopo river, is trying to enforce itsown. In 2007 it reportedly deported an av-erage of 4,000 people a week. India is �n-ishing an iron barrier 2.5 metres high alongthe 4,100km (2,500 mile) boundary withBangladesh, at a cost of more than $1 bil-lion, to mark a fuzzy frontier and keep outpoor Bangladeshis.

Are the barriers doing any good? Theanswer depends on your objectives. WithFrontex in Europe, for example, the craft,for all their guns and scary looks, some-times have to act as rescue boats. It is saidthat some migrants, once they have ar-rived in EU waters, phone ahead to getsomeone to collect them, con�dent thatthey will not be turned away. To makesure, they sometimes slash their dinghywith a knife as the patrol boat arrives.

In America, look down from the heli-copter at the spot where the fence stops.Here the paths begin: thousands of jaggedtracks in the scrubland, stretching north tosouth, worn into the rust-coloured earthby millions of human footsteps. The mi-grants have a simple way of dealing withthe technology: they walk around thefence. Only some are then stopped.

Even those detained at the border haveevery reason to expect to make it acrosseventually. On the day your correspon-dent visited, two men had been chased,tackled, dragged through a bush and hand-cu�ed in the back of a border patrol car.They were taken to a processing centre inthe nearby town of Nogales, their �nger-prints scanned and checked against a data-base of criminals. Those not on a wantedlist are usually deported within 24 hours.But many will turn round and try again.

In Europe an even larger proportion of

those stopped at the borders end up stay-ing. Many will attempt to claim asylum,saying they are escaping from a war. Thosewho are not able to convince o�cials thatthey are refugees may still be able to stay ifthe EU lacks a deportation agreement withtheir home country. If deportation is im-possible, they are released after a time andmelt away.

Don’t even think about itNo doubt the borders are becoming harderto cross. Franco Frattini, Europe’s commis-sioner for justice and home a�airs, is de-lighted with Frontex. The �rst eightmonths of 2007 showed 72% fewer mi-grants crossing to the Canaries and 41%fewer in the central Mediterranean thanthe year before. �It shows it is possible tocut because of the impact of deterrence,�he says. America’s fence-builders are alsopleased. O�cial �gures released in No-vember showed a one-�fth decline incross-border apprehensions, from justover 1m in �scal 2006 to 858,000 in �scal2007, the lowest number in �ve years.

The high prices charged by people-smugglers re�ect the growing di�culty, aswell as the relative risk and discomfort ofthe journey (see table 3, next page). Thecheapest way to reach San Diego is to curlup in the boot of a willing driver’s car andhope that sni�er dogs will not �nd you, orto use a fake or stolen passport. Tunnelsand guided hikes are more pricey. Tenyears ago a trip from Mexico to Phoenix,Arizona, cost $250-500, but now it will bemore like $3,000. If you are an �OTM�(Other Than Mexican, in the language ofthe guards), rates are higher.

Fences are popular with those who liveon the right side of them. The �rst barriersin San Ysidro went up in the early 1990s aspart of �Operation Gatekeeper�, helping to

India’s way with a fence

1


2 end chaos and violence. Huge numbers ofillegal migrants used to gather on the bor-der, then run across, thousands at a time,overwhelming border guards. Today shop-ping malls, warehouses and housing �ll anarea that was once scrubland too danger-ous for the police to patrol. Land and prop-erty prices have soared. But althoughsome illegal migrants are deterred byfences, the recent drop in apprehensions inAmerica may have as much to do with thehousing-market slump, which meansfewer are drawn north in the �rst place.

Other illegal migrants are diverted tonew and more dangerous routes. Thus Af-rican boat people endure longer trips inwilder seas. More Mexicans strike out overthose natural barriers. With inadequatewater, high-ca�eine drinks, garlic to wardo� rattlesnakes and a goat’s foot for luck,the ill-prepared are dying in alarmingnumbers in Arizona’s desert. Since 2000,in the sector around Tucson alone, some1,137 bodies have been found. There areprobably many more still out there.

Nor does it seem much to celebrate thatjob-seekers are handing more of their sav-ings to criminals, such as the Arellano Fe-lix cartel that controls much of the Mexi-can side of the California border. Somefund their crossings by becoming crimi-nals themselves, either as guides for othermigrants or as drug mules. They are also

carrying knives and guns more often. The bigger concern is that fences might

in fact push up the total number of illegalmigrants inside any given rich country.After all, the more costly and dangerous itis to cross, the less people will feel like leav-ing. Migrants quite often return home for awhile�but only if they know it will be rela-tively easy to get back in. The tougher theborder, the more incentive migrants haveto stay and perhaps to get their families tojoin them instead.

One migration expert in Washington,DC, says that higher walls will keep peoplein as well as out: �The more that is spent onthe border, the more illegal migrants stayhere. Our politicians are not stupid. They

know that walls do not stop people. It is aloser’s game.� That argument is well un-derstood in Europe, too. One o�cial deal-ing with immigration policy in Brusselssays: �It is playing King Canute to say thatyou can stop illegal migration. It has neverworked. It is no easier to stop than prostitu-tion.� But, on both sides of the Atlantic,tough borders are popular with voters, sothey are here to stay.

They may become more e�ective ifcombined with other high-tech enforce-ment. The EU has a pan-continental �nger-print database for asylum-seekers calledEurodac which lets o�cials track thosewho have been detained. Britain is intro-ducing identity cards for foreigners, in-cluding biometric information, and inFrance Mr Sarkozy will now go ahead withDNA testing of supposed blood relatives.In America every detained illegal immi-grant has his �ngerprints recorded througha system called IAFIS, which is linked tothe FBI and other crime databases.

American employers are also facingtougher checks on whether they use un-documented labour. An electronic data-base, E-verify, lets registered employerscheck instantly whether workers are au-thorised to be in the country. And moreemployers who break the law are facingarrests and �nes: 863 arrests were made in2007, against only 25 �ve years earlier. 7

3The price of safety and comfort

Sources: The Economist; Moisés Naim, “Illicit”

Cost of being smuggled over bordersSelected routes

Year Price, $

Mexico-Nogales, AZ 2007 1,000

Mexico-Phoenix, AZ 2007 2,500-3,000

Mexico-San Diego, CA 2007 1,500-3,000

Morocco-Spain (lorry) 2007 5,000-6,000

Morocco-Spain (boat) 2007 1,000-1,500

Turkey-Samos, Greece (boat) 2007 1,000

Horn of Africa-Yemen 2007 100-150

China-New York (boat) 2005 60,000

SEVEN years into the century a remark-able �gure was produced. Foreigners in

America sent home $275m in a single year,a total not far short of the value of all thegold mined in America. They used 2,625money agents to do so, mostly throughgrocers, bakers and other small immigrantshops. New York alone had 500, Chicago75 and Pittsburg 50. The New York Timesgasped at the numbers a little later, in 1910,and noted that migrants were shunningbigger banks as �the Italian and the Mag-yar and the Croat and the Slovak [are] sim-ple, ignorant foreigners�.

The sum of $275m in 1907 was $6.2 bil-lion in today’s money. That sounds a lotuntil you look at the current �gures, whichare probably in the region of $240 bil-lion-300 billion. Neglected for some timeby academics and policymakers, remit-

tances have recently been rediscoveredand have become the darling of many de-velopment experts.

Because of fears after September 11th2001 that terrorists might be using infor-mal money transfers to fund their activi-ties, agents had to register and submit tocloser monitoring. For a �avour of whatthe Arabs call hawala and the Chinese feich’ien, or �ying money, try north London’sSeven Sisters Road. With 105 di�erent eth-nic groups, north London is thought to beBritain’s most diverse area, and at �rstglance most of the 2,700 remittance agentsregistered in the country as a whole seemto congregate here. �JN� promises Jamai-cans that �As yu quint it reach� (once sent,your money is there). �Giros sur� special-ises in Brazil, Chile and Venezuela; �Mag-gie Gold� serves Ghana. �Homeboy, In-

stant transfer� is doing good business.The agents are wedged between halal

butchers, Chinese herb shops, Greek dry-cleaners and bustling grocers selling greenbananas, cassava and sweet potatoes.Pavements are crowded with shoppersand crooning preachers. A sign in oneshop, hand-written in Luganda, invites �allour people, come all. We send money toUganda at a good rate, here in the internetcafé of the Somalis.� Another agent, with aline of phone booths, has a dozen clockson the wall, showing the time in places likeSebastopol, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa,Johannesburg and New Delhi.

According to the clock in London, it is3pm in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, whenJulius Mucunguzi hands over £20 intendedfor his sister. His receipt says she will beable to collect 64,800 Ugandan shillings

Send me a number

Migrants’ remittances help ease poverty back home, but they are not a cure-all

1


2 from the �rm’s partner o�ce in downtownKampala. There is no fee, she can get at thecash almost immediately and the ex-change rate is reasonable (though theagent will make a pro�t on it). Mr Mucun-guzi sends her a text message with a codethat she will use to collect the money.These texts are now treasured back home.When friends and relatives need help,they plead: �Send me a number!�

The mechanism is relatively simple.The money agent needs an o�ce in Lon-don, say, to collect the cash and take detailsof the person sending it, and another inthe destination country to hand over themoney. The internet provides a safe andeasy means of sending the code, specify-ing the amount and checking rates. Theagent may invest the money he has beenpaid in London in some other business, orbuy goods to be exported for sale in, say,Uganda (secondhand cars are popular),where the pro�ts are used to pay salariesand provide the cash to be paid out locally.Trust is vital to this business, and reputa-tions are made, and spread, by word ofmouth among émigrés. Most agents areregistered, but a few illicit ones drum uptrade by o�ering good rates. Some evenlend cash for the migrant to send, with re-payment required only on con�rmationthat it has been collected.

Banks �nd it hard to compete with thiskind of personal service. A Bangladeshi inIreland complains that it takes two weeksto send money home through the bank,

compared with half an hour via WesternUnion. Banks may also lack the necessaryinfrastructure, and may feel that frequentsmall transfers are not worthwhile.

For most poor countries remittancesare more valuable than aid. For many theyprovide more than aid and foreign directinvestment combined. According to theWorld Bank’s Dilip Ratha, an expert on re-mittances, small countries gain most: mi-grants’ cash accounts for 27% of Tonga’sGDP, he estimates, and 21% of Haiti’s (seechart 4 for other examples where it matterseven more).

The total of global �ows is disputed.The World Bank talks of $240 billion a yearwhereas a recent report by IFAD, an agri-culture arm of the UN, claimed that $300billion went to poor countries in 2006. Al-lowing for goods in kind and cash carriedby travellers, perhaps one in ten people onthe planet gains from remittances.

Good as goldRemittances have many virtues. Sent di-rectly to families, money cannot be stolenor frittered away by middlemen in aidagencies or governments. Flows are lessvolatile than aid or investment, and can bestepped up quickly if the need arises. Forexample, South-East Asians abroad sentextra cash home after the tsunami in 2004.Migrants often feel morally obliged to sendmoney back. A survey of Mexicans inAmerica in 2007, by the Inter-AmericanBank, found that three-quarters of themearned less than $20,000, yet on averagethey sent home $3,550 a year. And not justfor a short while: Kathleen Newland of theMigration Policy Institute in Washington,DC, points to a study of 9,000 African doc-tors in America who sent home an averageof $20,000 a year, some of them after 20years away from home.

Mr Mucunguzi in London certainly

does his bit for Uganda, sending home sev-eral hundred pounds each month. Someof this pays for his grandfather to drink a li-tre of milk each day and for relatives’ hos-pital bills. Some goes on education. He is�100% sure� that his sisters stayed on atschool in Kampala only because of hiscash. His parents sold land to fund his owneducation, so now he is building them abig new house. He is also investing inproperty, buying plots and houses in Kam-pala and in his home town, Kabale. Nexthe may set up a business, building a com-mercial centre and internet café in Kabale.

His experience is typical. IFAD thinksthat perhaps 90% of remittances to poorcountries go on food, clothes, housing,education and health. A World Bank studyin 2007, reviewing evidence from 115 poorcountries in 2003, found that when o�cialinternational remittances rose by 10%, theshare of people living on less than $1 a dayfell by 3.5%. Countries such as Uganda,Bangladesh, Ghana and Nepal saw thebiggest gains. Babies had a higher birthweight and families spent more on educa-tion, with girls thought to bene�t espe-cially. Consumption creates jobs too, forexample in housing. Morocco’s ministerfor émigrés, Mohammed Ameur, explainsthe advantages: �The impact is decisive,enormous, we have a construction boomacross the country. This is an importantsafeguard against poverty and helps tomodernise our rural society.�

Even so, remittances do not necessarilyhelp those most in need. The biggest recipi-ents are in fact middle-income countries;the most destitute places are usually re-mote from rich ones and send few mi-grants abroad. And recipient families arerarely the poorest within a given country,so remittances may end up in the hands ofmiddle-income earners with few knock-on bene�ts for poorer neighbours.

Flying money in the Seven Sisters Road

The receiving end

Source: International Fund for Agricultural Development

Biggest recipients of remittances by % of GDP

30 35 40 45 50

Guinea-Bissau

São Tomé ePríncipe

Eritrea

Tajikistan

Laos

Cape Verde

Kyrgyzstan

Moldova

Grenada

West Bank &Gaza Strip

Remittances to developing countries, 2006, $bn

Asia 115.8 Africa 38.9

Latin America 68.1 Middle East 17.6

Europe 61.0 Total 301.4

4

1


2

THE complaints sound familiar. For-eigners steal our jobs. Aliens cause a

rise in crime. The corrupt interior ministrycannot cope. The border is ine�ective anddeporting illegal migrants does not work:removed by train, they return on foot. Out-siders put a strain on housing, especiallyfor the poor, and on hospitals and schools.But employers do not care: farmers wantcheap labour, and rich families need skil-ful foreign gardeners and housekeepers.

Residents of Soweto, or other urban ar-eas in South Africa, are likely to grumbleabout foreigners in the same way as in richcountries. The makwerekwere, as Africanforeigners are insultingly known, are at-tracted by South Africa’s relative wealth.Some Tanzanians talk longingly of Johan-nesburg as �Little London�. One in four Lit-tle Londoners may now be a foreigner.Zimbabwean teachers, forced out by hun-ger and repression, work as securityguards and shop assistants. Congoleselawyers toil as waiters and chefs.

In 2005 two World Bank researchers,Mr Ratha and William Shaw, estimatedthat two in �ve migrants�about 78m peo-ple�were outside rich countries. But whoin the poor world is counting? South Af-rica’s government does not know howmany foreigners it has (2m? 5m? more?).Mexico, India or Turkey cannot be sure ei-ther. Total numbers are skewed by thosedisplaced by the collapse of the Soviet Un-ion or who became de facto migrantswhen borders moved.

Ms Newland of the Migration Policy In-stitute in Washington, DC, says the �owsbetween poor and mid-income countriesare huge but �desperately understudied�.One reason why outsiders pay little atten-tion is that most poor migrants do notmove far. Roughly half of all South-EastAsian migrants are thought to have re-mained in the neighbourhood, and nearlytwo-thirds of migrants from eastern Eu-rope and Central Asia have stayed in their

own region. Nearly 70% of migrants fromsub-Saharan Africa remain on their conti-nent. West African countries do not limitimmigration from their neighbours, so lotsof people cross borders, for example fromGhana to oil-rich Nigeria.

Some middle-income countries, suchas Morocco, Mexico, Turkey and Libya, arewell-trodden transit routes with migrantpopulations of their own. A senior civilservant in Morocco laments that his coun-

You don’t have to be rich

Developing countries attract migrants too

Turfed out of Little London

Remittance money �ows along somecurious routes: Pakistan receives someNKr350m ($5.7m) each year from migrantsin Norway, with more perhaps carried bytravellers. India collects $24 billion a year,more than any other country, yet its dias-pora has been reluctant to invest in thehome country because of corruption, redtape and tricky �nance. As with aid, oil rev-enues and other unearned wealth, a �owof cash risks making recipients passiveand dependent. The most extreme pos-sibility is that remittances may indirectlyhelp to ease domestic pressure on awful re-gimes. IFAD says that in 2006 Zimbabwegot $361m in cash transfers, Cuba $983mand North Korea a whopping $1.8 billion.

At least more governments are thinkingabout using remittances to step up invest-ment. India now o�ers special incentivesto PIOs (people of Indian origin) to invest.Ethiopia, too, is tapping its diaspora inAmerica, making investment easy. Othercountries could do more to use the capitalbeing sent home. Morocco should encour-age rural investment, says Hein de Haas, aresearcher at Oxford University. Farmerslack con�dence in property rights, so theyspend remittances on housing, not on irri-gation. Mexico typically sees more than$20 billion a year �ow across the RioGrande, yet only a quarter of the start-upcapital for small businesses in its townsand cities is drawn from remittances.

Wisely, governments in recipient coun-tries have held o� taxing the �ows of cash,which would be a sure way to make themdry up. In the �nancial sector, remittancesare an opportunity to extend banking ser-vices to more of the unbanked (who arenot always the poorest) to encourage sav-ings, insurance and loans. And where thecost of sending remittances is high, morecompetition could cut prices. Britain’s gov-ernment has set up a website where rivalremittance services can be compared.Where there is plenty of competition�from rich to middle-income or poor coun-tries�the cost tends to be low. But sendingmoney from one middle-income countryto another can be painfully expensive. 7

1


2 try is �between the hammer and the anvil�of Africa and Europe. Others, like India,Russia, South Africa and Argentina, aredestinations in their own right. With allthis come the same opportunities andthreats as in the rich world. Chile importsdoctors and maids from Peru, raising wor-ries about a brain drain. Zambians fretabout an invasion by Chinese, whosenumbers in Africa are said to be between80,000 to 400,000, many in oil-rich coun-tries such as Sudan, Nigeria and Angola.

Remittances from one low-incomecountry to another probably help to cutpoverty. A 2006 study of 4,700 house-holds by the Southern African MigrationProject found that 40% of Zimbabweanhouseholds received some money fromthis source. How much is hard to measure,but a World Bank estimate for 2006 gives arange for remittances among poor coun-tries of $17 billion-55 billion.

Some middle-income countries are ex-traordinarily welcoming. Venezuela,awash with oil revenues, even allows Co-lombians to use its social-welfare system.Argentina has lifted most restrictions onimmigration from South America, againguaranteeing access to public health andeducation, even for illegal migrants. Butmany other countries show signs of xeno-phobia. On one occasion a newspaper inMorocco gave warning that �black lo-custs��African migrants�were invading.Russian authorities, especially in Moscow,regularly throw out traders from Georgiaand elsewhere in the Caucasus. Libya oc-casionally expels African migrants.

Many poor people are drawn to some-what less poor countries in the hope of�nding work, just as they are to rich coun-tries. But with war, repression and econ-omic collapse, push factors are muchstronger in the poor world. The invasion ofIraq in 2003, and the violence since, hasuprooted more than 4m Iraqis. Some 95%of them have remained in the Middle East,including 2m in hard-pressed Jordan andSyria. Sweden, with an admirable historyof taking in refugees, has welcomed23,600 Iraqis, but few other rich countrieshave followed suit. Some of the displacedare beginning to return home. Since the Ta-liban were booted from power in 2001, Af-ghanistan has seen the voluntary return ofat least 3.2m people from Pakistan, Iranand elsewhere.

Climate of fearCould a changing climate cause similarlybig ebbs and �ows? Scientists agree thataverage temperatures are likely to rise sig-ni�cantly by the end of this century. Rain-fall patterns are already shifting. Those inmarginal areas, for example on the edgesof deserts, will su�er most, along withthose in countries with the least resourcesto adapt. The sea is also rising, whichmight mean �oods on vulnerable coasts.Some 12% of Africa’s urban population,and 18% of Asia’s, live in low-lying coastalzones and may be exposed to extremeweather or �oods. The International Panelon Climate Change suggested in 2007 thatmillions may face water shortages, hungerand �ooding as a result of climate shifts.

Some would migrate, although probablyover a period of time.

Environmental change has already seto� some migration. Because the Sahel re-gion gets much less rain than it did a cen-tury ago, farmers in Mali are moving to thecities. According to the UN EnvironmentProgramme, over the past four decades thedesert in Sudan has crept south by about100km and forests have disappeared.Rainfall in north Darfur, in Sudan, hasdropped by a third over the past 80 years.

All this has displaced people and, somebelieve, encouraged war. Morocco’s gov-ernment is anxious about it. �There is a di-rect impact on migration. You see peopleleaving sub-Saharan Africa in search ofmore habitable land,� says Mr Ameur, theminister for Moroccans abroad. AbdelhayMoudden, a migration expert in Rabat,suggests that the �rst to leave may be strug-gling farmers: �If the urban economy can-not absorb them, then it may also push in-ternational migration.�

A 2005 report by the Institute for Envi-ronment and Human Security in Bonnsuggested that rising seas and extremeweather, among other things, could up-root 150m people by 2050. Ms Newland ofthe Migration Policy Institute cautionsagainst talking up the �gures, but thinksthat if drought and rising temperaturescause crop yields to fall in, say, the Sahel,they will probably encourage migration. Ifclimate change were to cause wars orspread disease, that could compound thee�ects. Another reason, then, to switch tolow-energy light bulbs. 7

THOSE setting migration policy in richcountries face an almost impossible

task. The demands of demography andeconomics�shrinking and ageing work-forces, a growing shortage of people to �lljobs requiring both high and low skills,and increasingly �exible and open econo-mies�all point to more migration. More-over, within the European Union workersfrom the 12 countries that have joined inthe past few years will soon have the legalright to live and work in any part of the un-ion. On the other hand, voters in manyrich countries seem increasingly hostile toimmigration, which suggests that politi-

cians may �nd it more and more di�cult toallow immigration to continue at its cur-rent high level.

If only there were some means of get-ting all the bene�ts of migration but noneof the costs. That is the thinking behind thelatest solution now being promoted: circu-lar migration. Europe’s commissioner forjustice and home a�airs, Franco Frattini,wants to see more temporary migrants inthe EU. For the highly skilled, he suggests ablue card (similar to America’s green one)to ease the temporary entry of profes-sionals and their families into Europe. For-eign workers with the most skills make up

just 1.7% of the workforce, about half therate in America and far less than in Canadaor Australia, and competition for them isgetting more intense as some of the bright-est head to China and other parts of Asia.A blue card would at least make it clear tomigrant professionals that they would bewelcome. On the other hand, highlyskilled workers go in search of dynamiceconomies, along with the high pay andbright careers they o�er, and a blue cardwould do nothing to bring more dyna-mism to Europe.

What of the less skilled? Mr Frattinipoints to a pilot project in Spain over the

Circulate or integrate?

A choice of migration policies

1


2 past two years in which Moroccans�espe-cially women�have been brought in to dospeci�c jobs on farms and in hotels for afew months at a time and then sent homeagain. Contracts are drawn up beforehand,travel is part-funded by the EU, everythingis above board, and so far every migranthas gone back as agreed. As a result,10,000 Moroccan workers did not have torun the risk of taking a patera across theStrait of Gibraltar. They were able to sendremittances home but put no strain onSpain’s public services. Mr Frattini wantsto launch another pilot programme in hisnative Italy, where southern farmers mightrecruit workers from Egypt or Tunisia. Mol-dova and Ukraine want to get involved insimilar schemes.

A new kind of Gastarbeiter�If the projects work (one in Corsica wasless successful), Mr Frattini would like toscale them up, with member countrieseventually setting import quotas for for-eign labour. The EU is planning to estab-lish job centres in north Africa, beginningwith one in Mali, to o�er a legal route tojobs in Europe, and also provide some lan-guage training.

But this part of what Mr Frattini andothers call circular migration has beentried before and seems unlikely to bringthe hoped-for bene�ts. Germany’s Gastar-beiter scheme began in 1955, drawingworkers �rst from southern Europe andnorth Africa and then Turkey. Somethingsimilar was done in France and the Nether-lands, mostly with workers from north Af-rica. America imported Mexican farm la-bourers under its Bracero programme.

The trouble is that such a dirigiste de-sign is not well suited to today’s liberal de-mocracies and their �exible labour mar-

kets. And unless schemes are tightlyregulated and the exit of workers is en-forced by law, everybody has an interest inkeeping the supposedly termporary work-ers in place. Employers would much prefernot to have to train new people every sixmonths, and workers want to keep theirjobs or move on to better ones. Many ofthe guest workers who arrived in northernEurope from Turkey and north Africa in the1960s and 1970s never left, and eventuallybrought their families to live with themtoo. The old joke that there is nothing sopermanent as a temporary migrant hasmore than a grain of truth in it.

It might be possible to create �nancialincentives for migrants to leave at the endof their contract period. Co-operation be-tween the governments of the host and thesending countries would be essential, saysMr Frattini. And migrants could be policedmore tightly with the aid of new technol-ogy: ID cards, databases with biometricdetails, systems like E-verify in Americathat allow employers to check whetherworkers are authorised to be in the coun-try. Proponents of circular migration ad-mit that it would entail a loss of privacy.

The biggest problem, though, is thatpeople who expect to be packed o� homeafter six months will be seen as second-class residents, and will have less incen-tive to integrate with their hosts. Whylearn the language or adopt local habitsand values for just a few months? Locals,for their part, are likely to view temporarylabourers with the same sort of hostility aslonger-term immigrants.

When migration is made legal andeasy, many migrants choose to go homeafter a year or two. Easily crossed bordersallow people to become what some re-searchers call �pendulum migrants�, those

who split their year between two di�erentcountries. This is already a well-estab-lished habit in rich countries. Growingnumbers of wealthy Germans, Britons orNordics spend parts of the year some-where sunny and then go home again. Per-haps more of this sort of movement couldbe encouraged, with rich countries o�er-ing workers multi-entry visas valid for sev-eral years at a time.

Yet any sort of circular migration bringschallenges of integration. Faster move-ments of people, combined with technol-ogy�cable television piping entertain-ment from the sending country, cheapphone and video calls back home�slowthe rate at which migrants adopt their hostcountry’s language, values and identity.Migration, suggests Mr Moudden in Rabat,�is changing our whole understanding ofcitizenship, of the nation�.

In the past a third-generation migrant,for example in America, would have beenexpected to have shed much of his grand-parents’ identity. Academics reckonedthat a second-generation migrant wouldbe �uent in his host country’s language butwould use his mother tongue at home. Bythe third generation descendents of mi-grants had usually swapped to Englishalone. That pattern may be changing asmigrants feel loyalty to more than onecountry. Moroccans in Europe, for exam-ple, even third- and fourth-generationones, are encouraged by the governmentin Rabat to identify with the north Africancountry. All are granted irrevocable Mo-roccan citizenship under the constitution,even as European countries, notably theNetherlands, are turning against the ideaof their nationals holding dual citizenship.The incentives for Morocco are clear: itwants citizens abroad to remit funds, to in-vest back home and to support its politicalambitions. �We look at how the Jews inAmerica do it, how that community hasthe ability to maintain ties with Israel andbe good Americans, that is how we wantit,� says Mr Moudden.

�and of citizenshipThe idea of dual identities may be unset-tling for some�in France, for example, allcitizens are considered French�but gov-ernments of sending countries increas-ingly want close ties with their émigrés.Hyphenated migrants like Italian-Ameri-cans and African-Americans may becomemore widespread in other countries too.As India, China, Ethiopia and others growmore intent on tapping their diaspora forremittances and other support, migrants,

Work is here, but where is home?

1


2

WHAT will happen to global migra-tion in the next half-century?

Whether they think migration is good orbad, experts agree on one thing: that gov-ernments are generally failing, or not eventrying, to manage it properly. Some wouldlike to see the establishment of a new in-ternational body, along the lines of theWorld Trade Organisation, or give morepowers to the UN’s existing InternationalOrganisation for Migration. Others hopeto decouple migration policy from partypolitics. In America, hostility to migrantshas been making serious policy reform im-possible for nearly two decades.

�We can’t touch a comma without kill-

ing each other,� complains Demetrios Pa-pademetriou of the Migration Policy Insti-tute in Washington, DC. �The only dis-cretion we have is whether to enforce thelaw or not.� There is a lot of nasty rhetoricabout illegal migrants, but politicians alsolobby for cheap migrant workers in theirconstituencies.

Those who think about the longer termagree that some of the assumptions of re-cent decades need revisiting. There is morescepticism, for example, that family reuni-�cation bene�ts host countries. But notmany of them weigh up the most extremescenarios: how would the world fare if ei-ther the �ow of migrants were to slow

down radically or, conversely, there wereno legal limits on migration at all?

Rates of migration might slow if coun-tries were to slam their doors shut, or be-cause the supply of migrants declines. Ifpolitical pressure became strong enough,rich countries might decide to squeeze for-eign labour whatever the economic price.That is what happened in America just be-fore the �rst world war. Within a few yearsCongress, overturning a veto by PresidentWoodrow Wilson, passed laws thatsharply cut the in�ow of migrants. Immi-gration slumped and stayed low until the1960s. Other rich countries also slappedon restrictions.

The long term

Too much or not enough?

even several generations on, may comeunder greater pressure to retain some oftheir old identity.

Conversely, the governments of receiv-ing countries, especially in Europe, are do-ing far more to encourage migrants to ab-sorb the values and habits of their hostsocieties, giving up on an idea of multicul-turalism that left ethnic groups free to pre-serve their languages and habits as theywished. In Britain a newly formed JusticeMinistry is planning to draw up a state-ment of British values to which all resi-dents might be expected to subscribe. InBritain, the Netherlands, Australia andmany other countries, those applying forcitizenship are expected to demonstratetheir knowledge of their host society bypassing an exam. France’s Mr Sarkozywants to inculcate French values into allFrench nationals.

When France takes up the rotating pres-idency of the EU in 2008 Mr Sarkozy plansto launch a campaign for the promotion of�European values�. More countries willpush the idea of a �contract for citizen-ship�, suggests Gregory Maniatis, a migra-tion expert in New York, under which mi-grants will have to learn the language andway of life of their host country.

These rival pressures on migrants’ iden-tity are likely to get stronger and more com-plex as patterns of migration change, withpeople moving greater distances and sett-ling among di�erent ethnic, religious andcultural groups. Danes in Sweden or Alba-nians in Greece have little trouble integrat-

ing into the relatively familiar societiesnext door. Even Poles in Ireland prosper,perhaps thanks to the incomers’ good stan-dard of education and skill and the sharedCatholic faith. But Iraqis in Sweden, Soma-lis in Canada or Pakistanis in Norway typi-cally �nd integration harder. Migrantswho preserve�or even develop for the �rsttime, perhaps as second-generation immi-grants�a strong religious sense that cutsacross any national loyalty may be thehardest of all to assimilate in broadly secu-lar Western societies.

The touchiest question these days ishow best to help Muslims to integrate intoWestern countries. Providing a decent edu-cation, o�ering language training, enforc-ing anti-discrimination laws to ensure ac-cess to jobs and discouraging ghettos areall tried and trusted methods to help anymigrant to feel more at home. The lessonfrom America, Britain and elsewhere isthat the more highly skilled people settlein very quickly and that many of thelower-skilled also catch up eventually.

But tackling an extremist minority, orits sympathisers, is quite another matter.Speci�c initiatives to encourage better co-operation with moderate Muslim coun-tries such as Morocco, which are as wor-ried as host countries in the West that theirdiaspora could become radicalised, maybe worth trying. Deploying moderateimams and Muslim scholars to counter ex-tremist propaganda within some Islamicmigrant communities might also be help-ful. Taking care that anti-terrorist e�orts do

not vilify Muslims in Western countries isself-evidently sensible.

Yet it is worth remembering that overthe years democracies on both sides of theAtlantic have managed to absorb largenumbers of migrants from diverse back-grounds. Robert Putnam, an academic atHarvard, is worried that greater diversityin rich countries may mean a short-termdecline in what he calls social capital�trust, co-operation, shared values�withinthose countries. He points to research inAmerica showing that greater diversity�usually in areas with high rates of immi-gration�is often associated with more fearof crime and other social problems.

But Mr Putnam also points to the ex-perience of once divided institutions inAmerica, such as the army, where peopleof di�erent backgrounds, with some en-couragement, have learned to integratewell. And he considers the example of im-migrants who came to America a centuryago, including those of di�erent religiousbeliefs, such as Russian Jews and PolishCatholics, who went on to share socialcapital in the same way as anybody else.

There is evidence that foreigners arestill following that model. For example, asurvey in America by the Pew HispanicCentre shows that the vast majority (94%)of Hispanic adults in the country whowere born of immigrant parents claim tobe �uent English speakers. It may take afew decades for rich countries to integratenewcomers, but history suggests that itwill happen before too long. 7


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If something similar happened today,there might be some bene�ts. For example,it might become easier to integrate existingimmigrant communities. Perhaps, as Ja-pan appears to be hoping, more jobs couldbe carried out by machines. Possibly, age-ing natives in rich countries might do moreof the jobs that they now shun. Such coun-tries would probably have to lower theirexpectations of economic growth.

It is also possible that the steady supplyof workers from nearby countries couldone day dry up. Patterns of migration willcertainly change. Note how quickly coun-tries switch from exporting to importinglabour as they develop. Until recentlySpain and other parts of southern Europewere sending lots of workers abroad, butdemographic and economic changes havemade them into net labour importers. Por-tugal now attracts Ukrainians, Spaindraws in Romanians and Moroccans.

In the coming decades, the next lot ofemigration countries will grow richer andolder too. The average age in Ukraine is al-ready 40 and in Poland 38, not very di�er-ent from the west European average. EvenMoroccans and Mexicans are, on average,already in their mid-20s. With rapidgrowth in their own economies, wagesback home rise too, and the supply of emi-grants will eventually drop. Those coun-tries, in turn, will then start to attract moreworkers from farther away. For the foresee-able future there will always be anotherpool in which to �sh for workers, but thatwill mean drawing migrants from moreand more distant cultures.

The other scenario, of a world wideopen to migration, is less likely but wouldbe more bene�cial. Some regions�most ofthe EU, much of west Africa�do have un-restricted movement, and seem to be far-ing well with it.

Philippe Legrain (formerly a writer on

The Economist), in his recent book, �Immi-grants: Your Country Needs Them�, arguesthat stopping people from migrating isboth �morally wrong and economicallystupid�. Lant Pritchett, of the KennedySchool of Government at Harvard, arguesthat faster global migration would bringhuge gains for poor countries, exceedingthe combined rewards o�ered by foreignaid, debt relief and trade reforms proposedunder the Doha development round.

How to make the world richerIf labour �owed without restraint, socialand political systems would be disruptedon a huge scale, but global poverty wouldbe vastly relieved. A study in 1984 sug-gested that if the �ow of labour were freedcompletely, the size of the world economywould double. Another study in 2003more modestly put the gains to world GDP

at nearly 10%. An estimate in 2004 of theimpact of letting 16m more migrants intoOECD economies suggested a global gain

of $156 billion, or about 0.6% of worldGDP�not a large rise, but again the poorwould be winners.

Opening borders to let many more job-seekers go where they please would beradical, but it would not mean allowingcriminals, drug-smugglers or terrorists tomove freely between countries. And thereare many ways of doing it. Holger Kolb, amigration expert, has suggested allowingunlimited numbers of foreign workersinto rich countries but charging them a feeon arrival. That would cut out the people-smugglers, and the revenues could help topay for public services. Another optionwould be to charge foreign workers higherrates of tax than locals. Such ideas shouldbe explored.

The moral case for migration is incon-trovertible: it greatly lessens human mis-ery. The cultural gains from migrants areusually obvious, too. But the economiccase needs to be made more forcefully.Over the past few decades the freer move-ment of capital and traded goods hasbrought enormous gains to human wel-fare. Similar bene�ts can be expected froma freer �ow of people. Policymakers in richcountries must make those bene�ts moretransparent. They need to persuade votersthat natives and migrants alike gain aslarger workforces speed up economicgrowth; and that foreigners not only �lljobs but act as entrepreneurs who in turncreate jobs and wealth. In the longer term,migrants will be essential to supplementshrinking native workforces. The questioncurrently being asked in the rich world�whether immigration rates are unsustain-ably high�may be the wrong one. Perhapsthey are not nearly high enough. 7

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