Foreign Policy In Focus

Migration is one of the best mechanisms for reducing poverty.

There has been much discussion very recently about the rapid and deep fall of global fertility rates. The conversation is not new, but has become more intense recently as more evidence has emerged of the depth and scope of the worldwide trend. One factor remains consistent: commentators nearly always assume that this is largely a problem, even a crisis, due to aging populations, shrinking labor forces, and unsustainable government initiatives. At times, increased global migration is mentioned as a coping mechanism, but is usually dismissed as inadequate for various reasons.

In contrast, it looks very likely that a massive increase in global migration, mostly temporary but often permanent, will emerge as the only method of compensating for this situation. Capitalists will not tolerate labor shortages if they can help it, in fact they are willing to bend and break the law in order to get around them, and thus they will inevitably and increasingly push for greater access to the world's available workers. Government after government will likely bow to the pressure, because, faced with the power of business lobbies and the prospect of companies shutting down due to lack of workers, they will not have a choice. This state of affairs might just save the world.   

From 1948 until 1962, it was possible for roughly one-quarter of the world's population to migrate freely to the United Kingdom. In response to labor shortages resulting from high levels of death and disability inflicted upon two generations by two world wars, along with some geopolitical maneuvering in the face of strong anti-colonial movements, the British Nationality Act of 1948 enabled all residents of the British Commonwealth (consisting mostly of the then-current and former nations of the British Empire) to migrate to the UK without legal restrictions. In practice, this meant that British companies were free to seek out workers from throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, the relatively tiny numbers of upwardly-mobile Commonwealth residents who were aware of this new opportunity and had the wherewithal to pursue it began migrating on their own to the UK.

Such were the beginnings of the modern, diverse, multicultural UK. Though immigration restrictions began in 1962 and have been refined over the years, the United Kingdom remains a destination for migrants from around the world. In contrast to the perennial worries of nativists and restrictionists, nowhere close to one-quarter of the world's population migrated to the UK as long as they had the opportunity. It is an empirical fact, routinely stated and re-stated by economists across the spectrum, that immigrants by and large only bother to travel when jobs are available, and the net effect is largely positive for both sides. This can be observed within free-migration zones such as the United States and European Union. Massive hordes of people did not arrive to leech off of the National Health Service; in contrast, the British economy got the workers it needed to shake off its deep post-war doldrums and rebound strongly.

It cannot be stated conclusively (and may be unlikely) that a continued open immigration policy would have prevented subsequent economic troubles, but the ensuing restrictions cannot have helped. In any case, taking the long view, the economic results have been good for the UK and good for the world. Besides the stimulus to to the United Kingdom (whose citizens were able to buy more of the world's products and invest more heavily elsewhere), immigrants took pressure off of the markets for jobs and public goods in their home countries, and, much more importantly, sent (and continue to send) home financial remittances. More recently, immigrants commonly invest in businesses and other ventures in their countries of origin. All of this activity alleviates poverty and increases access to education, among other factors which contribute to the ongoing decline in fertility in most of the poorer countries of the world. Such is the immigrant experience around the world, and it only looks likely to replicate itself in more and more countries.

One important caveat must be made here, in that it is entirely possible for a country to have low fertility and high rates of unemployment -underemployment-poverty-etc. At the moment, this is true on both sides of the Mediterranean. Forgetting this would be succumbing to the “lump of labor” fallacy, in this case the mirror-image of complaining that immigrants “take” jobs from locals. The upshot of this is that, as labor shortages do inevitably develop in certain sectors of many economies, this will create more opportunities for people from areas with fertility above the job-creation capacity of the local market, and from areas that are simply stagnant for other reasons.   

To reiterate, as long as one solution exists, business leaders are going to do all they can to pursue it, and their governments are almost certain to oblige them. Singapore, long a nation of immigrants, seems to be ahead of the curve. The prosperous island nation's government has been filling its labor shortages with large numbers of migrants for years, and they may have recently learned the hard way that there might not be anything else they can do. This cannot have gone unnoticed in another island nation on the other end of East Asia: Japan. Xenophobic stereotypes (and realities) notwithstanding, Japanese business leaders have been agitating for increased access to foreign workers for years, and a bloc of legislators agrees with them.

Speaking of xenophobia, nativist backlashes are a guaranteed sure thing, and the results can be ghastly. In any case, those who would prevent the movement of labor to fill vacancies are transparently on the wrong side of history. With prevention of cultural conflict in mind, look for governments to rush to broker bilateral deals with nations with cultural similarities (however tenuous), or, failing that, with societies that lack any particular seemingly irreconcilable differences. Specifically, look for European countries to look first towards the Philippines and parts of Latin America, before eventually turning elsewhere. Look for Bangladesh's leaders to promote their population's secularism, relatively tolerant atmosphere, and common use of English to lure recruiters. Look for China's government to encourage its millions of surplus men to emigrate to nations with longstanding Chinese communities, even as China paradoxically is already suffering from labor shortages of its own.

Migration is one of the best mechanisms for reducing poverty, and the inexorable decline of global fertility rates will just as inexorably lead to more migration of the world's people. As the pool of available labor gradually becomes dry, a world becoming gradually much wealthier (and producing less carbon!) will be in a far better position to deal with aging, shrinking populations, along with all the other problems feared by today's chroniclers of falling fertility. 

Scott Ryan Charney received an M.A. in U.S. Foreign Policy from American University.

(Pictured: Gaza Youth Breaks Out's logo.)

"F**k Hamas. F**k Israel. F**k Fatah. F**k UN. F**k UNWRA. F**k USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community!" Thus begins the Gaza Youth's Manifesto for Change, as posted on Gaza Youth Breaks Out Facebook page, which over 8,000 Facebook users "like." As the Guardian reports, the document details "the daily humiliations and frustrations that constitute everyday life in the Gaza Strip."

Equal-opportunity dissidents, the members of Gaza Youth Breaks Out are almost as outraged by the heavy hand of Hamas as by Israeli oppression. 

We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead. . . . During the last years, Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want.

Recent months have seen the emergence of another unlikely source of outrage: 93-year-old former French Resistance fighter and Buchenwald survivor Stéphane Hessel. His slim volume -- actually a long essay -- Indignez-vous! (Get indignant!) has spent two months atop French bestseller lists. Another Guardian article reports:

Hessel's book argues that French people should re-embrace the values of the French resistance, which have been lost, which was driven by indignation, and French people need to get outraged again.  

Among his personal hot-button issues:

. . . the growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, France's shocking treatment of its illegal immigrants, the need to re-establish a free press, protecting the environment, the plight of Palestinians and the importance of protecting the French welfare system. 

It's easy to lament how sad it is that Western public needs to be told to become indignant. But one might look at someone in Hessel's position -- not exactly the French Michael Moore, he once served as his country's ambassador to the United Nations -- as providing the populace with the permission it subconsciously feels it needs to express outrage. 

Allow me to qualify that by explaining that the disinclination of 90% of the population to refrain from rebellion does not make them sheep. They may just be hard-wired to support the society and government into which they're born. In his version of the the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, nutritionist and renaissance man Gary Null called them "adaptive-supportives." That's not so bad, is it? (For more, see my January 2010 piece for Scholars & Rogues Is apathy socially redeeming?)

But do Westerners, Americans especially, and not just youth, but adults, need to be reduced to straits as dire as the Palestinians in Gaza before they react as Gaza Youth Speak Out did?

One-time neocon Francis Fukuyama, the celebrated political economist who has since turned his attention to the subject of wealth inequality, wrestles with why Americans endure what we do without fighting back in the January-February issue of the American Interest. Note that, in the passage that follows, when he refers to the left he means moderates such as Obama supporters, not true progressives. Here is, to Fukuyama, the "paramount puzzle." 

Why has a significant increase in income inequality in recent decades failed to generate political pressure from the left for redistributional redress, as similar trends did in earlier times? Instead, insofar as there is any populism bubbling from below in America today it comes from the Right, and its target is not just the "undeserving rich"—Wall Street "flip-it" shysters and their ilk—but, even more so, government policies intended to protect Americans from their predations. . . . Within a year of Barack Obama's inauguration, the most energized and angry people on the American political scene were not the homeowners with subprime mortgages who faced foreclosure as a result of the crisis, but rather those who faulted the government for taking steps to protect those homeowners, and to prevent the crisis from deepening. It was a strange phenomenon that saw many of those most deeply injured by the crisis become, in effect, objective allies of those who caused it.

This, then, is the contemporary context in which we raise the question of plutocracy in America: Why, given the economic history of the past thirty years, have we not seen the emergence of a powerful left-wing political movement seeking fairer distribution of growth? [Operative word: powerful. -- RW] . . . How can it be that large numbers of congressional Democrats and arguably the most socially liberal President in American history are now seriously considering extending, and even making permanent, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003? Is this not prima facie evidence of plutocracy?

In an outstanding article at Huffington Post titled The Poorhouse: Aunt Winnie, Glenn Beck, And The Politics Of The New Deal, Arthur Delaney and Ryan Grim provide a clue. (Emphasis added.) 

[President Franklin] Roosevelt came into office a deficit hawk, pushed to balance the budget and cut federal worker pay. He quickly realized his error and turned around. He had the room to maneuver, however, because poverty had become so widespread that it lost its stigma. It could finally be addressed with a level head rather than a wag of the finger.

Before then, however, the nation was just prosperous enough for those with a little to look down upon those with less. 

In other words, the United States hasn't been reduced to the circumstances that many lived under during the Depression, nor under which the elderly once routinely lived. Delaney and Grim again.

Though there were no national measurements, in surveys taken between 1925 and 1932 in Connecticut, New York and Wisconsin, nearly half of elderly people lived on less than $25 per month, which survey administrators deemed "insufficient subsistence income." A third in Connecticut had no income at all. An attempt to quantify elderly poverty in 1939, deep into the depression, using census data, found the rate may have been close to 80 percent.

The day that poverty loses its stigma doesn't, of course, mean that it's become acceptable. It's just that it's become pervasive to the point we can no longer indulge in denial that we're about to be overtaken by it too. It's the same with, say, warrantless surveillance. Until the day comes when many of us are actually dragged from our homes and taken into custody, we'll remain in denial that our rights are being systematically abrogated. However tired, the metaphor of the boiling frog demands to be trotted out again: by the time we decide we've had enough, it's too late.