Open Borders - For Immigrants as well

[Fevola4God]

Here's the classical liberal arguement of why we should have open borders, eventually. It is the right wing, globalist case. if you will. And I personally find it a lot more convincing than other cases surfacing around today.

Open borders – for immigrants as well

The annual Telders Lecture, presented by Johan Norberg, at the Teldersstichting, Leiden, the Netherlands, 25 September 2003



Mankind has never before seen such a dramatic improvement of the human condition as we’ve seen in the last decades. We have heard the opposite view repeated so many times, that we take it for granted, without examining the evidence. But in a generation, the average income in developing countries has doubled. As United Nations Development Programme has observed, in the last 50 years global poverty has declined more than in the 500 years before that. The number of absolute poor – people with less than $1/day – has according to the World Bank been reduced by 200 million in the last two decades (Update: the latest figures say almost 400 million), even though world population grew by more than 1.5 billion during the same time. And there are convincing arguments that this actually underestimates the poverty reduction that has taken place.

GDP per capita of the developing countries taken as a whole (not as individual countries) grew by 3,1 per cent 1980-2000, up from 2,1 per cent 1960-80. Open poor countries are now repeating our industrial revolution, only faster. From 1780, it took England almost 60 years to double its wealth. A hundred years later, Sweden did it in about 40 years, and another century later it took South Korea just a bit more than 10 years.

There are two basic facts about the globalisation process that makes this tremendous development possible: a) International trade and investment increase competition and production and makes specialisation possible. And b) Globalisation increases the transmission of ideas and technologies from abroad.

This is great, but it is often the very source of criticism against globalisation and capitalism. Because in the short term it looks bad. When specialisation and technology means that we do thing in new, improved ways, we also have to discontinue the old ones. This means that the first thing people see are closed factories and unemployed workers. In the long term, however, this is a creative form of destruction. The money consumers save because of increased efficiency is then used to buy new goods, that we couldn’t afford before – luxury goods, better housing, education, health care. And people are employed in those sectors instead. With less work we can produce more, and therefore, with the same work we can get more of the goods and services we want. That is how living standards are increased.

The case is the same

Why am I saying this? Is it because I forgot my speech on immigration, and brought an old one on free trade instead. No, that is not the case. I give this introduction on the benefits about globalisation because they relate directly to the issue of immigration.

The two benefits of globalisation, specialisation, and transmission of new ideas and solutions, are also the two biggest benefits of immigration. Just think of it, free trade means that foreigners produce goods and services that we want, and therefore increase competition, production and specialisation. Immigration on the other hand means that foreigners come to our countries and produce goods and services that we want, and therefore increase competition, production and specialisation.

The transmission of ideas is one of the most important benefits of immigration. Openness to immigration means that people with different starting points and world views can address our longstanding problems and come up with creative solutions to them. Immigrants can utilise what is viable in our culture and combine it with traditions of their own, and we natives can do likewise. It is no coincidence that the US, the most dynamic society in history, was built by immigrants. I come to think of the story about the American historian who wanted to write the history of immigration to the US, but understood that it was impossible to demarcate the subject, and had to change the it to the history of the whole US.

We know from our economics lessons that the free movement of factors of production is necessary if capital and production are going to be at the place and in the particular production where they can benefit the economy most. This is important within a country, but it is even better between countries. And free movement for people means that the most important factor of production, human capital, labour, also experience this flexibility. Attempts to measure the extra wealth that immigrants give the American economy ranges from about $8 billion, to several $100 billion.

Economists don’t agree on many issues, but apart from the fact that rent control is destructive and free trade is good, the fact that immigration is beneficial seems to be one of those few issues. Here we can see a consensus from John Kenneth Galbraith to Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman. And whereas many popular tabloids are very hostile to immigrants and refugees, business papers like Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and The Economist are on the side of increased openness.

Many would agree that immigration is great for the consumers, who get cheaper gods and services, but what about the workers? Won’t immigrants take our jobs, and the result will be unemployment? This is a common concern – and a myth. Think again about the creative destruction that free trade brings about, that I mentioned earlier. When the goods get cheaper because of more efficiency or of immigrant workers, the consumers save money, so that they can use this purchasing power to buy other things, more expensive goods, education, health care, etc. And then people will get jobs in those sectors.

Furthermore, immigrants are not merely producers, they are also consumers, who spend their incomes. Immigrants do not merely supply, they also demand. Who are going to build their houses, grow and sell their food, produce their telephones and TV sets, supply them with health care and their children with education? To see more people as a problem, a burden, a cause of unemployment, is like thinking of more births and more babies as a problem. As long as wages follow how much people can produce, our productivity, there is no reason why it would lead to unemployment.

But so far I have only said that immigration does not affect the unemployment rate in the country they move to. That is not the whole story, there are convincing evidence that more immigrants actually reduce unemployment. That might sounds strange, but it is actually common sense. Many jobs are dependent on the existence of other jobs. You cannot work in an office if there is no janitor, you can’t work as a software engineer if noone produces the hardware, women cannot join the workforce if there is no day care, and I cannot write books if there are no publishers.

In his insightful and provocative book on immigration, Thinking the Unthinkable, Nigel Harris mentions the garment industry in Los Angeles in the 80’s. The industry expanded dramatically and Los Angeles become a magnet for US designers, specialist producers of buttons, zips and threads, and it created jobs for managers, foremen, in packaging, trucking and so on. But none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for the access to people on the ground doing the hard labour intense work in textile manufacturing. And that was done by illegal immigrants from Mexico. Their jobs created other jobs. Their immigration increased the demand for US-born workers in the industry by 50 per cent. One reason for the big unemployment in Europe is that we don’t have the jobs that can create other jobs. That is why business organisations are now lobbying governments to open up the labour markets, so that immigrants can create those jobs. According to the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, about 25 000 positions in Sweden were not filled in just one year, because of our lack of workers.

The rest of the article (which is reasonably long) is at http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=65

 

[medusala]

The author is Dutch so ironic how much trouble they are having re the immigration issue.

There have been numerous studies out on the economic affects of immigration. A recent one just out in the UK has shown that immigration as carried out by the UK has had a net NEGATIVE affect.

To come out with a blanket state that immigration is good or bad isnt really possible in my belief. For example it has been shown in Australia that refugee immigration in particular is not economically beneficial. I recently posted a newspaper article that showed that under the Aust immigration program before Ruddock's recent changes that the unemployment rate of immigrants was almost 20% a year after they arrived. There is also a sizeable statistical correlation between refugees and crime rates.

There is no doubt that if we let in 150k highly educated/ high net worth individuals in to Australia a year it would be beneficial. Unfortunately thats not what we do.

 

[deeslover4ever]

Here's the classical liberal arguement of why we should have open borders, eventually. It is the right wing, globalist case. if you will. And I personally find it a lot more convincing than other cases surfacing around today.


The rest of the article (which is reasonably long) is at http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=65

I pose 1 question to you in relation to your argument and Australia. Water ?

 

[David Votoupal]

Allowing unchecked immigration not only puts a strain on resources, but it will also cause community tensions if the population is ill at ease. We've seen that in the UK, and we may well see that here if we're not careful.

 

[- PC -]

I pose 1 question to you in relation to your argument and Australia. Water ?

I assume you mean large bodies of water? And not pipelined water?


Why not artificially create water areas? Digging a huge artificial lake shouldnt create too many difficulties. It has been done before. As we all know large bodies of water will cause condensation creating conditions ripe for temperature change and weather change

 

[medusala]

Allowing unchecked immigration not only puts a strain on resources, but it will also cause community tensions if the population is ill at ease. We've seen that in the UK, and we may well see that here if we're not careful.

Now come on David, the odd race riot is merely a small price to pay for the nirvana of multiculturalism.