Rich countries need better migration policies to avert voters’ backlash
THE fear of immigration is poisoning Western politics. Donald Trump owes his job to it. Brexit would not be happening without it. Strident nationalists wield power in Italy, Hungary, Poland and Austria, and have gained influence elsewhere.
Even Sweden, long a country of refuge, has soured on migrants. The Sweden Democrats, a thunderingly anti-immigrant party, could win the most votes at an election on September 9th (see article). Though it will not form a government, it has already transformed Swedish politics as mainstream parties seek to halt migrants.
The West risks a backlash of the sort that ended the previous great age of mobility, before 1914. That would be a tragedy. Societies that close their doors to migrants will be poorer and less tolerant. Meanwhile, those to whom the doors are closed will see increased suffering, unable to escape the poverty, climate change or violence that prompts them to move.
The stakes could not be higher. Yet advocates of liberal immigration, such as this newspaper, are losing the debate. They need to find better arguments and policies. That demands more honesty about the trade-offs immigration involves.
The walls of nations
International law categorises migrants either as refugees, who are entitled to sanctuary, or as economic migrants, who have no right to go anywhere that does not want them. Yet the distinctions are blurry. Poor countries next to war zones receive huge influxes, while rich countries try to shirk their obligations. And since rich countries admit virtually no economic migrants from poor countries unless they have exceptional skills or family ties, many of them try their luck by posing as refugees. It does not help that states have different rules on who is a refugee. Or that they struggle to send home those who are denied asylum, not least because many of their countries refuse to take them back.
This mess feeds disaffection in the West, and it is a waste. The act of moving from a poor country to a rich one makes workers dramatically more productive (see Briefing). A world with more migration would be substantially richer. The snag is that the biggest benefits of moving accrue to the migrants themselves, while the power to admit them rests with voters in rich countries. Fair enough: democratic accountability is vested largely in national governments. Yet most Western countries, struggling with ageing populations and shrinking workforces, need more migrants. So they have to find ways to make migration policy work for everyone.
The first step is to recognise the causes of the backlash against newcomers. Several stand out: the belief that governments have lost control of their borders; the fear that migrants drain already-strained welfare systems; the perception that migrants are undercutting local workers; and the fear of being swamped by alien cultures.
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