Blaming Immigrants

Nationalism and the Economics of Global Movement

Neeraj Kaushal

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780231543606
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Immigration Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Immigration is shaking up electoral politics around the world. Anti-immigration and ultranationalistic politics are rising in Europe, the United States, and countries across Asia and Africa. What is causing this nativist fervor? Are immigrants the cause or merely a common scapegoat?

In Blaming Immigrants, economist Neeraj Kaushal investigates the rising anxiety in host countries and tests common complaints against immigration. Do immigrants replace host country workers or create new jobs? Are they a net gain or a net drag on host countries? She finds that immigration, on balance, is beneficial to host countries. It is neither the volume nor pace of immigration but the willingness of nations to accept, absorb, and manage new flows of immigration that is fueling this disaffection. Kaushal delves into the demographics of immigrants worldwide, the economic tides that carry them, and the policies that shape where they make their new homes. She demystifies common misconceptions about immigration, showing that today's global mobility is historically typical; that most immigration occurs through legal frameworks; that the U.S. system, far from being broken, works quite well most of the time and its features are replicated by many countries; and that proposed anti-immigrant measures are likely to cause suffering without deterring potential migrants. Featuring accessible and in-depth analysis of the economics of immigration in worldwide perspective, Blaming Immigrants is an informative and timely introduction to a critical global issue.

1

Introduction

It’s Not a Crisis

We think of international immigration in grandiose phrases. It is a “problem” in need of a solution, a “crisis” crying out for attention, a “surge” demanding containment.1 Images of overladen boats, trucks, and trains crammed with immigrants are all over the media, lending credibility to these exaggerations and distorting the reality of immigration. In proportion to world population, the number of global immigrants—people living outside their country of birth—is a modest 3 percent. Not a deluge, not a surge, not a flood, not even a stream, but a trickle.

The increase in immigration globally over the past quarter century is largely in line with the growth in world population. The number of immigrants as a proportion of world population has not budged for over a century. It was 3 percent in 1900. Ninety years later, in 1990, and another quarter century further on, in 2015, it remained 3 percent.2

Yet immigration is one of the most divisive issues of our times. It is a source of cheap labor, talent, and entrepreneurial ingenuity. It is also a source of economic, social, and political discontents within native-born populations, arising from fears that immigrants will take the jobs of local workers and bring foreign cultures and identities that threaten the social fabric of host societies, destroy national identities, and expose host countries to international terrorism and crime. In countries across Europe, North America, and Asia, these fears have brought back the “acrid odor of the 1920s,” to use the words of historian John Higham, threatening the return of an era that severely restricted immigration.3

The Global Immigration Scene

From Austria, Britain, Denmark, and France all the way to Malaysia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, immigration is shaking electoral politics. In some countries, ultraconservatives are articulating public fears of immigration. In others, they are simply taking advantage of public anxiety to advance their exclusionist agenda.4 The radical right has won a few elections here and there, but in most countries (e.g., the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, and Italy), it is effectively pushing the centrist right parties to turn extreme on immigration, and in some (like Germany and the United Kingdom), it is weakening the resolve of liberal pro-immigration parties to welcome immigrants.

Since 2010 most of Europe has seen the rise of far-right, anti-immigration, ultranationalist political parties. In France, it is the National Front; in Italy, the Lega Nord (Northern League), Forza Italia, and the Five Star Movement; in Austria, the Freedom Party; in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party; in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party; in Greece, Golden Dawn; in Germany, Alternative for Deutschland; in Hungary, Fidesz Party and Jobbik Party; and in the United Kingdom, the Independence Party.5 On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump, a real estate developer and TV entertainer, won the American presidential election in 2016 after calling immigrants from Mexico rapists and criminals and promising that if elected he would ban entry of Muslims, deport the eleven million or so immigrants living in the United States without legal documents, build a wall on the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay for it.6

In 2015 and 2016 the far-right parties in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece made significant gains in state, regional, or national elections. But the pendulum swung back in 2017, when Emmanuel Macron defeated the far-right Marine Le Pen in France and Angela Merkel won her fourth term as German chancellor (even though Alternative for Germany, the anti-immigration party, improved its position and entered the German parliament). In the United Kingdom, the conservatives lost their majority. Elsewhere, the anti-immigration brigade continues to make progress. In Austria, Sebastian Kurz of the Austrian People’s Party has changed the party’s agenda to match that of the far-right Freedom Party. In the 2018 general elections in Italy, two right-wing anti-immigration parties were winners; the Five Star Movement won the most votes and the central-right alliance led by Lega Nord the most seats in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Overall, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, immigration remains a burning political issue in all Europe.

Hostility toward immigrants is not confined to Western democracies. India’s Bharatiya Janata Party has promised to seal the India-Bangladesh border so that “not even birds can fly across.”7 In Singapore, voters are demanding a Singapore for Singaporeans.8 In the summer of 2015 Thailand and Malaysia turned away boatloads of Rohingya and Bangladeshi migrants, leaving more than six thousand refugees abandoned in the Andaman Sea.9 The Pakistani government wants to expel hundreds of thousands of Afghani immigrants who have been living in the country for decades. The Malaysian government’s granting of entry to 1.5 million low-skilled Bangladeshi workers caused large-scale protests from labor unions. In many African countries, too, there are protests against immigrants.10 Brazil is building a virtual wall monitored by drones and satellites to restrict immigration.11 Saudi Arabia has built walls around five of its borders to restrict immigration from neighboring countries.12

A hundred years ago similar discontent pushed countries in the New World to close their doors to immigration from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Will history repeat itself? The rising popularity of right-wing political parties suggests that the process may have already begun. Many countries have responded to the growing public and political discontent toward immigrants with restrictive immigration policies, stronger enforcement, increased electronic and human cross-border surveillance, and construction of walls and fences.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, there were sixteen cross-border fences around the world. By 2016 the number had risen to sixty-five.13 In the same year seven Schengen countries—Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Poland and Sweden—introduced temporary border controls in previously border-free Europe. The Syrian refugee crisis created deep fissures in Europe’s Common Asylum Policy. The European Union has signed agreements with many sending and transition countries aimed at restricting immigration and refugee flows. The governments of the Netherlands and Denmark have resorted to advertisements in Lebanon’s newspapers in Arabic and English listing reasons why their countries would be unwelcome destinations for refugees. These attempts to repel refugees have worked. In 2015 one million refugees crossed the Mediterranean to arrive in Europe; in 2016 the number fell to around 364,000.14

Immigration—An Untapped Dimension of Globalization

The rising discontent hides the fact that immigration is by far the slowest-moving and relatively untapped dimension of globalization.15 Just compare it with the others. Global exports (in proportion to global output) increased fivefold between 1870 and 2016.16 Foreign direct investment (FDI) increased almost two hundredfold between 1971 and 2015.17 Despite the Great Recession and the growing cacophony of deglobalization, the average annual FDI flow between 2010 and 2017 was double the flow a decade earlier.

At 3 percent of global population, immigration appears unimpressive given that the three primary costs—travel expense, time, and postmigration cost of long-distance communications with family and friends back home—have plummeted over the past century. For those with internet access, the cost of long-distance communication is close to zero; travel cost has fallen to less than a tenth, and long-distance travel time to less than a hundredth, and in some cases, a thousandth, of what they were a hundred years ago.18

What is impressive is not the volume of immigration but its paucity. This is even more impressive given the existing global economic inequalities and demographic disparities. Some hope that immigration will rise to reduce these disparities.19 But so far there is little evidence of that happening. Consider Africa and Europe, two continents with dramatically different demographics and economies. Europe is aging and shrinking; Africa is young and growing. Europe is rich; Africa is poor. In 1900 a quarter of the world population lived in Europe and only one-twelfth in Africa. By 2050 the two continents will exchange places on the global demographic map: a quarter of the world population will be in Africa, and less than a fourteenth in Europe. For immigration to make a dent in these proportions, it will have to be many times the current or past levels, which appears unlikely given the public intolerance and political response.

Despite global disparities that should propel immigration, and despite growing protests against immigration that will discourage it, the future of immigration will not be very different from its recent past. It will rise in some countries and decline in others. But globally, the proportion of immigration in world population is unlikely to change dramatically. The fact is, most people live and die in the country, and often the district, village, or city, of their birth. Immigration is not easy. Older, unhealthy, and risk-averse people do not migrate to foreign countries.

Causes of Immigration

Not only is immigration modest compared to the rest of globalization, it is, for the most part, not triggered by any major economic or political crises. Nor, as I will document in this book, has it caused any. The vast majority of immigrants do not enter host countries in boats risking their lives or sneak in hidden inside a truck or by jumping walls or fences.

Immigration has risen over the past half century not because sending countries face bigger political and economic crises than before pushing residents to emigrate. On the contrary, immigration has increased because sending countries like China and India have replicated the Western model of economic success. Economic growth in sending countries has created a sizable middle class that can afford the initial costs of emigration. Immigration is rising because travel and communication costs have dropped dramatically, making international travel affordable, and—surprise, surprise—because host countries, including Germany, Canada, the United States, and even China, have liberalized their immigration policies.

Policies toward international travel have been liberalized globally, which creates the impetus and opportunities for immigration. U.S. citizens can get short-term, visa-free entry or visa-at-entry in 116 countries; the United States, in turn, allows visa-free entry to citizens of thirty-eight countries. Twenty-six European countries with a combined population of over four hundred million in the Schengen area20 allow passport-free travel; foreigners need only one visa for the entire area. Travel within many Latin American countries, among many African countries, and among three South Asian countries (Nepal, Bhutan, and India) is visa-free. Many countries (such as Turkey, India, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Vietnam) allow tourists to obtain visas online or on arrival; many others (the United States, India, the United Kingdom, and China) provide long-term (for example, ten-year) multiple-entry visas to citizens of many countries.

It is neither crisis nor chaos. Most immigration takes place through legal channels: immigrants carrying legal entry permits from host country consulate offices. Immigration through these legal channels is structured and highly regulated. To receive an immigration visa, prospective immigrants must produce reams of documents that justify the cause of immigration and certify their earnings, wealth, and health to ensure that on arrival they will not become a public charge. They must also produce documents to certify even the income and wealth of their sponsors, who are expected to pay for medical or other emergency expenses if the immigrants cannot.21

Is Immigration the Primary Cause of Discontent?

The short answer to the question of whether immigration is the main cause of discontent is no. What is incubating disaffection is neither the volume nor pace of immigration but the appetite of nations to accept and absorb new immigrants and their political and administrative ability to manage immigration. Consider this: immigration was the most cited cause for Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. But UK jurisdictions with a high proportion of immigrants voted against Brexit, and those with a low proportion, for it.22 Poland and Hungary, countries with the lowest levels immigration in Europe, are the most clamorous. Less than 2 percent of Poland’s population is foreign-born. Even so, it has categorically refused settlement of a single Syrian refugee within its borders while the Polish diaspora continues to grow across Europe and North America. The foreign-born in Hungary are less than 6 percent of its population, which is half the average for Europe.23 But Hungary’s nationals have much less tolerance for outsiders than most of Europe. The government of Hungary built a 280-mile-long wall to seal itself and northern Europe off from immigrant and refugee flows from southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

There is no simple formula that explains why some nations welcome immigrants and others want to expel them. Some countries with large and rising populations of immigrants—Canada, New Zealand, Australia—welcome immigrants. Others with somewhat lower levels of immigrants, such as Austria, Italy, France, Poland, and Britain, do not. Even within Europe, some countries (such as Spain24 and Ireland) that have experienced dramatic growth in immigration over the past ...