8 Leaders The EconomistAugust 1st 2020
E
very countryin the world has closedorpartlycloseditsbor-
ders since the pandemic began. In total, they have issued
more than 65,000 restrictions on mobility. For some places, es-
pecially islands, border controls have bought valuable time to
prepare for covid-19. But the costs of global immobility are im-
mense (see International section). Billions of cancelled journeys
means millions of jobs obliterated, lives blighted and dreams de-
ferred. When bankers and tourists stopped flying to the United
Arab Emirates (uae), for example, the migrants who made beds
and stirred soup were laid off. Foreigners without jobs are re-
quired to leave the Gulf, but lots of them cannot, because so
many flights have been grounded. Globally, tens of millions of
migrants have been stranded, burning through the savings they
had hoped would lift their families out of poverty and put their
children through school. Some have ended up begging; and since
that is a crime in the uae, several have been arrested.
Migration policy is far from the top of any country’s agenda
just now. And with the coronavirus still raging, a return to nor-
mality will be impossible for some time. But governments will
sooner or later have to grapple with an important question. As
they gradually and fitfully open up again for tourists and busi-
ness travellers, will they also welcome migrants?
There are emotive reasons why covid-19 might make coun-
tries less willing to accept foreigners even after a
vaccine is discovered and the pandemic is sup-
pressed. People are scared: not only of this pan-
demic but also of the next. Many associate for-
eigners with disease. (Dramatic news stories,
such as a boat full of covid-infected migrants
crossing the Mediterranean, can feed this im-
pression.) Suspicion of foreigners is why people
who look Chinese have been harassed in many
countries, and people who look African have been harassed in
China. It is why President Donald Trump has boasted about ban-
ning Chinese travellers (even as he downplayed masks), and why
one of the South African government’s first actions to curb co-
vid-19 was to build a fence on the border with Zimbabwe (though
the virus was already spreading in South Africa).
In addition, covid-19 has caused mass unemployment. Many
voters believe that migrants take jobs from the native-born, and
so would keep curbs on immigration even after other travel re-
strictions are loosened. Mr Trump is one of many politicians
who make this argument explicitly. His executive order in June
suspending most kinds of work visa was aimed at “Aliens Who
Present a Risk to the usLabour Market”.
Both these fears are electorally potent, but neither is well-
founded. Tourists and business travellers vastly outnumber mi-
grants. In Britain, for example, the total number of arrivals last
year was 60 times more than the number of immigrants who
showed up. When it is possible to open borders to short-term
travellers, it should also be possible to open them for migrants.
Unlike tourists, people who plan to stay for years will not object
to a two-week quarantine on arrival. The precautions that work
best—social distancing, contact-tracing, handwashing and test-
ing—pay no heed to nationality. Nor does the virus.Theideathatmoremigrants means fewer jobs for locals in
the long run is an example of the fallacy that the economy has a
fixed “lump of labour”. As well as spending their wages, which
supports new jobs, migrants bring a greater diversity of skills to
the workforce, allowing the labour market as a whole to operate
more efficiently. In the short term, rich countries may not need
as many hotel or airline workers, but policymakers can tailor ad-
mission criteria to make sure that those who come meet local
needs and can support themselves.
This is the opposite of Mr Trump’s nail-the-doors-shut ap-
proach. He has locked out skilled workers, internal company
transfers and even foreign students, if they have not yet arrived
and their courses are online. This is a recipe for a poorer, more
insular America, where domestic firms cannot hire the best, for-
eign investors cannot send in technicians to unblock bottle-
necks and brainy youngsters opt to study and settle in Canada.
Alas, America is not the only place where the pandemic has
spurred nativists to clamp down. Italy is alarmed at Africans
crossing the Mediterranean. Malaysia has pushed boatloads of
Rohingya refugees back into international waters. The army
chief in the Maldives has called migrant workers a security
threat, not least because some date locals. South Africa tempo-
rarily closed migrant-owned shops in townships, forcing cus-
tomers to walk miles to distant grocery stores,
thereby spreading the virus.
However, even as covid-19 has immobilised
the world, it is making some people appreciate
the benefits of mobility. Many voters in rich
countries have noticed that doctors are often
migrants: 53% in Australia, 29% in America. The
same is true of nurses, care-home workers and
virus-busting mop-wielders. When people bang
pots for health-care workers, they applaud a lot of foreigners.
Migrants are also over-represented among those who make it
possible for others to work safely and productively at home, by
harvesting and processing food, delivering parcels and fixing
software bugs. They turbocharge innovation, too. Some 40% of
medical and life scientists in America are foreign-born. Vaccine
research depends on large teams of talents from all around the
world. Half the big American tech firms were founded by a first-
or second-generation immigrant. If the founder of Zoom had
never left China, locked-down professionals might not even
know what their colleagues’ bookshelves look like.Open the windows, open the doors
Some countries may end up more open after the pandemic than
they were before. Japan is allowing foreign “trainees”, as it calls
migrant workers, to switch jobs. Britain will be less open to mi-
grants from the eu, because of Brexit, but just offered residency
to up to 3m Hong Kongers without a perceptible backlash at
home (see China section).
When the coronavirus is vanquished, migration will still be
what it was before: a powerful tool that can lift up the poor, reju-
venate rich countries and spread new ideas around the world. A
pandemic is no reason to abandon it. 7Locked out
When and how to let migrants move againGlobal migration