The EconomistNovember 16th 2019 Special reportMigration 92 The World Bank recommends that gov-
ernments replace visa quotas with taxes to
regulate immigration flows. They could do
so via a surtax on immigrants’ incomes, or
other means. They could earmark the pro-
ceeds for a popular cause, such as pensions
or health care, or remit the cash directly to
citizens. The more migrants they admit, the
bigger the payout. This might make the na-
tive-born see immigration as less of a threat
and more of an opportunity.
William Bourke of Sustainable Austra-
lia, a party that campaigns to reduce immi-
gration, argues that letting in too many
newcomers leads to overcrowding, conges-
tion, high house prices and environmental
stress. “As people move from the develop-
ing world to the rich one, they move from a
low carbon footprint to a high one.”
The notion that Australia is overcrowded seems absurd. The
empty plains of North Dakota are three times more densely popu-
lated. But migration in the rich world is highly concentrated. New-
comers head for the most dynamic cities, where everyone else
wants to live, too. Congestion and high house prices are big pro-
blems in places like Sydney and London, but they can be eased by
better policies. Restrictive zoning rules do more to inflate house
prices than immigration does. Cities would accommodate many
more people if they could build upwards. And immigrants’ taxes
could cover the cost of the extra roads and subway lines needed.
The impact of migration on climate
change is probably small. Migrants who
escape poverty might emit more carbon,
but it is grotesque to argue that they
should therefore remain poor. And there
are two counter-arguments. First, migra-
tion stimulates scientific research, which
will help curb global warming. An Indian
in North America is 28,000 times more
likely to file a patent than in India.
Second, migration causes fertility to
plunge. Migrants from poor countries to
rich ones no longer want seven children.
They want their kids to go to college, so
they have small families. Ethnic Somali
women have an average of 6.2 kids in So-
malia but only 2.4 in Norway. Allowing
more migration to rich countries would
reduce the future global population, mak-
ing environmental problems easier to tackle in the long run.
Some opponents of immigration fret that it will increase in-
equality. Some think it unjust that people from poor places might
come to rich ones to work as servants. But if the migrants thought
that, they would not come. Workers from a poor country who start
at the bottom in a rich one will, statistically, make their new home
more unequal. But their moving will reduce global inequality.
A deeper worry is that mass migration might undermine the
traits that make the rich world rich, such as good institutions and
the rule of law. Many migrants come from countries with terrible,
crooked governments. Suppose enough of them arrived to replace
the norms of, say, Japan with those of Haiti?
Immigration sceptics cite many alarming anecdotes. Mexican
mobsters sell drugs in America. A gang of Pakistani-British men
sexually abused hundreds of young white girls in Yorkshire. The
Chinese government snoops on Chinese overseas students to
make sure they say nothing heretical about democracy or Taiwan.
But step back and a more hopeful picture emerges. America’s
population has risen 60-fold since 1800. It has absorbed migrants
from Tsarist Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam and
nearly every other dictatorship of the past 200 years, without los-
ing its democratic soul. On the contrary, migrants head to America
because they prefer its institutions to the ones back home.
By most measures, immigrants in the United States are inte-
grating as well as ever. Their unemployment rate is a negligible
3.5%, lower than for the native-born. Only half of first-generation
immigrants speak English “very well”, but by the second genera-
tion English dominates even among Hispanics, who are sur-
rounded by other Spanish-speakers. Only 6% of second-genera-
tion Hispanic immigrants speak mostly Spanish. By the fourth
generation, half of those with Hispanic forebears are so well inte-
grated that they no longer identify as Hispanic.
America’s success in absorbing immigrants is remarkable, but
in recent decades it has been surpassed. The share of the popula-
tion who are foreign-born is higher in Australia (29%), New Zea-
land (24%) and Canada (21%) than in the United States (14%). None
of these new migrant magnets has a perfect immigration system.
But all combine openness with order, selecting the migrants they
want, processing their visas reasonably quickly and excluding un-
authorised migrants fairly effectively.
Australia shows that a well-run democracy can be twice as open
to immigrants as America and still rank ten places higher on the
un’s Human Development Index. Singapore, where 45% of resi-
dents are foreign-born, shows that a well-run city-state can be
more open still. It would be rash to open the gates suddenly and
completely. But countries could open a bit and see how it goes. 7They come over hereSource: TIMBRO *Index of 33 countriesEurope, aggregated populist votes*, %05101520251980 90 2000 10 19Left wing Right wing