12 Special reportMigration The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
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can be found at: Economist.com/specialreports2 the violent, corrupt regime of Nicolás Ma-
duro—a seventh of the population. In a
country where elections are rigged, the
only way they can get a better government
is to go and find one.
Foot-voting can take place over any dis-
tance and for many reasons. A person may
move from Congo to Botswana to be better
governed, or from New York to Florida for a
lower tax bill and kinder weather. Foot-vot-
ers are typically better informed than bal-
lot-casters. One vote is unlikely to affect an election result, so
hours spent analysing each candidate’s policies are probably wast-
ed. When migrating, by contrast, an informed choice pays huge
dividends and an ignorant one can spell disaster.
If people were allowed to vote freely with their feet, they would
have more choices about the kind of society in which they lived. A
gay man might choose to leave Iran, where his love is punishable
by death, and move to Uruguay, where he could get married. A tra-
ditional Saudi man might choose to remain in Saudi Arabia, where
Islamic piety is enforced and women are kept in their place. His
wives might prefer to move to Canada, where they would be free to
divorce him. The biggest gains from foot-voting often accrue to ill-
treated groups such as ethnic and sexual minorities, and women.
The lengths to which people will go to vote with their feet give a
hint of how large the benefits can be. Emmanuel, for example, left
Gabon because it fails to protect young women like her from sexu-
al violence. Her father used to abuse her. When her mother found
out, she blamed Emmanuel, beat her, threw her clothes into the
street and ordered her out of the house.
It is hard enough reporting a sex crime in a rich democracy,
where the police are trained to treat allegations sensitively. In Ga-
bon the cops are as scary as the criminals. Emmanuel saw no
chance of justice, so when a friend offered her a plane ticket to Tur-
key, she went. From there, heavily pregnant, she boarded a flimsy
boat bound for Greece. It leaked, and began to sink. She fell into the
freezing water. Her friends called the coastguard, who found her
after 45 minutes. Amazingly, both she and her baby survived. Now
in Athens, she helps out at Melissa Network, a refugee charity, and
hopes to train as a medical secretary. She says she feels much safer
in Greece: “You have human rights here.”
A worry about foot-voting is that it might retard reform in the
places migrants leave. If the strongest objectors to Venezuela’s dic-
tatorship have gone, who will stand up to it? It is a reasonable fear.
When ethnic minorities flee to escape mistreatment, their depar-
ture may indeed reward their tormentors. For example, a politi-
cian may court the votes of his own tribe by stirring up animosity
against another, thus spurring the out-group to leave his electoral
district and making it easier for him to win re-election.
However, foot-voting can also accelerate reform. Dissidents of-
ten find safety abroad. Exiles played a big role in ending apartheid
in South Africa, and today are the most audible critics of authori-
tarian regimes in China and North Korea. Even the possibility of
exit can influence how societies are run. If taxpayers can move,
governments must govern better to avoid losing them. When the
citizens of the closed, communist states of eastern Europe were al-
lowed to head west and sample the fruits of capitalism in the late
1980s, the Soviet empire was revealed to be a failure, and collapsed.
Migrants often stimulate reform at home by finding good ideas
overseas and bringing or sending them back. India’s successful
economic opening in the 1990s was informed by the observation
that Indians were prospering everywhere except in India.
The arguments for allowing more freedom to move are partly
economic. Migrants from poor to rich countries could collectively
increase their incomes by tens of trillions of dollars. For this op-portunity, they would surely be willing to share some of the bene-
fits with the rich-country voters who let them in. Since the eco-
nomic disruption caused by migration is modest, an imaginative
government with sensible policies (come to work, do not draw
welfare) could raise living standards all round.
But that is only half the story. Liberal, democratic capitalist
societies have many flaws, but also great virtues: peace, freedom,
tolerance and a culture that fosters innovation. The simplest way
to spread these virtues is to let more people in. Every time a mi-
grant flees a dictatorship for a democracy, global freedom grows a
little. Every time someone leaves a kleptocracy for a more law-
abiding state, humanity is slightly better governed. Every time a
woman leaves a country where her testimony is worth less than a
man’s, global sexism ebbs a millimetre or two. Migration is, there-
fore, a deeply moral issue.
Rich countries have a choice. They are ageing. Without immi-
gration, their populations will soon start to shrink, if they have not
started already. They can choose to dwindle gradually into com-
fortable obscurity. Or they can confidently recruit talent from
everywhere, inviting bright minds and willing hands to help build
a bigger Australia, a bigger America or even a bigger Japan.Smoke on your pipe and put that in
The more the West opens its doors, the richer and more powerful it
will be in 50 years. Indeed, as the world’s population stabilises and
falls, each country’s weight in the world will depend more and
more on whether people want to live there. This is one of the big-
gest advantages that rich democracies have over nationalist dicta-
torships such as China. On current trends, most will squander it.
Potential migrants watch the news. The brightest have choices,
and will shun places they think might mistreat them. Already,
brainy Chinese are wondering whether they will be welcome in
America, which is one reason why the number of new foreign stu-
dents there fell by 7% in 2017-18. Brainy Indians are tiring of the in-
terminable wait for a green card. Some give up and go elsewhere.
Uma Kanekar, a high-flying Indian itspecialist, moved to Can-
ada after a decade in the United States waiting vainly for a green
card. The last straw was the realisation that her daughter Disha, a
college student who had lived in New Jersey since she was six,
might be sent back to India when she turned 21 and was no longer
covered by her mother’s temporary work visa. Canada gave the
family permanent residence in eight months. “It’s so nice to be in a
country where you feel you belong,” says Disha.
For all the furious demagoguery around migration, there is
hope. Despite (or perhaps because of ) Mr Trump, more Americans
today say immigration should be increased than say it should be
cut, finds a Pew poll. Majorities in Spain, Canada and Japan sup-
port keeping migrant flows the same or raising them. Most Greeks,
Italians and Russians do not. So be it. Countries can have different
policies. Many will build walls. If they fail to put well-designed
doors in them, they will end up poorer, weaker and duller. 7The more the
West opens its
doors, the richer
and more
powerful it will
be in 50 years