Policy-makers must keep both in mind to craft a sensible immigration system.
Policy-makers must keep both in mind to craft a sensible immigration system.
O verall, immigration has both positive and negative effects, something rarely acknowledged by advocates on either side. An intelligent approach would try to minimize the negatives, for example by keeping out immigrants with ties to radical anti-Western groups or who lack employable skills, while looking to attract newcomers with the right skills, work ethic, and entrepreneurial gifts.
The most compelling argument for mass migration lies in demographic trends, particularly in high-income countries. Globally, total population growth in 2021 was the smallest in a half century. Sixty-one countries are expected to see population declines of at least 1 percent by 2050. The world’s population is due to peak sometime later this century. Populations are expected to halve by 2100 in more than 20 countries, including Spain, Portugal, and Japan. The decline in fertility rates is an almost universal phenomenon as countries become more economically developed. Fertility rates will remain above replacement in Sub-Saharan Africa at least in the near future, meaning that its population and its share of the global population will likely continue to grow.
Low fertility rates mean a shrinking workforce. In the U.S., workforce growth has slowed to about one-third the level of 1970 and seems destined to fall even further. This decline harms public finances by wrecking the assumptions under which old-age benefit programs were designed. It also accounts for a significant portion of the concomitant decline in average economic growth compared with earlier decades.
Innovators, Entrepreneurs — and Servants
John Maynard Keynes warned that “chaining up of the one devil [of overpopulation] may, if we are careless, only serve to loose another still fiercer and more intractable.” Historically, rising populations and the young workforce they imply drove economic growth and innovation, as was clearly the case during Europe’s early modern heyday as well as in the great economic expansion of the U.S. Similarly, East Asia in the first decades of this century benefited from an enormous “youth bulge” of younger workers at a time when overall fertility rates had begun to decline.
In countries of net immigration such as the U.S., immigrants are critical to labor-force growth. They account for roughly 18 percent of the U.S. workforce, up from 15 percent in 2006. Newcomers and their offspring are more likely to be entrepreneurial risk-takers. Latinos, for example, now account for upwards of 80 percent of all new business in the U.S., starting at a rate three times the national average. Similarly the Asian-American share of all U.S. business has more than doubled since 2000. Foreign-born workers, overwhelmingly from Asia, make up a remarkable three-quarters of all of Silicon Valley’s tech workforce.
Immigrants make up 20 percent or more of the workforce in industries such as construction, transportation, agriculture, and leisure and hospitality. The demand for labor in these fields seems likely to continue for now, although, it could be reduced through developments in artificial intelligence and robotics.
A Smarter Approach to Immigration
In the short run, at the very least, most Western and East Asian countries will need more workers to sustain growth. But this does not necessarily mean that more is always better. Countries, including the U.S., may need immigrants but only in ways congruent with the national economic interest and political stability. Control of the border, and a thought-through, properly enforced immigration policy, is a foundation for this.
Until the past decade some countries — notably Canada and Australia — have prioritized the migration of people with useful skills. This sensible approach has been largely abandoned due to pressure from the open-borders left, with perhaps some support from businesses seeking cheaper labor. Yet this skills-focused approach worked well for decades.
Due to massive changes in geopolitics and technology, there is an urgent need to make a careful, and flexible, assessment of what the country will need in coming years. Slower and more deliberate may be the best approach. The skills countries need may vary, but formal education should not be the primary driver. The U.S. may need physicists and engineers, but in the immediate future, much of the shortage will be in skilled trades.
The persistent undersupply of skilled workers in the U.S. reflects in part overemphasis on four-year colleges and insufficient skills-training programs as traditionally seen in countries such as Germany. Although President Biden has talked about having miners “learn to program,” a lack of qualified workers has already emerged as a major barrier to the construction of the semiconductor plant planned in Arizona, forcing the company to bring hundreds of workers from Taiwan. As many as 600,000 new manufacturing jobs are expected to be generated in the U.S. this decade which might not be filled. Amid a recovery in the U.S., by late 2021, over half a million manufacturing jobs were left unfilled.
Health care is projected to add an estimated 1.8 million new jobs annually over the next decade. By 2030, there will be a projected shortage of 500,000 registered nurses and 40,000 doctors nationwide. Already immigrant health-care workers account for 28 percent of physicians, 24 percent of dentists, and 38 percent of home health aides.
Yet it would be wise not to assume that current demand will persist in all fields. The demand for foreign skilled professionals, including those in finance, could be affected by the application of artificial intelligence. Within months of AI’s emergence, freelance work in software declined along with pay, while tech firms are cutting back on recruitment for their white-collar workforce. As part of a corporate reorganization to develop AI, Google, long a leading destination for foreign techies, laid off 12,000 workers, a number that could grow to 30,000.
The Political Barrier
If countries were companies, the logic of migration might still seem irresistible. But democracies revolve around politics and the preferences of the existing electorate. In some East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, mass immigration is widely seen as incompatible with the national culture, with foreign workers recruited not to become citizens but to fill specific jobs in areas with deep shortages.
Asians certainly cannot be impressed with Europe’s relatively open policies. The current massive wave of immigration, much of it illegal, has been more or less embraced by business and intellectual elites in Europe. Yet estimates of illegal immigrants near 1 million or above in France, the U.K., and Germany. This sense of an uncontrolled border has also energized right-wing populist parties across Europe, even in societies which once prided themselves on their openness, such as the Netherlands. In France, which has a long history of successful immigration, the rise of largely Muslim immigrants has triggered the growth of harsher anti-immigration politics.
American attitudes to immigration have also hardened, spurred by the record numbers now crossing the border. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who wish to reduce immigration has increased from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent this year. A 2024 CBS news poll found that 62 percent of Americans and a majority of Latinos now support mass deportations.
Even big cities, historically destinations for migrants, are having second thoughts. In Denver, New York, and Chicago, largely undocumented border crossers have led to higher costs and growing resentment among residents over competition for social services, parks, and hospital care. In the past, politicians and media have taken pride in becoming “sanctuary cities,” but Andrew Cuomo, a who in addition to having been governor of New York was also the secretary of housing and urban development under President Clinton, suggests the infusion of so many newcomers, most with limited ability to earn a living or make rent, constitutes “a tipping point” for many beleaguered urban centers.
Indeed, it’s increasingly clear that massive, largely unregulated immigration by itself does not promote growth. Canada has long had favorable policies toward immigration but has made migration far easier over the past decade. Immigration accounted for 95.9 percent of Canada’s population growth in 2022, yet Canada is one of the worst-performing economies in the OECD as measured by per capita GDP growth. There are a variety of longstanding causes, such as overregulation and an uncompetitive tax code, that harm Canadian economic growth, but it’s clear that immigration alone does not turn a low-growth country into a high-growth one.
In Europe, immigrant workers often either lack the skills or cannot penetrate the continent’s difficult regulatory environment. Worse still has been immigration’s impact on already beleaguered institutions.
Outbreaks of riots and antisemitic thuggery roiled cities like Paris. But in the French capital, this came as less of surprise than other cities. For years, it has hosted a permanent underclass that embraces lawless nihilism, compounded by Islamist ideology. Sweden, long the Valhalla of progressive fantasies, has been forced to call out the army to tamp down on both gang and Islamist violence in immigrant-dominated areas. Neighboring Norway is tightening restrictions to prevent something similar happening there. Denmark is mandating integration and limiting immigration.
In the U.S., the current influx of largely poor, barely educated immigrants competes with Americans for low-skilled jobs. In addition, just under half of all Latinos, notes Pew, associate the current wave with increased crime.
Migration and the Future of America
The current progressive view in Europe as well as North America has been basically to let everyone in, the more the merrier. Vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz as governor of Minnesota embraced progressive policies to allow illegal immigrants to get free college, health care, and access to driver’s licenses. The uncontrolled border plays straight into Donald Trump’s reelection drive.
Anti-immigration sentiment may often be ugly, but unrestrained immigration has made it politically difficult to craft a more rational policy that accommodates sensible levels of immigration.
Immigration needs to be saved from both restrictionists, who deny the essential nature of this nation of immigrants, and from radicals who see the newcomers as allies in their ideological struggle. We need to get back to the “American alchemy,” as one writer called it, of integrating immigrants into an expanding economy. This may require adjusting which immigrants the U.S. welcomes. After all, the U.S. is no longer the fast-growth country of the early-20th century, nor is it in such dire need of strong backs and domestic labor. Demand could drop as companies embrace robotic nannies and robots that can clean bathrooms and make hotel beds, and new efficiencies could also reduce the demand for professionals.
Selectivity, and actual control of the immigration process, are critical to maintaining a healthy migrant flow. A successful immigration policy has to be fundamentally pragmatic, driven both by data and the need to maintain social stability. The focus cannot be on immigration as a means to right past perceived “colonialist” wrongs, but rather it should be seen as a means to strengthen our society and grow our economy.