The Economist has a great post about the effects of (legal) immigration and crime. Starting January 1st, Bulgarians and Romanians will have free migration to the rest of the European Union. Ignorant xenophobic people are worried about negative effects on crime. I say ignorant because:
Researchers at the London School of Economics and University College London have studied the effect on crime of two large migration flows to Britain. One was the arrival of large numbers of economic migrants from eastern Europe after the enlargement of the EU in 2004. Rates of violent crime in the parts of England and Wales where they settled remained stable and property crime fell...Economic migrants are likely to arrange jobs before they arrive. Few are unemployed. Studies in America have shown similar trends: the crime rate among first-generation immigrants is lower than the overall crime rate.
The second group were asylum seekers...their presence had no impact on the prevalence of violent crime. Property crime did, however, rise slightly. Part of the reason behind this is the contrasting circumstances of asylum seekers...Few planned to leave their homelands.
The funny part is that their native born children commit crimes at the same rate as the rest of the native born. Sounds to me like they'll be as American or British as anyone else.
On the emigration side, I found this:
Ireland's situation is still perilous...Only mass emigration over the last five years has stopped its unemployment figures from rising...Emigration now even seems to have formally become a government policy to reduce unemployment figures.
But that shouldn't be too surprising. Ireland has used emigration as a safety valve for centuries, why change what works? Fun fact: Ireland's population before the Great Famine was over 6 million people. Many emigrated because of the famine, but the trend continued until the mid 20th century, when the population bottomed out just under 3 million. Today Ireland's population is still below its peak, at around 5 million people.
If anyone reads this regularly, they know I’ve done a few posts about the economics of migration (here, here, and here). That’s because freer migration is the single best thing for the world economy. Since that statement isn’t at all controversial, and Latinos voted against Republicans in droves in the last election, it was natural that a bipartisan immigration bill passed the senate. The bill, while still flawed, was progress in the right direction. However, it died in the House, where Republicans refused to let it come up for a vote.
So what would the immigration bill have done for the economy? It would have been a net benefit. The CBO found that, over the next 20 years, passage of the immigration bill would increase GDP by 5.4%, and reduce federal debt by $300 billion. Average wages would be 0.5% higher[1]; the rate of return on capital investment would be higher. Immigrants added to the population would “participate in the labor force at a higher rate”, or because they would be both less skilled and work at lower wages, on average (the bill would also allow for more skilled immigrants), they would be employed at a higher rate[2]. Overall, the bill would increase the productivity of capital and labor, meaning it would be profitable to employ more of both. Illegal immigrants who would obtain legal status would see a wage increase of 12%, and increased productivity. It would lead to a higher return on savings, which, combined with increased wages would lead to a higher savings rate.
A while ago I posted about the immense benefits of freer migration for migrants, the places they leave, and the places they go. Most research focuses on immigration, and partly as a result there is concern that emigration makes a sending country worse off by reducing its productive capacity. As I outlined in my original post, emigration is a net benefit, and increases growth.
Since then, I came across a paper on emigration and growth in the Southern United States. At the beginning of the 20th century the South was proportionally poorer than the North. Starting in the 1940s, the South grew faster than the North and closed the gap significantly. At the same time, there was large black emigration out of the South.
To get at the causation, Richard Hornbeck and Suresh Naidu of Harvard and Columbia University respectively, look at The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
Some opponents of immigration attempt to hide behind an opposition to solely illegal immigration (the "wait your turn" argument). It makes them look civic, rather than xenophobic.
To supplement my previous post about the benefits of immigration, a nice flow chart of just how cumbersome and lengthy the legal immigration process is can be found here. Many people without direct family in the U.S.A. who would like to immigrate have no legal avenue, especially the poor and unskilled. See also, Franz Kafka's Before the Law.
Lower barriers to migration is by far the best policy option to increase economic growth, and reduce poverty. Yet there’s still debate and hypocrisy. How can a country, or person, who espouses the benefits of free markets be against the free flow of labor? It’s half the basic production function[1]. Anyway, if you click “read more” I intend to show that the evidence is overwhelmingly in support of freer migration. And opposition is only possible through ignorance, hypocrisy, or malice for the poor. Here are the basic conclusions showing freer migration, of both skilled and unskilled workers, is the single best policy option for the world economy.
1. Complete reduction of barriers would increase world GDP by between 67-147%. Even a small reduction in barriers would lead to welfare gains larger than the complete elimination of remaining barriers to goods and capital flows.
2. Migrants from the developing world themselves are the largest beneficiaries of migration. At the median, a migrant to the U.S. will experience a wage increase of around 4.11 times their pre-migration wage.
3. Immigration increases productivity and employment levels for all workers, including native workers.
4. No study has found large negative effects on GDP, wages, or government finances/service provision due to immigration.
5. Emigration from developing countries puts upward pressure on domestic wages, increases incentives for education, and leads to remittances. All of which make emigration a net benefit for poor countries.
