Migration isn’t just for the birds

Broader questions arise when immigrants arrive in sufficient numbers that they start to change their adopted society. Greens may be concerned that a rising population puts additional strain on the environment. Trade unionists may fear that the newcomers threaten the jobs and wages of marginal workers. Taxpayers may fret about the burden they might impose on the welfare state. Cultural conservatives may worry about their impact on national identity and social mores.

Such concerns must be addressed, because even though freer international migration can bring huge economic and cultural benefits, it also requires political consent. Already, as immigration has risen in recent years, it has sparked a backlash in America, Europe and elsewhere.

Fear of foreigners

About a million people migrate legally to the US each year, and maybe another half a million - nobody knows the exact figure - enter the country illegally. Europe admits some 2.8 million foreigners each year, with another 800,000 or so - again, nobody knows for sure - entering illegally. Canada, with a population of 32 million, admits about 235,000 permanent migrants a year; Australia, with a population of 19 million, about 150,000 (but about 60,000 foreigners leave each year).

These are big numbers, but what makes them especially significant is that people in rich countries are having far fewer babies than ever before, which means immigrants account for a rising share of the workforce and population in rich countries - and an even larger share of the population increase.

Immigration has already changed the faces of many rich countries. In 1970, there were only 10 million foreign-born Americans; now, there are officially over 37 million - plus several million uncounted illegals - and the new faces are mostly Latin American and Asian. In a country fractured by race and fragmented by the unintended consequences of “affirmative action” (the well-meaning attempt to give blacks and later other minority groups a hand-up through positive discrimination), the new wave of immigration has sparked a fervent debate about the changing face of America.

In The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization, Pat Buchanan shamelessly sought to exploit heightened fears of terrorism in the aftermath of 9-11 to stir up anti-immigrant feelings: “Suddenly, we awoke to the realization that among our millions of foreign-born, a third are here illegally, tens of thousands are loyal to regimes with which we could be at war, and some are trained terrorists sent here to murder Americans.”

More recently, Samuel Huntington, in Who Are We? America’s Great Debate, warns of the risk of a “bifurcated America, with two languages, Spanish and English, and two cultures, Anglo-Protestant and Hispanic” and the potential for a backlash against this: an “exclusivist America, once again defined by race and ethnicity and that excludes and/or subordinates those who are not white and European”.

An even more vitriolic backlash is sweeping through Europe, where the number of foreign-born residents has soared from 10 million in 1970 to 29 million in 2000. In Britain, tabloid newspapers fan fears about the country being swamped with feral foreigners, accusing them of all manner of ills - stealing jobs, scrounging welfare benefits, spreading disease, committing crime, plotting terrorism and so on.

Germany is struggling to accept that its Turkish minority is there to stay. The Dutch are questioning their long tradition of multiculturalism.

Regardless of whether rich countries choose to admit more immigrants, they clearly need to do a better job of integrating those who have already arrived.

A global debate

Migration is increasingly a global issue, yet the debate about it is still mainly conducted along (hostile) national lines - as if each country were an isolated citadel threatened by hordes of barbarian invaders.

The increase in international migration is not occurring in a vacuum: it is part and parcel of globalisation, the combination of distance-shrinking technology and market-opening government policy that is bringing the world closer together.