Free people movement is the way to global prosperity

Free people movement, not increases in aid, is the only realistic way to put an end to the dispiriting reality of 30,000 people dying daily of hunger in developing countries.

The recent G8 summit in Germany has been heavily criticised by anti-poverty crusaders Bob Geldof and Bono for not keeping the promises made at the G8 Gleneagles summit in 2005, which was supposed to make poverty history.

Geldof and Bono are right to be incensed at the double-speak by the G8, but they need to redefine their vision if they want to finally put an end to mass poverty and suffering.

Sending resources to impoverished places has lots of merit. But it is a slow and fickle way of enhancing well-being. Obstacles include finite generosity and withering sympathy glands in the West and the lack of efficient and targeted processes for distributing aid.

Rather than trying to enhance net global flourishing by sending resources to impoverished nations, we should directly pursue this aim by freeing up the flow of people so that they can travel to where the goods are located.

It is only once this occurs that we will effectively deal with the dispiriting irony of thousands of Africans dying daily from hunger and poverty, while much of the first world gorges itself to ill-health. The on-going starvation crisis has nothing to do with a food shortage. The problem is simply one of distribution. There is enough grain alone produced on earth to make every person fat.

The best way to ameliorate third world poverty is by massively increasing migration to the west. Left to their own devices many people would gravitate to life sustaining resources, leading to a rough equilibrium between the world’s resources and its population.

That’s not to suggest that Africa would empty overnight into the western world. Some of its citizens are too destitute to hobble to a more plentiful border. Some will not want to come, in any event. But huge numbers will follow the yellow brick road to prosperity in the west.

There is one fundamental obstacle to western nations relaxing border controls: racism. Discrimination on the basis of race is the lynchpin of the whole of western migration policy.

Nationhood and the practice of excluding others from our shores is so embedded in our psyche that many readers will find it jarring to contemplate that this practice is morally objectionable. No doubt our forefathers would also have found disconcerting the suggestion that precluding aboriginals from voting and taking their children from them was founded on a racist ideology.

While most of the western world has made remarkable strides in recent decades by eliminating most forms of discrimination and ensuring that most people enjoy something approaching adequate (if not equal) access to the resources of the nation, there is a fundamental failing with this enlightenment: the benefits are limited to people within the borders of the nation.

For most of human history there have been few migration limits. Now we are moving to an age of “anti-migration”. In 1976 only about 7 per cent of UN members had restrictive immigration policies. This rose to 40 per cent in the early part of the 21st century. Advanced (western) economies are at the forefront of this regrettable trend.

We must accept that restrictive immigration policies are racist unless there is a morally relevant basis for tightly limiting the number of people we permit to join our privileged society.

A relevant reason cannot be a person’s birth place. This is merely a happy or unhappy accident. Much of what is important to a person’s flourishing should not turn on so little - morality requires that to the maximum extent possible luck is taken out of the benefits and burdens equation.

National security is commonly used to justify a tight migration policy. While we have a legitimate right to security, this only justifies a policy of strict security checks. This is tacitly accepted by governments. Western nations accept a far greater number of tourists than migrants.

We are relaxed about tourists because we derive a net positive economic advantage from them. This gain, however, is not a moral justification for consigning much of the world to a life of destitution, merely a western expedient.

It has also been claimed that too many foreigners would diminish our material prosperity. Research is equivocal about this. Some models suggest the opposite - that immigrants have a net positive effect on the economy.

In any event, a slight diminution in the living standard of western countries is a small price to pay to reduce global destitution. To determine whether a more relaxed approach to migration is justifiable, one cannot look at the situation only from the perspective of the locals. There is no ethical basis for ranking the interests of one person higher than another.

Arguments that open migration would lead to cultural dilution are unsound. What for one person represents cultural dilution, for another amounts to cultural enrichment. There is no objective point of reference from which these positions can be set off. They are by definition culturally relevant. Morality, on the other hand, consists of universal principles, which apply to all people equally.

This vision represents a vastly different world. People ought to be able to travel and settle in any country of their choice so long as they do not present a security threat and the nation has the resources to sustain them.

Is this likely to happen in the foreseeable future? No. Patriotism and materialism are such powerful forces that no amount of moral persuasion is likely to quickly reverse existing western migration policies. We must at least start seriously debating the notion of the free movement of people, otherwise we are forever forced to confront the racist within us.