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Why has immigration become a big problem again? Increased movement towards rich countries. What does The Economist's analysis say?

2023-12-02 12:31:41Biznes SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Why has immigration become a big problem again? Increased movement towards rich

Illegal immigration is becoming a heavy burden for many governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

The sea migration route between West Africa and the Canary Islands, a crossing so dangerous that it was avoided for years, has started to be used again: around 30,000 people have tried to make the crossing so far in 2023.

Countries like Germany, once friendly to asylum seekers, are cutting benefits and speeding up deportations. This year, half a million people may cross the Darién Gap, the strait that connects Colombia to Panama, to reach the United States.

This number is more than four times higher than the crossing attempts during the 2010s.

Meanwhile, authorized immigration has also increased. A recent report from the OECD, a club made up mostly of rich countries, found that its 38 members accepted a record 6.1 million migrants last year.

According to calculations by The Economist, immigration to rich countries is growing at the fastest pace in 15 years. Across the OECD, around 10% of people live in countries where they were not born.

Why has immigration become a big problem again? Increased movement towards rich

There are a number of factors that lead people to move to more attractive Western countries. Conflicts in some parts of Europe, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa are pushing millions of people to emigrate.

(About 4.7 million Ukrainians have left their country for other European countries). Extreme poverty also drives people to move, as does crime and gang violence.

Most immigration occurs within regions, not from poor countries to rich countries. However, the security of Western countries is a factor that attracts immigrants.

Tight labor markets in rich countries are another big draw. Over 70% of immigrants in all OECD countries are employed and this number continues to grow. Average wages in the EU are now over 12 times higher than those in sub-Saharan Africa.

The number of people who want to emigrate will only increase in the coming years. Some worry that climate change could trigger an exodus. A bigger concern, from the perspective of rich countries, is demographics: as they grow, they will need more imported labor.

For decades, net immigration in some rich countries has accounted for a larger share of the total population than net births.

Why has immigration become a big problem again? Increased movement towards rich

Nearly 15 million Germans, or 18% of the population, are first-generation immigrants, a higher percentage than America's peak in the 1890s.

Different definitions

Officials overseeing the borders are finding it difficult to cope with the situation. One problem is that the complexity of people's migratory journeys is blurring a distinction that is strictly supported by international law.

This is the difference between refugees (that is, those who cannot return to their countries of origin due to "fear of persecution", who seek help through the asylum systems), and other migrants. The number of people who sought asylum in OECD countries last year reached a record of 2 million people. Additionally, anyone who trespasses in a country that is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention can apply for asylum. This hinders governments' efforts to reduce the number of arrivals.

What happens if someone who escapes misery also wants a job? Employment immigration schemes are too small to cope with the supply of migrant labor or the demand for it.

This leaves asylum systems as one of the only channels through which immigrants can enter these countries without risking immediate deportation. Many underfunded and overburdened systems are being strained beyond capacity. Rich countries remain faced with a dilemma: how to balance the needs of economies weakened by demographics and tight labor markets with the delicate politics of immigration and asylum?

Church and state

All these difficulties unfold clearly in America. A record 2.4 million migrants were apprehended at the southern border this year through September. The asylum system in the country is strained.

2 million requests need to be processed and it takes an average of four years to process each one.

"No funding has been provided for immigration judges, asylum officers, the people who decide whether asylum seekers who are caught by border guards can stay or not," said Theresa Broën, who served at the Department of Homeland Security in the Bush administrations. and Obama.

The change in the type of people who come also reflects the difficulties that immigrants face. Nowadays, families who immediately surrender to border officials make up a much larger percentage of arrivals than in the past.

Last month, for the first time, Venezuelans overtook Mexicans as the most frequently detained immigrant nationality at the border. They are fleeing the autocratic regime of Nicolás Maduro.

One such immigrant is José Castillo, who is staying at a church shelter in San Diego. When he and other migrants leave each day to look for work, they pile their belongings in garbage bags under a tent in the garden.

A statue of the Virgin Mary stands guard. Castillo left his wife and two young daughters in the Falcon and then waited months in Monterrey, northern Mexico, to make an asylum appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection through the CBP One phone app. The app tries to channel immigrants into legal channels and reduce the number of would-be immigrants flocking to America's southern border. But administration is becoming difficult, due to the very high number of requests.

Another scheme launched last year, which offered a two-year stay to some privately sponsored nationals from Latin America and the Caribbean, initially reduced arrivals at the border from those countries. But, also, it has not been enough to meet the demand.

America's tight labor market (with 9.6 million job vacancies) is an obvious draw for immigrants. Mr. Castillo, a mechanic, explains that he can earn more in a day in California than in months back home.

Wayne Cornelius, a professor at the University of California at San Diego, thinks there has never been a better time for immigrants looking for work in America.

In September, the Biden administration granted temporary permission to nearly half a million Venezuelan immigrants to stay and work legally in the country.

This was done to ease the burden on cities like New York, which wanted to give asylum seekers the right to work so they could afford housing. But Republicans and Democrats have also highlighted a chance to fill gaps in the labor market.

Formal employment and immigration schemes in America are not adequate to meet companies' needs for workers, whether highly skilled or not. The US Chamber of Commerce estimates that in 2024, only one person for every ten applicants will receive an H-1B work visa. "The policy debate is taking place without taking into account these realities of the labor market", thinks Professor Cornelius. However, if you think America is in bad shape, you haven't seen Europe. European politicians are fighting again over illegal immigration.

Border controls have been reinstated across the Schengen area that was created to be open. Governments are bringing back controversial ideas such as processing asylum claims abroad: this week, the right-wing Italian government welcomed a deal under which Albania would accept some of its asylum seekers.

Europe's difficulties are deeper than America's because Europe is not a unitary authority. No matter how reasonable the distribution of asylum seekers among member states may seem, one government or another will always oppose it. The EU's common asylum system sets common standards, but governments fanatically retain the right to make their own asylum decisions. Even the misused "Dublin" system, according to which asylum seekers must return to the EU country where they were registered for the first time, has been violated time and time again.

Last year, Germany was able to return to other EU countries only 6% of the asylum seekers it considered qualified under the Dublin rules.

The difficulty is that Europe also badly needs workers. Varun Kumar Jain's story is typical. In 2017, he left his native Bihar, a state in eastern India, for Warsaw. He noticed that in the Polish capital, there were no competitors in his area of ​​specialization: Indian cuisine. He quickly converted the tourist visa into a work permit.

After four years of working in an Indian restaurant, he has just opened his own business. The children attend a Polish school and he attends the country's only Sikh temple. Despite harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric, Poland's government is starved for manpower.

Return to the old continent

Aging Europe will need more and more foreign workers to meet the growing needs of the labor market, due to its demographics.

The average age of Europe is 44 years old, significantly higher than that of America, which is 39 years old. According to one estimate, the EU needs to import 50 million people over the next 25 years just to keep the population stable. As labor shortages grow, rich countries will increase competition for immigrants, and not just the highly skilled. Europe has great demand for janitors, truck drivers and carpenters. Although immigration cannot solve a country's demographic difficulties (because immigrants are also aging), it can control the pace of change.

This is critical for Europe. "If managed well, people on the move who are ignored today will be eagerly sought after tomorrow," says Amy Pope, director general of the International Organization for Migration.

Why has immigration become a big problem again? Increased movement towards rich

Europe is located near a region where economic and political conditions are pushing people away. The median age in Africa is 19 years. Across the continent, only 3 million formal jobs are available for the 10-12 million Africans entering the workforce each year.

Most African migrants move within the continent, as the groups of job seekers on the streets of South Africa show.

A second group, especially in East Africa, move to work in the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf, even as they pay the price of having their civil rights violated. But increasing numbers are making their way to Europe, and as Africa grows richer, more will gain the means to do so.

Traveling

Because countries do not properly adjudicate asylum claims, public support for all forms of emigration decreases, especially when emigration for employment is channeled through asylum systems.

A more rational path is possible. Well-resourced asylum systems and adequate employment-based immigration schemes are needed, enabling newcomers to enter labor markets quickly. These should be comprehensive enough to change the minds of people who plan to make unauthorized trips.

But it is difficult to imagine that such schemes could ever be large enough to accommodate all those who might wish to emigrate.

"I have become skeptical about the great promise that irregular immigration can be reduced by increasing legal immigration, because we create small legal bottlenecks rather than large legal avenues," says Victoria Rietig, an immigration expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations. Outside, research body in Berlin.

Canada and Australia provide interesting examples. Both of these rich countries have maintained public support for unusually high rates of immigration (though not without problems).

Last year, Canada welcomed 1 million newcomers, increasing the population by nearly 3%. The country accounted for a full 42% of global refugee displacement (from poor to rich countries). Australia accounted for 15%. But it is difficult to take their experience as an example to follow.

These countries have a geography that allows them to maintain control, which in turn discourages people from coming in without authorization.

Indeed, the sheer difficulty of managing immigration is leading to official distortions. On the one hand, politicians who do not want immigrants are happy to support possibly illegal policies such as processing claims outside the territory of the country where asylum is sought. On the other hand, governments are increasingly open to including asylum seekers in the labor market once they arrive in the country.

Citing an "ever-increasing labor shortage," several German states have sought to give asylum seekers the right to start work immediately, rather than spending months on language and integration courses.

However, in most cases, governments provide labor market integration through neglect. Overwhelmed, asylum systems abandon applicant files in legal limbo. Thus, many find informal jobs and hope that their status will be adjusted; for example, few asylum seekers in America wait the 180 days or more required by law before they can legally find work.

Eventually they will manage to obtain social security numbers and work permits, formalizing entry into the labor market, even before the end of immigration status. Desperation is driving other governments down difficult paths. Faced with an unmanageable number of so-called spontaneous arrivals, some governments are reluctant to accept refugees through formal, often unorganized resettlement.

In 1980, America accepted over 200,000 displaced refugees; last year it got only 25,000. Some politicians from the right have called for the rewriting or even the rejection of the UN Convention on Refugees. Meanwhile, progressives worry that the convention's provisions, which haven't been seriously revised in more than 50 years, are too narrow to include those fleeing violent crime and extreme poverty, for example, in parts of America Central or Caribbean.

However, it is by no means certain that a better deal would emerge from the ashes of the old deal, notes Elizabeth Collett, a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Australia. Simply opening the discussion could lead to the removal of current protections for refugees. Including a smarter toolkit is the most practical bet. Governments hope they can restore public confidence in asylum systems and deter future arrivals, deporting people without a right to stay in the country. Mr. Biden has recently resumed the deportation of Venezuelans.

Faced with the rise in popularity of the far right, Germany's chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has recently traveled to African countries seeking return deals to fulfill his promise to "deport people, more often and faster". new EU proposal calls for certain asylum cases to be fully adjudicated within 12 weeks and claimants to be kept near borders. Last year, almost half of all asylum decisions across the EU were positive (although some appeals are successful). This means that hundreds of thousands of applicants must be deported. Securing return agreements requires bargaining, providing rewards, such as development aid and formal immigration partnerships, but also penalties, such as visa withdrawals or removal of trade privileges, notes Ms. Rietig.

The big countries with which Europe should establish strategic relations are difficult to entice with offers and threaten with credible punishments. In 2017, Nigeria rejected EU demands to take back its migrants, arguing that Turkey reached a better deal the year before. And deals with arrogant Europeans can be extremely unpopular.

If governments cannot improve asylum systems, they will feel compelled to continue making dubious deals with neighboring autocrats, thereby being vulnerable to political blackmail.

The EU's 6 billion euro ($6.4 billion) migration deal with Turkey in 2016 was a desperate, and largely successful, attempt to block a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis that hit Europe hard. .

On the other hand, a recent €1 billion deal with Tunisia, a popular departure point to Europe, appears to have reduced the number of migrants.

In the absence of fully open borders, there will always be incentives for immigrants to attempt unauthorized travel. No single policy can dramatically reduce their numbers.

But the right mix of policies can soften the blow and create room for more generous immigration and refugee policies. "What no one wants to hear," says Ms. Rietig, "is that immigration is not a problem to be solved, but a reality that we can only hope to manage."

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