ARTICLE ON GLOBAL MIGRATION REFORM

GPI LAW attorney Amien Kacou has a new article in the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. The article, titled "The Case for Treating Migration as Trade," presents arguments in favor of liberalizing and multilateralizing global migration on the model of global trade.

LIBERALIZING INTERNATIONAL LABOR MIGRATION, PART II: Potential Benefits and Costs to Destination Countries

Potential Benefits

• Replacement migration: According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the population of high income countries (typical destination countries) such as the U.S. aged between 20 and 64 years old is expected to decline by 23% in 2050 (see World Migration 2008). Younger immigrants could help both address related labor shortages and fund social security and pensions for that ageing population.
• Decreased incentives for illegal immigration and related crimes: According to the IOM, international migrant smuggling now matches drug trafficking as a source of income for organized crime (see here).
• Lower the cost of migrant departure: According to the World Bank, migrants tend to stick to their destination country, even during times of economic crisis, when migration flows decrease (see Migration and Development Brief 11, 2009). I am not so sure that this squares perfectly with more recent (post- Great Recession) experience in the US, but, regardless, perhaps migrants tend to fear losing the opportunity to return if they leave.
• Fiscal benefit: at least in the case of skilled migrants,  they can be expected to pay more in taxes (due to their higher income) than they receive in public benefits.
• Alternative to outsourcing: international labor migration (ILM) may be preferable to outsourcing in at least two respects. First of all, it brings new consumers and investors to domestic U.S. businesses (instead of creating new ones for foreign businesses); and, second of all, it enables high income countries to control labor conditions--through wage legislation for instance--in ways that can favor their domestic populations.
• Specialization of domestic workers in destination countries: In theory, liberalization should favor a better division of labor (see Joel Trachtman, The International Law of Economic Migration, 2009, p. 339).

LIBERALIZING INTERNATIONAL LABOR MIGRATION, PART I: Benefits to Countries of Origin

In December 2011, Robert Guest (business editor for the Economist) described the general case "in praise of brain drain" (i.e., the "transfer of intellectual capital" due to skilled worker migration from poor countries to rich ones), pointing out that, under normal conditions, the transaction benefited poor countries by:

• Motivating their citizens (the majority of which would not be able to emigrate) to acquire "marketable skills;" 
• Creating uniquely-stable financing through remittance flows (money earned in rich countries and sent back home to poor families, which is more than double the foreign aid their allegedly "corrupt" governments receive); and
• Opening channels of commerce (through diaspora networks).

Guest (an economist) failed to mention some easily-overlooked political benefits of so-called brain drain--e.g., releasing key young labor surplus (thus reducing the chances of social unrest). Most poor countries have very young populations in demographic ascent. (A 200% increase is expected in Africa, and around 40% increase expected in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, in the 20-64 age group, by 2050.) For poor countries, where those populations are likely to be unemployed and there is currently too little capital for entrepreneurship, exporting even a skilled labor surplus might well increase political stability.

SELLING EB-5 PROGRAM SHORT

In December 2011, the New York Times raised suspicions about the value of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which grants permanent US residence to business creators with a capital of either $1 million dollars in general, or $500,000 in high unemployment or rural areas (so-called "targeted employment areas"), provided their investment creates or preserves, directly or indirectly, at least 10 full-time jobs (excluding non-immigrant workers) within two-years of their admission to the US. The paper reported that critics of the program describe it as a "cash-for-visas scheme," and that state officials sometimes "stretch the rules" (including by gerrymandering--i.e., redrawing census maps) to qualify projects for the lower $500,000 capital requirement.