Free to Move (Immigration and Development)

Economist Lant Pritchett is interviewed about his views on immigration and third-world development. What makes him unique is that his advocation of open borders as a practical and ethical solution to world poverty are unpopular with both the right and the left.

He wastes little time in defaming the ideal of the nation-state and its stifling effects on global development and welfare:

We shouldn’t create hostages. We shouldn’t keep people locked in place within some arbitrary post-colonial boundaries just so we can continue with the bold experiment of trying to make nation-states develop. People should be free to move.

His critique of the position held by many on the left is spot-on. Though poverty, inequality, and exploitation are serious issues here at home, why do our worries end at the border? The loss of wages by the lower class (an idea contested by many economic studies) is often given precedence over the enormous gains by many immigrants, ignoring the magnitude of the poverty divide which exists more severely across state borders than within them. Why?

Being against migration to the United States is wrong for two reasons. One, I don’t think it gets the scale of the poverty in the United States vs. poverty in the rest of the world right. Second, if you are really concerned about inequality in the United States, there are many things you can do that would be better than blocking other people from coming to our country. I don’t want to say that people who are concerned about inequality in the U.S. aren’t right to be concerned about inequality in the U.S. But I think taking that concern and using it to keep people from coming to the United States is victimizing the world’s true victims in favor of people who happen to live closer to you.

There are numerous concerns about side effects, including brain drain, population and societal dynamics, crime, and identity crisis. I found his answer to be quite unexpected (especially for a Harvard economist!):

It’s the same path you take toward free trade. Rather than say you’re against free trade, let’s put the emphasis on fair trade. When it comes to brain drain, let’s get more unskilled migration rather than saying let’s stop all migration that could cause brain drain. That’s the turn that the more sophisticated NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] have taken on trade, where they really have moved from a free trade to a fair trade agenda, which has its downside but is enormously positive relative to an anti-trade agenda. But they haven’t taken that same turn at all on the immigration issue. We say, look, let’s have migration that’s the best possible for everyone. Profitable, welfare-improving trade is usually driven by differences. And there’s nowhere the differences are larger than in the endowments of unskilled labor.

All in all, a very well-rounded analysis. There are obvious issues with the practical implementation of such policies and the accompanying political friction and public backlash, but it is good to see the debate has been opened up to acknowledge the global implications of immigration policies and that perhaps the blind faith and admiration of the nation-state may be on the decline.

Sean