Is there too much immigration?

About immigration and the recent elections in Italy:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/03/08/thomas-jones/who-killed-idy-diene/

“On Monday evening I picked my daughter up from basketball practice. She plays with children whose parents or grandparents were born in India, the Middle East, Eastern Europe (both within and beyond the borders of the EU) and the UK, as well as plenty of Italians. On the way home we passed the campaign billboards going soggy in the spring rain. ‘STOP INVASIONE’ the Lega poster screamed. The idea that Italy is being ‘invaded’ by immigrants ought to be laughable. But Salvini’s is now the largest right-wing party in the country, and he is a contender for premier. The secret to his success was to convince enough Italians that immigration matters more than anything else. Eurobarometer polls show that before the 2013 election, only 4 per cent of Italians considered immigration one of the two most important issues; this year the figure soared to 33 per cent, second only to unemployment (a top concern for 42 per cent of people, which is one of the reasons the M5S did so well).

The PD, in government, cracked down on immigration. With EU backing, it last year negotiated a deal with Libyan forces, supplying them with funds and equipment to keep people from crossing the Mediterranean, knowing full well what detention in Libya would mean for them. The number of people arriving from Africa on Italy’s shores dropped dramatically, from more than 180,000 in 2016 to fewer than 120,000 in 2017, and under 6000 so far this year. The PD’s electoral dividend from this moral capitulation was nil (at best). People obsessed with immigration didn’t vote for the PD; they voted for the Lega. Facts count for very little. Salvini insists on a connection between immigration and crime, even though statistics show that both overall crime, and crime committed by foreigners, have gone down over the last ten years, at the same time that the number of asylum permits issued has gone up. ”
_____________

The real question is, why do people believe that immigration squeezes wages, where it doesn’t? Why people believe that crime is on the rise, while it’s falling? Etc. etc.

I think that people believe that immigration is bad for wage because we internalize a logic where “income” is created by capital, and my boss gently gives me a wage as a share of that income (instead of income being created by workers and capital snatching a share of it).
In this logic, everyone is seen as mini-rentier, and if my income comes from being a mini-rentier I don’t want to share it with others (and I don’t realize that immigrants are actually creating income).

It’s quite possible to believe that the UK’s immigration rules are currently too restrictive and that unlimited immigration would be completely unworkable. Numbers do matter in practice. For example, according to statistics I’ve seen, there were over 9 million applications for the US Green Card lottery in 2015. Would the UK be able to cope with 9 million people immigrating to it in a relatively short period? If not, then you have to have some limits on rates of immigration and some choice on who out of all those who want to come should come.

Since Ancient Times, State is based on ownership of land. In Monarchy, Kings own all land. In Feudalism/noble-cracy, noble class own all land. In Democracy, the Citizens (often male-only and limited ethnicity) own all land. The Owner decide on distribution of profit from land ownership. Thus Owner can reject any new shareholder to property, and government function is property management and distribution of profit. And any non-owner had zero rights to protection, profit or service from property. Every States advance its own owner interest, even at other non-owner expense.

CB: Apart from the empirical questions of whether current rates of immigration into the UK and elsewhere are too high (there does seem to be a difference of opinion here), and whether UK immigration authorities are always behaving intelligently and justly (but they’re bureaucracies, what do you expect?) there are a couple of logical problems, as matters of political philosophy, suggested by this post.

More important: do you, CB, accept that in some states, in some circumstances, a rate of immigration, in general or from specific places, might be too high? And that the relevant states might justly reduce it?

If so, if you accept that states can rightly in some circumstances control immigration levels, there goes the main thrust of your argument. Doesn’t it?

But if not, there are of course no arguments for any sort of immigration controls whatever, anywhere. Are you in fact proposing their universal abolition? Or if not, what exactly? You write that “To make the regulation of migration legitimate, states ought to comply with principles that ought to be acceptable to everyone”. Are you waiting for principles that are acceptable to Somalia and Switzerland alike, to Australia and Afghanistan? I’m a patient man, but I had no idea you were so patient. Or so long-lived.

Less important: you write that “unlike resident citizens would-be immigrants get all of the [state] coercion with none of the protection”. Well yes: would you argue that would-be immigrants, not being citizens of the states they wish to go to, nevertheless deserve the same protections that actual citizens have? If I am a citizen in the UK, wishing to emigrate to the US, do I automatically deserve the protection offered to a US citizen, which I’m not? And if you accept that states do have the right to apply coercion against non-citizens, what becomes of your main argument that they don’t?

It’s interesting that unrestricted immigration is defended here as a natural consequence of freedom of association when this is presumably one justification opponents would use for restricting it ie. the State is exercising the collectivity’s right to decide who to admit.

I would strongly favour liberalising the current abusive system but I’m sceptical about absolutist demands for similar reasons to Magistra. I’m also uncomfortable when people’s views on this diverge sharply from their views of what one might call the borders within the liberal state: those of property and education, those surrounding universities, factories and prisons.

“the state limits our freedom but also protects us from the threat that we, as individuals, pose to one another’s freedom. This tradeoff provides us with reasons to comply with the state’s authority. But unlike resident citizens would-be immigrants get all of the coercion with none of the protection.”

This seems like a rather inconsistent form of social contract theory. On one hand, it suggests that we only have obligations to others under an implied social contract (“this tradeoff provides us with reasons to comply”), but it seems to be a natural law that’s incompatible with the basic logic of the contract as a tradeoff of individual’s interests, since it’s intended to question “whether states have the rights…to regulate migration according to whether it is good or bad for the economy, strains public services, makes some people better off or worse off, and so on.”

Hobbes gives a much more unhappy, but much more consistent position: if you accept a strong version of contract theory (without natural law or rights), then you’re forced to conclude that states are by default in a state of war with immigrants, and they can treat each other however they please, they may let them into the contract or prohibit them for any reason, and immigrants may use whatever means necessary to get in.

Personally, this strikes me as a good reason to avoid treating immigration through the contractarian lens of the mutual exchange of self-interests, and instead accept that we have basic obligations to others in the form of rights that do not directly depend on any “tradeoffs.”

This issue like many involves a kind of frustrating circular trip around what is a right or duty, and who has them or ought to have them. And thus what kind of obligations anyone has to any other people. We see it repeated in the areas of taxation and social security. Strictly “economic” arguments are mixed up with racism, xenophobia and inconsistent ideas about moral and legal relationships. To resolve them requires a lengthy discussion of different issues. Each question can be answered but not without a lengthy programme of reforms. The ultimate solution was proposed in the fifties of a world government. Gradually creating a single citizenship. Economic objections to migration like other problems can be resolved if necessary by redistribution of claims within and between political units all working towards an agreed goal of a society based on equality, liberty, and humanity.

It is not an accident I think that the rejection of such a society within countries coincides with a refusal to apply them to refugees or migrants from without. Population flows are quite small today compared to past great migrations of people and the means of dealing with them already exist if the economy was organised to do so. Actual and potential migrants are merely another group being demonised the economic interest of a small minority. Austerity kills our own citizens and here are a another group to turn into a political football as a distraction.

Hidari @12

Immigration to the Middle East most often excludes the possibility of citizenship. None of these countries have Jus Soli. Naturalization, when possible, requires wealth (financial independence) and often includes ethnic or religious requirements. This means immigrants have little to no government benefits, no right of the vote, and no right to remain in country. Not exactly an apples to apples comparison of immigration to the UK/Europe.

“Over 80% of the population of UAE are immigrants, and it seems to be working out for them. ” – UAE is being accused of large scale Forced Labor of its migrant worker population:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/series/modern-day-slavery-in-focus+world/united-arab-emirates

The title of this panel asks whether there is too much immigration? I’m inclined to wonder whether this question is simply a mistake.

I’m not wondering. There is no good reason to frame the question in that way and no good can come of attempting to have a serious discussion framed around that question. Who did frame the question, and what made them think that was a good way to frame it?

In terms of previous rapid migration to the UK, I heard an expert on the Huguenots (Robin Gwynn) estimating that 30,000 Huguenot refugees came to London (population then around 500,000) after 1685. So London then could absorb about 6% of it population of immigrants over a generation or less. But some cities, like Lincoln, refused to take any refugees, and nowhere else in the UK had anything like the same levels of French immigration as London. The Ugandan Asian refugee crisis brought about 27,000 refugees to the UK. Something over 300,000 Irish people came to England/Scotland/Wales between 1841 and 1851, according to the census. None of these are anything on the scale of 9 million people in a single year specifically applying to move to the US.

@15, @16

So your argument is, these countries treat their immigrants badly (and as opposed to where, precisely), therefore they should not allow in any immigrants? Are you implying that these countries would somehow be more ‘liberal’ if only they would be like ‘us’ and have stricter immigration laws?

If not, what is your argument, precisely?

Incidentally, most of those Western or Westernised liberals who like to pontificate about what is or what is not possible in terms of immigration tend to ignore the realities of what has happened in the Middle East recently. Due to the (Western caused, to a large extent) Syrian ‘civil war’, if you want to call it that, there are now 5 million Syrian refugees. While Western liberals wept and applauded the Germans who took in 600,000 one year, they ignored Turkey (which has taken in 3.5 million) and Lebanon, who took in 2.2 million (the population of Lebanon is 7 million). And yet Lebanon, so far, has not disintegrated or collapsed into civil war: there are no mass famines or marauding bands of bandits killing all and sundry. Life goes on.

As I say, this is rather nice of the Lebanese as they bear no responsibility for the war (the situation in Turkey is rather different, obviously). Compare and contrast the situation in Britain and the US, both of which do bear at least some responsibility for that war, who have whined and complained about the tiny numbers of refugees who have managed to reach their shores.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with racism. Goodness no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_of_the_Syrian_Civil_War

Surely a state has a right to regulate entry of non-citizens because the power of state flows from the citizens of that state developing and agreeing upon the rules that all must abide by. This doesn’t work if a bunch of other people come along who decide that they are not going to abide by the rules that have been so developed. Broadly we expect that immigrants to a society are going to at least try and abide by the rules of their new land, and we grant them only partial rights in society until they’ve hung around long enough to have a reasonable grasp of those rules, before we start inviting them to be a part of the collaborative process of maintaining and developing those rules.

This seems to me to be fair to both the pre-existing citizens of the state, whose previous good work the immigrants are relying upon, and to the immigrants, as a pathway towards citizenship is provided. But it only works so long as the rate of input of new immigrants is limited such as to prevent “entryism” changing the rules substantively for the pre-existing citizens.

If you believe states have any rights at all to the land that their citizens inhabit, they must surely have a right and a responsibility – granted and demanded by their citizens – to restrict immigration to an amount that does not compromise the ability of citizens to enjoy the rules that they themselves have developed and selected.

This does mean that a state ought to tolerate immigration of citizens from similar cultures more than immigration from dissimilar cultures, since the gap between an immigrants’ ingrained rules system and the rules system of the society are closer together.

That’s not to say that the current implementation of migration controls to the UK isn’t problematic. Since immigrants mostly can’t vote, there’s no incentive for rulemakers to fix problems in the immigration process. Immigrants are gouged for access to healthcare, for instance, where they pay both tax and an additional healthcare levy, for no good reason. The application process to become a citizen is lengthy and tortuous.

However, certainly in the UK I strongly believe immigration to be a scapegoat for the decade of lost earnings forced upon us by austerity and the capture of workers’ productivity by the rich. We talk about immigration like it’s had some substantive negative effect on the economy, but it hasn’t: it’s the capitalists concentrating wealth in their own hands, plus the government’s inability to diversify jobs out of London. This has led to the regions blaming the few immigrants they see thanks to billionaire-owned print media, and the London poor being priced out of the housing market by a jobs bubble sustained by a government in hock to rich interests and unable to introduce a land value tax to depress London prices and force marginal businesses out of the city.

Hidari “So your argument is, these countries treat their immigrants badly (and as opposed to where, precisely), therefore they should not allow in any immigrants?”

In discussions such as this there is a need to normalize of the numbers. As an example, it is effectively impossible to become a naturalized citizen in Qatar. As such, when comparing Qatar’s immigration numbers to say the UK, it would be more accurate to look at the foreign born numbers (individuals born outside the country) rather than the immigration numbers (non-citizens living in a country).

Freedom of association may be a part of who we are, but it is a much bigger part of who middle-class people are than the rest of us, who mostly have to learn to get along. (NB this point is as true of migrants, who generally experience as little choice about getting on their bikes to meet the first-world professional population’s insatiable demand for casualised servants as poor inhabitants of declining post-industrial wastelands have about staying put).

[T]hose new customers bring with them the means to pay for the goods they consume… In the public sector, however, new people are not accompanied by additional resource in the same way. Their taxes go to the Treasury but local government finance is not increased to match. This isn’t a problem about immigrants, but about how we manage our public finances.

This question seems to me to be central: it’s not an allocation among national/local governments question, but a resources question.

If you go to a grocery store, the store will only sell you what you have the ability to pay for. This is not the case for public services: it is entirely intended that some people get more health care than they pay for, some people get more schooling for their children than they pay for, and so forth: this is a core function of the state in all the liberal democracies.

It seems to me that this implies, in the standard Ostrom analysis of commons, that there needs to be either some mechanism to exclude new entrants from that commons (immigrants and their dependents aren’t eligible for some public benefits) OR some mechanism to ensure that the new entrants pay the typical costs (immigrants have to be expected to pay a certain amount of taxes to immigrate.)

– and on ”whether states have the rights to regulate migration according to whether it is good or bad for the economy, strains public services, makes some people better off or worse off, and so on” – that seems to depend on the type of State we are dealing with?

If you have a State -(like the UK or the US) where one can ”buy” the right to migrate to –
(a contraire to a State like Germany – where one can’t) – isn’t it kind of… ”logical” that one also might be able to ”buy” the rights to regulate?

And for everybody who doesn’t have… let’s say: ”The sufficient funds” –
”Tough Titty”! –
(if this is the right expression”?)

Z, 24:…but also to hostility, disunion, conflicts… perhaps not in equal measure, but also not insignificantly either.

This is why a reliance on the forms and institutions of liberal capitalism including rights and privileges cannot solve the issue and a counter-hegemony, a new transnational identity (s) is needed to replace nationalism. Marxists and socialists offered an identity for a century. A panoply of candidates (gender, ethnicity, career, party, etc) are competing and cooperating cause it is going to take a (shhh…revolution) to open borders which mark nation’s fall.

It will look like anarchy, feel like communism.

@[takes vow of silence for the rest of the thread]
I do – after I’m allowed to say how much I agree with:
”states at the moment are actively trying to subvert or evade even the paltry international conventions that currently exist, such as the Refugee Convention. In doing so, they are locking millions into poverty, exposing hundreds of thousands each year to avoidable death, separating families, and exposing others to statuses that make them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. States that act like this have lost their moral authority to control their borders.” –
and I really read the OP – that’s why I thought – that there is a tremendous difference between States who want immigrants to ‘meet some “minimum income requirement of £18,600” and that States who don’t – and ”my bad” – didn’t think that… through?

He who does not talk about the legitimacy of private property should also be silent about that of borders

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

I’ve been doing some thinking, and… I’m not actually sure there is a general right to not associate with members of a group. Individuals, absolutely, but there’s a big difference between “I won’t associate with jim” and “I won’t associate with anybody who’s a part of what jim built”.

LOL, please stop viewing my peeps as medical services provider serfs!

sanbikinoraion

Surely a state has a right to regulate entry of non-citizens because the power of state flows from the citizens of that state developing and agreeing upon the rules that all must abide by.

If you’re talking about Hypothetica, Imaginaria, and Fantastistan.

Anders @10 What’s the endgame for open borders advocates: who gets the right to vote and receive a state pension, for example?

Personally, I always thought that the following attempt, from the Constitution of 1793, held quite remarkably well, despite the somewhat quaint language:

Every foreigner of more than twenty-one year of age, who, residing in France for more than a year – Sustains himself from his labor – Or owns a property – Or marries a French – Or adopts a child – Or provides for an elderly person; – Every foreigner finally, who will be judged by the Legislative body to be a worthy member of humankind – Is admitted to the exercise of the rights of French citizens*.

Why not, after all? (Note incidentally that the formulation leaves open the possibility that such an individual would not quite be a French citizen, just that he would enjoy all the rights of French citizens.)

The question of who can come and settle is thornier, in my opinion, as it seems to entail consideration of power differential (taking stock of the spectrum existing between a settler in a colonized country and a refugee seeking asylum). Chris Bertram probably addresses this in his book, and I hoped we would get an inkling here, but unfortunately his electronic lips are apparently sealed.

about @42 (whom I’d rather not address directly; his pseudonym might be innocent, but certainly not where I live)When the banlieues were rioting in Paris, this showed France had not assimilated its immigrant population efficiently.

Or it showed the rage that develops on the losing side – whatever the cultural or ethnic making of that losing side – when cutting-throat social competition is established within an intensely unequal society.

*My translation, with emphasis on a faithful rendition of punctuation.

J-D @45
If you’re talking about Hypothetica, Imaginaria, and Fantastistan.

that implies you think we who live in the secular democracies of the West are labouring under totalitarian dictatorships? To say that is to consider today’s UK (even with the pitiable politics it has) as the same as Stalin’s Russia, or perhaps you prefer Idi Amin’s Uganda.

And from that idea, you presumably think that there should be no borders or immigration control? That’s fantasy right there.

Today’s world is very different from France of 250 years ago, or any other historical time and place compared to which today’s nation state immigration protocols are claimed here to be inhuman(e) and completely unacceptable: today we have a) worldwide media connectivity, so the poor and victims of war can see how the supposedly rich and free live and b) worldwide transport connectivity, so the means to get from one place to the other is no longer out of the question, and c), the technological means for dictators to make their countries utterly impossible to live in, providing real motives for mass exodus.

faustusnotes@40 cites the Guardian as showing:
“1) EU migrant labourers do not earn less than their UK counterparts, so aren’t underbidding them on price
2) EU migrant labour is important for all sectors, not just low-paid work, and in some higher paid sectors may be more important than in low-paid sectors (I have said here before that the kind of professional voters who are supposed to be supporters of the EU are actually much more vulnerable to competition from the EU than “white van man”)
3) EU labourers are less likely than local labourers to be paid below minimum wage”

This is the Guardian’s way of putting it. Perhaps FT in an unguarded moment might put it like this:
1)Migrant labor keeps wages under control by preventing labor shortages.
2)Highly skilled migrant labor in particular keeps labor training costs down
3)Unskilled migrant labor is less likely to be paid less than minimum wage than native workers.

Japanese people were Japanese people before capitalism, and they remain so after, as you well know.

Sorry, I don’t know that at all. “Japanese” identity (nihonjinron) and nationalism is one of the more studied histories of imaginary communities and socially constructed nationalisms. “Japaneseness” in the late 19th pretty much was considered to be a consequence of modernization, and required the int’l recognition that a uniformed army, battleships, and colonies provided.

I guess Steven Johnson’s admired comment (131) is in the other thread:
“Democratic revolutions were about creating a nation fit to fight other nations, and win because they were united as a people.”

…except of course I still analyze them as “bourgeois revolutions,” recommending Scottish Neil Davidson’s 2013 Drucker award-winner. Also Appadurai.

Just a little ND. Davidson was a prominent “Left Leaver” incidentally.

Thomas Beale
sanbikinoraion
I value highly the strictly limited ability that has accrued to ordinary people in some modern countries to influence the laws and the governments of those countries; but I strive to avoid deluding myself with exaggerated idealisations.

Hidari, if you and Chris are both going to accuse me of being a ‘pretend proletarian’ perhsos you’d like declare roughly what your incomes were in the last tax year and we can compare?

b: stupid (i.e. who genuinely have persuaded themselves that every country has a ‘set number’ of jobs and that when a job is ‘taken’ that’s the end of it: it’s gone. The number of jobs never goes up, employment never rises, immigrants never bring employment to an area (in other words, they persuade themselves that an Indian who comes to Britain and sets up a curry restaurant, or a chain of them, which eventually employs thousands, hasn’t ‘really’ created any jobs but somehow, in some occult way,’stolen’ those jobs from ‘native’ (i.e. white) British people who would ‘otherwise’ have set up a chain of British run curry restaurants selling not particularly authentic Indian food….))….and so on.

Here’s how noted nationalist moron Paul Krugman put it a long time before all this blew up (I’m not endorsing his reasoning just pointing out it’s mainstream economics)

My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand: we’re talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it’s inevitable that this means a fall in wages. Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz have to go through a lot of number-crunching to turn that general proposition into specific estimates of the wage impact, but the general point seems impossible to deny.

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/notes-on-immigration/

And your relentless straw-manning notwithstanding I’ve never been anti-immigration but I am anti- attempting to treat the injustice and irrationality of restrictions on the movement of labour in isolation from the injustice and irrationality of global capitalism/imperialism.

Steven t Johnson you could say that, but you’d have to prove it. Consider Japan,with rock bottom unemployment and low inflation and wage stagnation. Migrant labour is not keeping wages down here. It’s entirely an economic and social decision how to apportion the profits of wge exploitation. You can go the Nordic route and give it to your employees, you can go the British route of pocketing it or the Japanese route of reinvesting it. But the idea that the division of those fruits of exploitation has any relationship to the nationality of the exploited is not really a very lefty one.

@SamChevre 31

You are conflating the immigrant’s income with the immigrant’s productivity.

– Suppose that local worker produces 100, with a take home pay of 70 and the remaining 30 going into profits;
– Immigrant workers does the same job but is only paid 60, the remaining 40 going into profits (I’ll assume that this is true, and ignore Faustusnote’s point for the sake of this argument).

Social services are paid for by taxes, and taxes are levied both on wages and profits, so the immigrant workers generates the same taxes than the local worker, in fact if taxation is progressive he generates more.

The whole point of this “anti immigration craze” is that it is a way to put worker against worker, instead than workers against capital.

Hidari

– Factor price equalization.
There are enough exceptions to this that immigration behaves differently than trade. Example, Any good or service that must be created/provided locally (skilled construction, nursing, etc). Any good or service where the transportation costs offset the production costs. Any high tariff situation, country cheating on free trade agreement, etc. Any local where some specialized skill or knowledge is not truly interchangeable.

– Complementarities.
There are still local economic losers in this immigration scenario. Using your example, British roofers are losing to Polish roofers.

– Adjustment.
Based on the recent interest rates this theory is wrong. To paraphrase Mark Blyth, now that (implied rich) governments are running the economy to control for interest rates, interest rates do not rise unless this is intentional.
As to the second half, this is completely out the window in a world with a global supply chain. Unless your increasing immigration into the UK to such a rate that the labour costs are competitive with India, China, etc (+ transportation costs). there is no guarantee that labour demand will be met with local UK labour.

Back in 2006 it was uncontroversial that significant immigration caused economic winners and loser among the existing citizenry*. Now that it is 2018, and immigration is presented as a civil right, these negatives are papered over in case the voters make decision. It would be far better to address the negatives head on and come up with workable solutions.

*An example: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/notes-on-immigration/?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=945F56BB492653C8F64BC61C0840D361&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion

@60
Chris Dillow:
‘ I should be a poster boy for how you can escape poverty through work, study and savings: I grew up in a single-parent family hiding from the rentman behind the sofa to become a millionaire (just).

Even this, though, needed luck: the luck of being perceived as intelligent; the luck of graduating in an age when well-paid jobs were expanding; and the luck of years of house price inflation. (No doubt posh cunts will poshsplain why I’m wrong, but they can fuck right off).’

The sentence that made me think of you is highlighted.

https://european.economicblogs.org/chris-dillow-stumbling-mumbling/2017/conservatives-corbynistas

‘ lower labor costs in foreign production will lead to lower wages no matter what.’

No: I think that lower labour costs in foreign production will be a constant temptation for the capitalist to maximise profits, however he (sic) chooses to do it, and I am right to think that. For example, Dyson, who recently moved a factory of his to the ‘Far East’ with the loss of 800 British jobs, and nary an immigrant in sight.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2752100/800-jobs-to-go-as-sad-Dyson-moves-factory-to-Far-East.html

‘The Dillow case is the free trade case against protectionism, applied to labor.’
Wrong.
This is about the mobility of capital and labour. And capital already is mobile. As Jeremy Corbyn pointed out a few months ago, assuming we are prepared to ‘free’ capital (and perhaps we shouldn’t) it’s extraordinarily dangerous not to give the same freedom to labour. When Dyson shut down that factory it was terrible for the workers. But if you prevent them from moving (either within a country or to another country) to try and make money somewhere else, you are making their lives objectively worse. But Dyson doesn’t care. He doesn’t need immigrants. Capital is mobile.

(Remember: emigration and immigration are the same thing).

@63: CF Krugman: Krugman is great, but ultimately he is a neoliberal who believes in the ‘laws’ of supply and demand. It seems ‘reasonable’ that in the absence of workers employers will ‘have to’ raise wages. But this is obviously false. They don’t ‘have to’ do that at all. They can automate, or deskill the job and get lower paid staff to do it, or increase hours, or increase multitasking, or engage in more or less illegal but very hard to catch wage suppression tactics.The rise of ‘zero hours contracts’ in the UK and similar is another way for capitalists to squeeze value out of labour, and they do it regardless of the immigration rate. Remember: all the arguments against immigration are essentially the same arguments as those against automation: it’s the same argument, with the same presuppositions.* In the ‘West’, in the 1950s and 1960s, it wasn’t an absence of labour that caused higher wages (indeed, there were loads of workers due to the baby boom). It was strong trade unions, a strong welfare state, job protection laws, labour/socialist governments and so on. Immigration was fairly high in this period, although not as high as in other periods. But unemployment was also very low. It’s easy to state the relationship between unemployment and immigration statistically: there isn’t one. Same for wages and immigration. Remember, there were essentially no immigration laws at all before about 1910 in the UK, but wages were much higher then than they had been a century earlier.

As I pointed out earlier, immigration has not led to a lowering of wages in UAE or Singapore and the fact that these immigrants face discrimination there (as immigrants do everywhere) is irrelevant.

*In other words if you are against immigration, you must by definition be against ‘robots’ and automation generally.

Where did I ‘poshsplain’ that Dillow was wrong about being lucky to ‘escape poverty’ (which on the evidence of that paragraph means living in a rented house after your parents were divorced)? If I do think it’s wrong it’s because I wouldn’t describe the existence of grammar schools and Britain’s parasitical financial sector as ‘luck’ but structural injustice.

Hidari @ 56, Have you really never seen an argument against low skilled immigration on the basis that it costs the state money in benefits? Which then leads to either lower benefits for existing citizens or higher taxes on all? Which category does that fit in for you – a or b? The wages argument can go either way – it’s unfortunate that we have to decide on policy with such legitimate uncertainty about the impact. But I think the public spending issue has to be acknowledged and addressed squarely. It hardly works to point out that illegal immigrants don’t get many benefits (which is commonly argued) since the main point of open borders is to make them legal immigrants with normal public benefits. I think you really have to be willing to argue that, yes, low skill immigrants will cost the state money and, yes, this is how it should be.

By the way, there are a quite a few vocal libertarians in support of open borders. I have seen regular discussion that this policy preference is aimed at undermining the welfare state.

Faustusnotes@59 didn’t remember it’s the Guardian making the claims, presumably proving them in his eyes, or else why cite them? The hypothetical FT version are the same claims, just phrased differently. If the Guardian proved them, I don’t need to. If the Guardian didn’t, argue with them.

“Consider Japan,with rock bottom unemployment and low inflation and wage stagnation. Migrant labour is not keeping wages down here.” Rock bottom unemployment is when everybody gets the wages they want for spending in exchange for the hours they want to work. I think defining full employment by mysterious metaphysical criteria, rather than wages and hours and labor force participation rates and poverty rates. I think true rock bottom unemployment looks to employers like a labor shortage and lowers profits. It must be a very popular idea that you can arbitrarily define a natural unemployment rate—John Quiggin does it in his new book, after all—but that doesn’t make it so. Sorry, I really think, like most businessmen act, that full employment, real full employment, would cut profits.

As for Japan’s situation, the low growth is keeping wages down in money terms. And in international trade, the wages are too high for the bosses to make a profit on exports, hence the low growth. (And the wage stagnation weakens internal market but underconsumption is I think more strongly determines secular growth trends, not the business cycle proper. The difficulty is how distinct trends and cycles are, or are not.)

“But the idea that the division of those fruits of exploitation has any relationship to the nationality of the exploited is not really a very lefty one.” Except this sentence follows three example of different division of the fruits and every single one of them is national.

I think the contribution of immigrant to a high growth economy is extremely positive overall, despite the areas where wages are bid down, because their labor is essential to the growth. I think the benefit from immigration is much less, or even negative, when an economy sacrifices growth (which includes more efficient use of resources by the way!) to profits. In the current situation where capitalist economies are stressed and the miracles of finance can make outright stagnation profitable. Like all free trade, and, yes, like all automation, capitalist economy does not aim to satisfy needs of all (much less wants.) So yes, labor saving capital investments, free trade and immigration can hurt the workers. Perhaps absolute immiseration of the proletariat is the whip of the revolution, so we should favor these things?

Hidari@67 seems to be confused. He denies that he thinks lower labor costs in foreign production can lower domestic wages, then cites the example of a Dyson factory offshoring. I have no idea how the unemployment of the Dyson factory workers doesn’t lower wages. And mobility of factors like capital and labor are part of how factor price equalization happens. I think taking Dillow seriously will confuse you very badly.

As to Jeremy Corbyn’s belief that everyone should move into London, the remittances from London to Leeds, for example, would have to be much higher than the remittances from London to Poltava, for example. But if Corbyn means for the young and healthy to drop the dead weight at home, practically speaking, that’s much easier if you go to another country entirely. But, did he really imply that the English were oppressed by their inability to move to Ukraine? Or was he implying the US, or maybe Denmark?

When Dyson shut down that factory it was terrible for the workers. But if you prevent them from moving (either within a country or to another country) to try and make money somewhere else, you are making their lives objectively worse. But Dyson doesn’t care. He doesn’t need immigrants. Capital is mobile.

So British factory workers should be in favour of open borders so when Dyson shifts protection from Britain to Malaysia they can apply for jobs there mmmkay

Remember, there were essentially no immigration laws at all before about 1910 in the UK

How many budget airlines were there?

How many budget airlines were there?

Not carefully the form here; it’s not actually framed as a claim. Claims can be discussed and decided. It contains an implicit claim — “transport costs were higher then” — but because it’s not actually engels who’s framing it anybody who wants to engage with what engels appears to be claiming first has to construct and assign a meaning to engel’s statements and get him to accept that their framing is correct. It means the whole debate process is gatewayed by what’s essentially a game of mother-may-I or something, and that’s just fucking stupid.

To be extremely charitable.

Not worth it. Shoo him away.

Chris Bertram: “…whether states have the rights that politicians, pundits and journalists simply assume that they do”.

I’m truly glad you’re going to authoritatively rule on that issue Chris, because I just have this awful confusion as to what a “right” actually is. Like how are “rights” created ? Who or what issues them ? To whom ? When ? How are they policed and controlled ?

I am especially confused when “rights” are “assumed” as belonging to states. We haven’t always had “states” so they must have somehow come into existence some time in the past. Did all the “rights” that inhere in states come into existence when those states did ?

On the other hand if we’re just talking about “powers” exercised by those states with enough might to make those powers stick, then I can understand.

But if we are, then we aren’t talking explicitly about morality, are we.

This blog post suggests that steerage on the titanic was $700 for adults and $300 for children in today’s money. That’s considerably less money than my parents spent migrating from the UK to Australia in the 1980s. It’s also considerably less than a Syrian refugee today might have to spend to get into Europe, I would suggest.

anybody who wants to engage with what engels appears to be claiming first has to construct and assign a meaning to engel’s statements

Quelle horreur

This blog post suggests that steerage on the titanic was $700 for adults and $300 for children in today’s money. That’s considerably less money than my parents spent migrating from the UK to Australia in the 1980s. It’s also considerably less than a Syrian refugee today might have to spend to get into Europe, I would suggest.

That’s interesting, but I think the relevant comparison would be the cost and ease of making the same or similar journey, excluding legal barriers. Does anybody here seriously think that hasn’t greatly decreased? (For the sake of the Collin’s among us, my point was that discussing the feasibility of abolishing legal constraints on a given behaviour by pointing to the absence of such constraints in the past without considering the non-legal constraints that existed then seems pretty misleading.)

“Remember, there were essentially no immigration laws at all before about 1910 in the UK”

“How many budget airlines were there?”

None, but plenty of immigrants, and it wasn’t technology that was driving them but the same kind of economic conditions and disparities that apply today.

Quelle horreur

And, again: we get an allusion to meaning rather than anything concrete. Why, it’s almost as if it’s a deliberate communication strategy… except it doesn’t communicate, not effectively, so calling it a communication strategy is somewhat misguided.

Hidari@67 wrote, in response to my remark that lower labor costs in foreign production will lead to lower wages no matter what.

“No…” Sorry, I think Hidari is confused, if only by his grammar, as this is not “literally the opposite.” Jeremy Corbyn’s belief that labor mobility would be like EFT, if only not for pesky laws unfairly pinning labor down in one country, is kind of crankish.

Faustusnotes@76 wrote “How labor relations play out has very little to do with supply and demand and a lot to do with social institutions.” Personally I would say class struggle in production, not being an ideologue committed to economic science as taught in every academic institution. The phrasing “social institutions” is uncomfortably close to “culture” or, worse, “race.” I persist in thinking demand for Japanese exports has more to do with economic growth (or lack of same,) unemployment, wage rates, etc. than the spiritual proclivities of Japanese people.

And, again: we get an allusion to meaning rather than anything concrete. Why, it’s almost as if it’s a deliberate communication strategy… except it doesn’t communicate, not effectively, so calling it a communication strategy is somewhat misguided.

Call it whatever you like mate

Faustusnotes @76

“I’ll back up hidari’s response to krugman at 63 by again pointing out the example of post bubble japan : ”

Japans current problem is attributed to the lack of youth employment opportunities. The consequence of which is a significant segment of the Japanese population are not getting married and having children.

“The gender stuff is pretty consistent with trends around the world—men are having a harder time,” said Anne Allison, a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University who edited the recent collection of scholarly essays Japan: The Precarious Future. “The birth rate is down, even the coupling rate is down. And people will say the number-one reason is economic insecurity.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-mystery-low-birth-rate/534291/

Immigration could increase the overall Japanese economic situation. What it won’t do is increase the economic security of the Japanese youth as these are one segment of the Japanese population who typically compete with the immigrants for jobs.

Steven Johnson, it is a fact that Japan has weak unions in what should be a strong workers market, and yes they have a different culture of work than the west – you should try it, it will break you in a week. I happen to think it’s not a historically fixed thing, I think it’s post bubble, but lots of Japanese will tell me it’s from the samurai era. But what do they know, eh? The reality is that culture matters, and Marxists and economists consistently ignore this important fact. Institutions matter, as do the political settlements institutions make with each other and with civic society (see eg the NHS for how institutional settlements have conspired over 70 years to create a broken system).

Hidari there is actually a lot of job security in Japan, much more than the west. Young people here have growing concerns about job security but it’s nothing like the west. The problem is that they trade their personal freedom for that job security. People aren’t putting off coupling and childbirth because they don’t have job security, quite the opposite: they’re putting these private decisions off because their job for life demands all their time, moves them to a new city every three years, and won’t offer them any lifestyle security until they’re in their 30s. All of these problems in Japanese life would disappear if Japan had strong unions, but we don’t, so here we are trapped in a work culture that is determined entirely by cultural and legal norms rather than class antagonisms.

Fwiw I agree with what Hidari has written after ‘immigrants and immigration are not to blame for any of this’ apart from the implication I disagree (I never said free movement can’t help third-world non-immigrants but that it doesn’t ‘boost their rights’)

Steven t Johnson there is huge demand here. After adjusting for aging Japan isn’t suffering low growth.

This debate is pointless. Those that are of the opinion that there is too much immigration abundantly have that opinion for irrational reasons. Knowledge and rational arguments will not change them.

The way to sway them is to change how they *feel* about immigrants. And the only way to achieve that is for those in favor of existing, or even more lax, immigration policies to loudly and proudly laud immigration, instead of avoiding the topic, speaking about it in fearful or concerned terms or acknowledging it is a ‘problem’. As long as even those favoring immigration do so, no one will be convinced there isn’t reason for concern, fear and a problem to be solved.

We need to start associating positive emotions with immigration and immigrants.

@95 I wanted to compliment you on your generally solid remarks regarding the superiority of the health systems of Japan and France relative to the UK, and for your observations regarding stealing medical health professionals from nations desperate for trained doctors. You’re also on solid ground regarding the difference in cultures, but less so in terms of the work done in Japan versus the US, for example. Japanese workers work long hours, and in some cases work very hard. I’m sure we both know examples of brutal conditions (‘black’ companies that coerce unpaid overtime and unused vacation days)
That said, I’d be surprised if any western worker found the system more demanding than a competitive work environment in the west. The Japanese engineers I know transferred to North American branches were shocked to discover that they were expected to finish all their assigned work within an 8-hour shift and be out the door at 5:01. Perhaps that’s changed. My own experience is that Japanese folks are as lazy/industrious as any other community. Cultures vary. Not being able to say no to one’s boss is a problem, but nowhere near as severe from what I’ve been told by former Samsung employees, as the work culture of Korea. Plus, we get lots of paid national holidays.

I rarely see my colleagues break much of a sweat.

As for the OP, it’s a great way to start a useful discussion. I’ve been impressed by CB’s posts on immigration this year and on the strike. Nobody I know (of) Remain or Leave is anti-immigration, but some are more concerned with eroding values, stresses on services, and cultural change. Canada is very hostile to open borders and I’m frankly astonished so few people seem aware of that fact. It’s Trumps’ policy precisely – Canada’ immigration policy is determined only by how the policy best benefits Canadians. You’re welcome in Canada if you cash, or very high skills.

Otherwise, best of luck!

Equalitus 100

“Also, open borders or even semi-high immigration will crush the welfare states in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Austria and Luxembourg. ”

Why exactly? Don’t immigrant pay taxes? Don’t immigrant’s employers pay taxes?

In Italy, before the recent wave of immigration, there was strong inner migration between the poorer south and the more industrialised north; the Lega party that got a lot of votes in the recent elections on an anti-foreign-immigrant party was born as an anti-southerner party.
But southern italian migrants never were a problem for Italy’s welfare state.

Why would it be different with other immigrants?

Were italian immigrants in the USA in the early 20th century a problem for the USA economy? As long as we (Italians) were the migrants, we tought that no, italian migrants were so smart and cool and a source of growth for the USA; now that the migrants are coming to us we say the opposite.

I think that this idea that immigrants are a problem for the welfare state is bunk, it’s like the “welfare queen” meme: people who want to smash the welfare state (because they want lower taxes) say that there are guys who are wreacking it by taking too much, and blame it on some random minority; gullible voters believe it and attack the minority, not the one who are really wreacking it by lowering taxes (I’m looking at Donald, but also at Silvio and at the Lega, that is mostly an anti-tax party; basically Donald=Silvio+Lega).

I think that this idea that immigrants are a problem for the welfare state is bunk

I can’t remember it myself so very happy to be wrong but I think someone above said that Chris’s own view was that abolishing national borders would require replacing universal entitlements to (eg) pensions with a contribution-based system (what does that remind you of…)

I my be entirely wrong, I hope I am, but I have an uncertain and undocumented memory of somebody (not Chris?) arguing in favour of a combination of open borders for all and a universal income for all residents.

I do hope that everyone will agree that is not possible.

Kidneystones I have no doubt you and your colleagues don’t break a sweat- we both know what kind of work you do. But I wonder how many ordinary Japanese salarymen or OLs you know. I know quite a few, I have worked in three countries and I can assure the reader that there is no comparison between the demands of a Japanese workplace and a western workplace.

It is true that the demand of an efficient day rather than a long day is alien to a lot Japanese workers but a large proportion of Japanese staff working long hours really are working in those hours – relentlessly. Also I wonder what engineers you know into he west who knock off at 5 pm. You certainly won’t see that shit in a well functioning Aussie or British engineering firm!