Spoken or not, the issue of migration is an overt or covert issue for much of the politics of the world today, especially in a year with elections scheduled in eight of the world’s 10 most populous nations. That is nothing new but it has been speeded up by two factors: the ease of travel and, most important of all, gaps between fertility rates and hence the demand and supply of labor. Migration has its own mostly economic dynamics over which politicians have limited control. Today’s global reality is of massive refugee situations in several spots such as Turkey/Syria, not forgetting the millions of Palestinians who ended up in Gaza or Jordan or Lebanon.
More immediately, in the US, former and possible future president Donald Trump is making illegal migration across its long border with Mexico of people from all over Latin America and the Caribbean into a major election issue. Thus, even the few countries that have long believed in the benefits of accepting migrants can become hostile if they feel or can be made to feel threatened. Murders and rapes by migrants, especially illegal ones, are an easy win for scaremongering politicians. The phenomenon is not new. However, numerous studies from Malaysia, where tens of thousands of Indonesians illegally crossed porous borders to work, to Germany with its Gastarbeiters, to the United States with its surging numbers from Latin America, show there is no causal relationship between crime and the influx of migrants, both legal and illegal. Migrants, the studies show, dare arrest to get into nearby countries because they want to work, and they do jobs native-born citizens don’t want to do because wages are too low and the benefits too paltry.
While the perception that immigration fuels crime is an important source of anti-immigrant sentiment – and electoral fodder – the World Bank, using data for 2003-2010, estimates the overall impact of economic immigration in Malaysia on crime and suggests that immigration actually has little effect. A US Justice Department study on Texas migration found US-born citizens are over two times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over four times more likely to be arrested for property crimes than migrants, especially illegal ones, who want to keep their heads down to avoid arrest.
Cultural identity gets in the way
At the other end of the scale from countries perceived to be threatened by immigration are those with such a precise notion of their ethnic and cultural identity that there was long resistance to even discussing the possibility that significant immigration might cause more good than harm. Two which seem to fall into that category are South Korea and Japan, in both of which years of very low fertility are now confronting the reality that even if rates should by some miracle recover, it would still be at least a generation before the average age and native population of working age could be stabilized.
Foreign workers are increasingly accepted but unless they get permanent status and can bring spouses or find them locally, such migration has limited long-term value. Korea is in much the same position as Japan – but worse in terms of current fertility at 0.9 compared with Japan’s 1.3. North Korea, poor and currently only half the South’s 51.7 million but has a median age of 35.6 compared with 45.0 in the South. Its fertility rate of 1.8 is double that of the South.
The population gap is set to narrow sharply. Taiwan is similar to Japan and now has a median age of 44 compared with China’s 39.8 but a slightly higher fertility rate. It has some 700,000 foreign workers but permanent migration, mostly Chinese from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, is insignificant. All of the above have resorted to temporary worker fixes without seriously addressing the politically difficult issue of settlers of unfamiliar racial and cultural background.
Singapore and Hong Kong have even lower fertility. Singapore’s ethnic mix makes immigration from various sources politically easier though still subject to citizen unease when numbers become too obvious. Hong Kong may remain attractive enough to see inflow from the mainland but numbers are unlikely to be sufficient for a sustained increase in population given that the median age is already 46.8 or eight years more than the US.
No solution to low birth rates
In none of these cases has there been any sign that pro-natalist policies actually work despite especially big efforts over many years by Singapore. As for China, its chance of improving fertility is severely impeded by the gender imbalance caused by a mix of the three decades of one-child policy and the extraordinary male dominance of the ruling Communist Party. China is also too populous for immigration to make much difference unless it is willing and able to tap the one continent which continues to have fertility levels well above replacement – Africa where fertility is 4.1.
There is no country in Asia east of Afghanistan with fertility much above 2.1 live births per mother, regarded as the minimum replacement level, apart from Pakistan, Cambodia, and the Philippines (where it is declining steeply). Thailand’s median age is now 41.0 years, slightly older than the United Kingdom and with a fertility rate of just 1.3. Indeed the Thai economy has for some time now been sustained by the flow of manpower from Cambodia and Myanmar, the latter with a population of 55 million which should be the equal of Thailand if it had not had fifty years of bad government.
Thailand’s experience is a reminder of two factors which do not apply everywhere. First, it owes little to government policy and much to the supply and demand for labor across relatively porous borders. Second, and probably most important in an international context, is that Cambodian and Myanmar people do not look significantly different from Thais. Although they may have very different languages and have fought many wars in the past, they share religious and cultural links. Thailand has also long been a destination for Chinese.
The issue of appearance and cultural background also explains why Japan’s first worker imports were South Americans of Japanese origin, followed by Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. As those supplies shrink, they are importing labor from the Philippines and Indonesia. But there is a clear reluctance in East Asia to recruit from South Asia, let alone Africa. Decrying de facto policies based on appearance and skin or hair color will not make this issue go away. It is usually more important than language or religion.
The countries that actively encourage immigration increasingly try to look ethnically diverse in their sources, thus Australia, which had a Whites Only policy till the 1970s, turned increasingly to East Asia, then South Asia, and now other regions. Net migration has averaged about 250,000 annually over the past decade, the issue of illegal migrants and asylum seekers remains a hot political topic even though actual numbers are very small relative to official intake. As elsewhere the issue is less immigration per se than perception and the degree of government control over numbers and source.
Brexit and immigration
The gap between perception and reality in the popular mind that often arises was seen in the UK’s vote to exit the European Union. Immigration was a factor in the narrow vote for Brexit. Yet many of the EU migrants who caused this concern were in reality only temporary workers, leaving their families back home in poorer parts of the EU such as Romania. Meanwhile most migrant settlers in the UK, then as now, were from outside Europe. The loss of freedom of movement from the EU to UK simply increased demand for labor, especially for workers from Asia and Africa to care for an aging population.
Immigration remains a political issue in the UK, having averaged 700,000 a year in 2022 and 2023 – 1 percent of the population each year. Demand for tighter rules is certain to remain a political issue but no one expects significant immigration to cease and the percentage of those categorized as non-white not to continue to increase. It is now 18 percent having been less than 1 percent in 1950, driven by a mix of labor demand, former colonial links, globalization of commerce, family reunion policies, students, and asylum seekers. London’s population is 37 percent white British, 17 percent other white, 21 percent Asian (mostly…
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