In rich democracies, immigration is fuelling a fierce hostile reaction. That is not surprising. While a few insist that everybody is entitled to share in the prosperity and freedom of these countries, many of their fellow citizens view those seeking entry as more like invaders. Similarly, economists’ benign view of the economics ignores the fact that immigrants are people whose descendants might live there permanently. Immigration then is about national identity.
In recent European elections, attitudes towards immigrants were instrumental in generating support for nationalist parties. In the US, Donald Trump’s fierce campaign against people pouring across the southern border has been a powerful source of his appeal. In his speech to the Republican convention, he claimed that “the world’s criminals are coming here, to a town near you — and are being sent by their governments”. In both the US and the UK, polls show that immigration is a salient and divisive issue: Trump knows quite well what he is doing and why. (See charts.)
Yet, argues Lant Pritchett, one of the world’s leading thinkers on economic development, in an article on “The political acceptability of time-limited labor mobility”, demographic changes might force an opening in the “Overton window” of what can be discussed on immigration. High-income countries may have to abandon today’s binary view of the options — either exclusion or a pathway to citizenship — in their own interests and those of developing countries.