By aapsky @Adobe Stock
Immigration, a Hot Topic
The U.S. is not the only country where immigration is a concerning hot topic. Border security is heating up in the Dominican Republic, where the country is building a 250-mile wall across the island of Hispaniola to seal off its border with Haiti, reports Walter Russell Meade in the WSJ. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered Conservatives in Britain are facing the political challenges of migrants crossing the English Channel. And from Sweden to Spain, far-right anti-immigrant parties appear poised to make big gains in June’s elections to the European Parliament.
As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, Americans’ views toward immigration are trending more negative:
A March 2024 Gallup survey found that immigration was the issue voters most frequently mentioned spontaneously as the top problem facing the country.
An Associated Press-NORC poll conducted last month found that 64% of respondents supported hiring more Border Patrol agents, 53% wanted to reduce the number of asylum applicants, and 42% wanted a wall.
Backlash toward Migration
Technological and demographic forces drove levels of migration that touched off a backlash, explains Mr. Mead.
Historically, migration was limited by mobility. Travel by land meant walking or at best, riding on horses or in carriages or carts. Crossing the Atlantic meant long voyages in small ships. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Railroads crossed Europe, and trans-Atlantic fares dropped as steam-powered ships carrying 1,000 or more people crossed the ocean in less than a week. Transporting people became a big business, and as rail and steamship companies vied for potential migrants, competition drove fares down. All this happened as European populations exploded, and the mechanization of agriculture forced many rural workers to seek their living in cities.
A similar mix of forces is powering today’s global migration surge:
- Travel by air and road became dramatically cheaper in much of the world in the last generation.
- Populations are rising in many poor countries, and the need for agricultural laborers continues to fall as mechanized agriculture replaces subsistence farming in much of the Global South.
- Large business networks now help migrants cross borders—with or without papers.
New Factors in Play:
- Low birthrates in much of the industrialized world create demand for immigrant labor.
- Wars and civil strife are driving tens of millions of refugees from their homes across much of sub-Saharan Africa and into the Middle East.
- Cheap smartphones give billions of people in poor countries clear if sometimes misleading information about the disparities in living standards between, say, Somalia and Sweden and keep immigrant communities in Europe and North America in touch with friends and families left behind.
What’s Going to Change
As Mr. Mead notes, “advanced industrial societies are going to need skilled and unskilled immigrants for the foreseeable future, but their citizens are legitimately concerned about the social and economic consequences.”
Unless voters believe that policymakers have addressed these concerns, the pressure for draconian legislation will grow.
In both Europe and the U.S., the first step must be to regain control over the borders. Large numbers of illegal border crossings raise legitimate public concerns about crime (including terrorism) and reduce support for immigration. Whether the focus is the Mediterranean or the Rio Grande, border enforcement must be, and be seen to be, effective. Potential migrants must come to believe that absent legal authorization, their chances of crossing the border are low, and that even if they get in, their chances of deportation are high.
Policy Failure in the West
Sustainable immigration policies that might include annual caps on total entrants with clear paths for skilled and unskilled workers.
Asylum laws must strike a reasonable balance between compassion and political reality.
Western leaders’ failure to control their borders and to develop sensible immigration and asylum policies may be the most important single force empowering far-right movements on both sides of the Atlantic. To reverse the drift toward authoritarianism and illiberalism, and to foster the sustainable immigration our economies need, nothing matters more than getting the border right.
