Great review, I agree very strongly with the America-centric nature of the book being annoying and misleading, but I have a few niggling points:
“Do more populous countries have greater growth in the long run? If so, this points us in the direction of open borders.” I think this is true, that populous countries have greater growth on the whole. But this doesn’t seem to point to open borders. I think there is a selection effect whereby only countries with a particularly strong system of governance don’t split up into other countries, and it’s the strong governance that creates growth. And some large nations don’t even have open borders between regions; it’s actually easier to move from rural Poland to Paris for work, and benefit from public services there, than it is to move from rural Hunan to Shanghai.
“There are various arguments related to longtermism that Caplan didn’t use. The downsides of immigration (higher crime, perhaps draining the government’s budget) are temporary but the upsides (higher economic growth) bear their fruit over centuries and will likely affect billions of future people.” I disagree with this, connected to reasons you mention later. The downsides can continue, even accelerate, for a good few generations, and then become fundamentally unpredictable; in France, for example, children of immigrants are more likely to commit crimes and be unemployed than 1st gen immigrants. Muslim migrants are less likely to want to assimilate to European countries than they used to be; a 2nd gen Muslim woman in Bradford is far more likely now to wear a Burqa than a 1st gen woman was 20 or 30 years ago, for example. For most people concerned about immigration, it’s the fact that their country (imagine Ukraine/ England/ Tibet/ Israel/ Luxembourg) won’t be their country anymore in a few decades (or centuries) that worries them. Tibetans have seen the number of Han Chinese in their nation rapidly increasing over the past 50 years, and they reasonably fear that once Tibet is 60-70% Han, they’ll either have to assimilate or be reduced to something akin to Aboriginals on reservations. Similarly, the theme of Soumission by Houellebecq is arguing something similar for France; if the rate of Islamic immigration continues to increase, then it’s possible that within a few decades an Islamist candidate could start implementing Islamic law within a European country (as we see regionally already, with divorce courts). You can only imagine if Israel were to allow open borders with her neighbours… This is to say that negative impacts of open borders may not be temporary, and could affect the mid-to-long-term identity, culture, norms and stability of a nation. It’s hard to make concrete predictions, but I’m tempted to predict that low-immigration, high-GDP countries (or countries with very selective migration, like Switzerland) will be more politically stable in the coming few decades. Paul Collier explains this dilemma well in his book, Exodus.
“The countries that are the closest to having open borders are the Gulf states; they have many migrant workers from countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.” This seems the strangest line of the review. Depending on your definition, I’d say that the Gulf States have the opposite of open borders. They previously had targeted immigration policies allowing other Arabs from the MENA region to work there, then they caused too many social problems, so the Gulf countries threw them all out, and invited targeted immigration from a few specific poor countries (with people who didn’t speak Arabic, and therefore wouldn’t get involved in local politics). There is actually a decent amount of social mobility in these countries (a strangely high proportion of my friends are Gulf-state Indians based in Europe), so I wouldn’t be too worried about long-term racial segregation. If you see this story of poor South Asians taken out of poverty by working in the gulf, the Gulf States are a strong argument for a very ‘non-open borders’ way of doing mass immigration: inviting large numbers of migrants to come to a country on guest worker schemes, with very limited rights. Although these migrants have no social support, and can be thrown out on the whim of the recipient country, they can make loads of money compared to back home. I actually think this might be a really good idea, and this is also similar to what Chinese cities do with domestic migration, which avoids parts of Beijing and Shanghai turning into huge shantytowns. However, as you mention, having a ‘second-class’ population sits poorly with European norms and sensibilities.
Thank you for making a great point! Large countries do implement limits on internal migration to ensure political stability. The Chinese system is called hukou if anyone wants to read up on it; I am no expert myself. I would, however, disagree that these limitations suggest there is no free movement. In fact, the very existence of these limitations suggests we should open up compared to the baselines, but perhaps not fully. The population of Shanghai grew almost 100% from 14M to 27M within the last 20 years—and the city transformed into a wealthy metropolis like NYC. According to Wikipedia, consistent with my intuition, a relaxation of Hukou migration restrictions coincided with the (post-)Deng Xiaoping era of stability and prosperity. So internal migration in China is enormous and while it is hard, it can’t be that hard to move. Now, of course, these people are mostly Han Chinese and it is an interesting question how many immigrants of a different cultural background we could handle in Europe.
Agree, it is naive to argue for a “free lunch”. As far as I recall, there is good economic evidence that migration from e.g. Afghanistan is a net cost for the taxpayer in Germany despite the younger age structure of the immigrants. (It only works out under extremely optimistic assumptions, if the immigrants can find higher-paying jobs than expected.) Migration (from [very] poor countries) should be considered a form of “foreign aid”, it is a cost; and it is a question of political stability. Having many immigrants is useless if the AfD or Front National then rises to power, reverts your measures and sabotages democracy.
How does political stability change, though, is it linear with the number and type of immigrants or are there thresholds?
Does this point argue strongly against open borders? Both systems could work fine and strike a similar balance. Higher migration, lower migrant rights. Lower migration (but still higher than the status quo), better migrant rights. Either way, we are trying to maximize the same product: [Number of immigrants] x [net improvement in migrant life = wellbeing(home country) - wellbeing (target country)]. Europe opts for the former, the Gulf or Singapore for the latter. Neither can tell us if a deviation from the status quo towards more migration would be beneficial or not since the systems are so different.
Great review, I agree very strongly with the America-centric nature of the book being annoying and misleading, but I have a few niggling points:
“Do more populous countries have greater growth in the long run? If so, this points us in the direction of open borders.” I think this is true, that populous countries have greater growth on the whole. But this doesn’t seem to point to open borders. I think there is a selection effect whereby only countries with a particularly strong system of governance don’t split up into other countries, and it’s the strong governance that creates growth. And some large nations don’t even have open borders between regions; it’s actually easier to move from rural Poland to Paris for work, and benefit from public services there, than it is to move from rural Hunan to Shanghai.
“There are various arguments related to longtermism that Caplan didn’t use. The downsides of immigration (higher crime, perhaps draining the government’s budget) are temporary but the upsides (higher economic growth) bear their fruit over centuries and will likely affect billions of future people.” I disagree with this, connected to reasons you mention later. The downsides can continue, even accelerate, for a good few generations, and then become fundamentally unpredictable; in France, for example, children of immigrants are more likely to commit crimes and be unemployed than 1st gen immigrants. Muslim migrants are less likely to want to assimilate to European countries than they used to be; a 2nd gen Muslim woman in Bradford is far more likely now to wear a Burqa than a 1st gen woman was 20 or 30 years ago, for example. For most people concerned about immigration, it’s the fact that their country (imagine Ukraine/ England/ Tibet/ Israel/ Luxembourg) won’t be their country anymore in a few decades (or centuries) that worries them. Tibetans have seen the number of Han Chinese in their nation rapidly increasing over the past 50 years, and they reasonably fear that once Tibet is 60-70% Han, they’ll either have to assimilate or be reduced to something akin to Aboriginals on reservations. Similarly, the theme of Soumission by Houellebecq is arguing something similar for France; if the rate of Islamic immigration continues to increase, then it’s possible that within a few decades an Islamist candidate could start implementing Islamic law within a European country (as we see regionally already, with divorce courts). You can only imagine if Israel were to allow open borders with her neighbours… This is to say that negative impacts of open borders may not be temporary, and could affect the mid-to-long-term identity, culture, norms and stability of a nation. It’s hard to make concrete predictions, but I’m tempted to predict that low-immigration, high-GDP countries (or countries with very selective migration, like Switzerland) will be more politically stable in the coming few decades. Paul Collier explains this dilemma well in his book, Exodus.
“The countries that are the closest to having open borders are the Gulf states; they have many migrant workers from countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.” This seems the strangest line of the review. Depending on your definition, I’d say that the Gulf States have the opposite of open borders. They previously had targeted immigration policies allowing other Arabs from the MENA region to work there, then they caused too many social problems, so the Gulf countries threw them all out, and invited targeted immigration from a few specific poor countries (with people who didn’t speak Arabic, and therefore wouldn’t get involved in local politics). There is actually a decent amount of social mobility in these countries (a strangely high proportion of my friends are Gulf-state Indians based in Europe), so I wouldn’t be too worried about long-term racial segregation. If you see this story of poor South Asians taken out of poverty by working in the gulf, the Gulf States are a strong argument for a very ‘non-open borders’ way of doing mass immigration: inviting large numbers of migrants to come to a country on guest worker schemes, with very limited rights. Although these migrants have no social support, and can be thrown out on the whim of the recipient country, they can make loads of money compared to back home. I actually think this might be a really good idea, and this is also similar to what Chinese cities do with domestic migration, which avoids parts of Beijing and Shanghai turning into huge shantytowns. However, as you mention, having a ‘second-class’ population sits poorly with European norms and sensibilities.
Thank you for making a great point! Large countries do implement limits on internal migration to ensure political stability. The Chinese system is called hukou if anyone wants to read up on it; I am no expert myself. I would, however, disagree that these limitations suggest there is no free movement. In fact, the very existence of these limitations suggests we should open up compared to the baselines, but perhaps not fully.
The population of Shanghai grew almost 100% from 14M to 27M within the last 20 years—and the city transformed into a wealthy metropolis like NYC. According to Wikipedia, consistent with my intuition, a relaxation of Hukou migration restrictions coincided with the (post-)Deng Xiaoping era of stability and prosperity. So internal migration in China is enormous and while it is hard, it can’t be that hard to move. Now, of course, these people are mostly Han Chinese and it is an interesting question how many immigrants of a different cultural background we could handle in Europe.
Agree, it is naive to argue for a “free lunch”. As far as I recall, there is good economic evidence that migration from e.g. Afghanistan is a net cost for the taxpayer in Germany despite the younger age structure of the immigrants. (It only works out under extremely optimistic assumptions, if the immigrants can find higher-paying jobs than expected.) Migration (from [very] poor countries) should be considered a form of “foreign aid”, it is a cost; and it is a question of political stability. Having many immigrants is useless if the AfD or Front National then rises to power, reverts your measures and sabotages democracy.
How does political stability change, though, is it linear with the number and type of immigrants or are there thresholds?
Does this point argue strongly against open borders? Both systems could work fine and strike a similar balance. Higher migration, lower migrant rights. Lower migration (but still higher than the status quo), better migrant rights. Either way, we are trying to maximize the same product: [Number of immigrants] x [net improvement in migrant life = wellbeing(home country) - wellbeing (target country)]. Europe opts for the former, the Gulf or Singapore for the latter. Neither can tell us if a deviation from the status quo towards more migration would be beneficial or not since the systems are so different.