American legislators are at odds over a plan to give US citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico. Australia has just announced a new scheme to send asylum seekers to remote island detention camps. The issue of the unauthorized arrival of migrants remains a burning one for the world’s more prosperous economies. Whether these people come in fear of their safety in their own countries or simply because they seek a better life, they present a problem in their would-be new homes.
Their arrival in any number can generate racism and intolerance, especially if they join existing ethnic communities that have failed, for whatever reason, to integrate into the country that accepted them. This can be exacerbated if the new arrivals are thought to be taking jobs away from locals or exploiting welfare systems to which they have not previously contributed.
The historic argument for immigration is that migrants have very often enriched the societies that received them. The US, Canada and Australia are among countries that have always relied upon a steady influx of newcomers to build themselves. By this view, it is shortsighted to seek now to stem the flow. Whatever the ethnic tensions that exist for one maybe two generations, most migrant families integrate and end up becoming every bit as American or Canadian or Australian as those who came before them.
There is however an emerging counterargument that deserves respect, because it is not based on racism or bigotry even though it might be exploited by people who hold such opinions. This view is that when Third World countries start to lose their brightest and their best to rich economies, they suffer significant economic and social damage. Health is a case in point. In North America and the UK in particular, hospitals have large numbers of doctors and nurses who have been drawn by pay and conditions that are simply unavailable in the Third World home countries where they originally trained and qualified. A few of these professionals may eventually return home and share their greater experience with their domestic health systems. Most will not. All that goes home is money to sustain their families.
They thus represent a considerable loss to the health systems of the countries that trained them in the expectation that they would stay and work in their local hospitals and clinics. The responsibility for this unsatisfactory sucking up of talent from underdeveloped countries clearly lies with rich nations, which have been unable to recruit and train enough of their own doctors, nurses or engineers. This gap must clearly be addressed urgently. Serious consideration should also surely now be given to regulating the amount of time that Third World professionals can work in First World services and perhaps also to awarding them a bounty when the time comes for them to return home. There is something rather sad, even hypocritical, about societies that welcome, even encourage, immigrants from poor countries who can be of use to them, while trying to shut out those who have no obvious talents.
