Thread: Keep the borders open

More propaganda from MSPM. This must be the magazine of choice for Bush and Co.

Keep the borders open
Jan 3rd 2008
From The Economist print edition

The backlash against immigrants in the rich world is a threat to prosperity everywhere

MagnumITALIANS blame gypsies from Romania for a spate of crime. British politicians of all stripes promise to curb the rapid immigration of recent years. Voters in France, Switzerland and Denmark last year rewarded politicians who promised to keep out strangers. In America, too, huddled masses are less welcome as many presidential candidates promise to fence off Mexico. And around the rich world, immigration has been rising to the top of voters' lists of concerns—which, for those who believe that migration greatly benefits both recipient and donor countries, is a worry in itself.

As our special report this week argues, immigration takes many forms. The influx of Poles to Britain, of Mexicans to America, of Zimbabweans to South Africa and of Bangladeshis to the Persian Gulf has different causes and consequences in each case. But most often migration is about young, motivated, dynamic people seeking to better themselves by hard work.


History has shown that immigration encourages prosperity. Tens of millions of Europeans who made it to the New World in the 19th and 20th centuries improved their lot, just as the near 40m foreign-born are doing in America today. Many migrants return home with new skills, savings, technology and bright ideas. Remittances to poor countries in 2006 were worth at least $260 billion—more, in many countries, than aid and foreign investment combined. Letting in migrants does vastly more good for the world's poor than stuffing any number of notes into Oxfam tins.

The movement of people also helps the rich world. Prosperous countries with greying workforces rely ever more on young foreigners. Indeed, advanced economies compete vigorously for outsiders' skills. Around a third of the Americans who won Nobel prizes in physics in the past seven years were born abroad. About 40% of science and engineering PhDs working in America are immigrants. Around a third of Silicon Valley companies were started by Indians and Chinese. The low-skilled are needed too, especially in farming, services and care for children and the elderly. It is no coincidence that countries that welcome immigrants—such as Sweden, Ireland, America and Britain—have better economic records than those that shun them.

Face the fears
Given all these gains, why the backlash? Partly because politicians prefer to pander to xenophobic fears than to explain immigration's benefits. But not all fear of foreigners is irrational. Voters have genuine concerns. Large numbers of incomers may be unsettling; economic gloom makes natives fear for their jobs; sharp disparities of income across borders threaten rich countries with floods of foreigners; outsiders who look and sound notably different from their hosts may find it hard to integrate. To keep borders open, such fears have to be acknowledged and dealt with, not swept under the carpet.

Immigration can, for instance, hurt the least skilled by depressing their wages. But these workers are at greater risk from new technology and foreign goods. The answer is not to impoverish the whole economy by keeping out immigrants but to equip this group with the skills it anyway needs.

Americans object to the presence of around 12m illegal migrant workers in a country with high rates of legal migration. But given the American economy's reliance on them, it is not just futile but also foolish to build taller fences to keep them out. Better for Congress to resume its efforts to bring such workers out of the shadows, by opening more routes for legal, perhaps temporary, migration, and an amnesty for long-standing, law-abiding workers already in the country. Politicians in rich countries should also be honest about, and quicker to raise spending to deal with, the strains that immigrants place on public services.

It is not all about money, however. As the London Tube bombers and Paris's burning banlieues have shown, the social integration of new arrivals is also crucial. The advent of Islamist terrorism has sharpened old fears that incoming foreigners may fail to adopt the basic values of the host country. Tackling this threat will never be simple. But nor would blocking migration do much to stop the dedicated terrorist. Better to seek ways to isolate the extremist fringe, by making a greater effort to inculcate common values of citizenship where these are lacking, and through a flexible labour market to provide the disaffected with rewarding jobs.

Above all, perspective is needed. The vast population movements of the past four decades have not brought the social strife the scaremongers predicted. On the contrary, they have offered a better life for millions of migrants and enriched the receiving countries both culturally and materially. But to preserve these great benefits in the future, politicians need the courage not only to speak up against the populist tide in favour of the gains immigration can bring, but also to deal honestly with the problems it can sometimes cause

http://www.economist.com/research/ar...ry_id=10430282

economist, economist, economist.
Every bloody thing 80% of economists address is about growth--it's about having people come in to America so that (supposedly), more goods are sold, more goods are made,etc, etc.
Never a darned word about the impact on our communities, the disease. the health problems, the giveaway programs and all the other issue that cost Americans a lot of problems and money.

"The backlash against immigrants in the rich world is a threat to prosperity everywhere."

"The rich world", a relative thing. How is one rich if one loses his/her house because of no job?? How is one rich whem one cannot get medical treatment--denied insurance etc, because one is an American citizen?
People in third world countries continue to procreate at a very high rate in countries that do not have the resources to support them. And our feeble-minded American economists see the soulution is to bring them here so that WalMart and all the rest have higher gross sales and profits. While this is happening, a whole new class of American is being growing almost as fast as the numbers in the invasion. I call them, (not a new term), the "Lower Middle Class". Mom or Dad has a service job now, but they still make enough to pay the bills. Luxuries are gone, DVD rentals take the place of the movies. The ever rising gas prices eat a bigger piece of the monthly budget. The economists and especially the globalists want to grow this group of people to be the largest group. No borders, "free trade", "free trade", "free trade". As long as the model is working they are happy. Their jobs do not disappear. They are not threatened with a massive influx of lower paid economists, (or so they believe).
Stop, stop, stop. Let's have America for Americans. We will prosper without these asinine growth economists. Give the tanker contracts to Boeing, give in-state tuition to all TRUE American students regardless of state of birth. Penalize, severely any and all employers participating in the modern slave trade of low paid illegal alien employees. Enrich our coffers by ensuring that all employees are legal and working toward eligibility for Social Security. Stop with the unfair , (and possibly illegal) , practice of allowing illegals to qualify for SS with about 1/3 of the required quarters of contribution. Stop with the SS agreements with a broken Mexican SS system.
Stop, stop, stop, mistreating Americans.

Meantime Senor Jorge sits on the patio of his estancia as the grateful minions of the south, worship at his feet and pay tribute. All this while American boys and girls are fighting and dying around the world for the American dream which is rapidly becoming a nightmare.