Preciados street, in Madrid, in an archive image. Pablo Monge
The West toughens its immigration policy. With new laws (France, the FRG). Or latest mass deportations (from the United Kingdom to Rwanda). Or try them (Alternative for Germany together with neo-Nazis). Or it begins, quietly, criminalizing a segment of refugees (those who committed crimes several times) to whitewash a xenophobic policy (in Spain, from Jordi Turull to Isabel Díaz Ayuso).
Those crazy humans are doubling down on economic nonsense. There are 270 million immigrants in the world, and increasing (The macroeconomic effects of global migration, IMF, 2020).
Between now and 2050, Europe needs between 40 and 50 million new external workers, several reports estimate (United Nations, European Parliament, CIDOB). And the US will require on the same date to “double its level”, of more than 45 million (Immigration facts, FWD.usJuly 21, 2020).
As indicated last Saturday, without immigrants, Spain would not have its best historical record in 2023. More than 21.25 million employees, the EPA counts yesterday.
It happens everywhere that the benefits of this phenomenon expand to the entire working world. In the United States, “immigration not only does not harm, but rather benefits, American workers,” because “they complement them, rather than compete with them,” by exhibiting different qualifications, and because “they create new companies at twice the rate of native people” (Fwd.us).
Nor do they erode the welfare state (although they cause localized dysfunctions). On the contrary, if they were reduced by half, Social Security would lose 1.5 trillion (with b) dollars in 75 years, this source calculates.
And the old European debate about whether inactive immigrants (students, retirees and others) are a burden was settled a decade ago when an extensive study for the Commission put their total cost at 0.001% of the EU’s GDP (A fact finding analysis on the impact on the member states social security systems, ICF, 2013).
The opposite happens: due to its vital impulse and its youth, immigration contributes more than it spends: lowering it to the level intended by Brexit predicted on that date a 2.2% increase in taxation on work (The long term economic impact of reducing migration, NIESR, 2013).
Also the contribution to “increased productivity in host economies is a key empirical result” of scientific studies, underlines the IMF. The counterfactual evidence lies in the results of Brexit. As much as Tory governments try to disguise them, academia shakes them up: “Migrants receive lower salaries and fewer opportunities in the long term and the British lose them on the continent,” summarizes economist Kristina Sargent (The labor market impacts of Brexit, Elsevier , 2023).
And studies by the main specialist, Jonathan Portes, calculate declines in GDP of between 0.2% and 1.9% of GDP due to this cause (Immigration and the UK economy after Brexit, Oxford review of economics, number 1, 2022 ).
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2024-01-27 10:27:47
#Kicking #immigrants #economic #nonsense
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