The Other School of Economics

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses…”: on refugees & Saunders’ Arrival City

The immigration debate has all the attributes of a barbecue stopper. Refugee advocates campaign on the necessity for compassion, whereas border vigilantes focus on deterring people smugglers and the threat on the perceived current social and economic harmony. Whilst both camps vehemently disagree, they share the strong belief of the definitive self evident nature of their respective case.

The question confronting participants to this debate is how to change the inward-looking and defensive nature of the current argument and how to explain to the broader nation that policy areas regarding immigration and the treatment of refugees, whilst technically distinct, define our collective national mindset vis-à-vis our relationship to foreign countries and their populations.

Indeed, whichever side you are on, you would have to admit that this mindset is suffering from lack of long term vision. Not only Australia’s foreign policies were barely mentioned in the 2010 federal election campaign, but when the topic made headlines, it was focused on sensationalized emotional reactions on what should be forbidden. There was no mention of planning for these migrations, given that global human movements will ineluctably continue, irrespective of the Australian policy of the day.

An alternative view would be to consider the terms of the immigration and refugee debate in the context of this global mass human migration that started with globalisation, and that is well underway to change our world in the next decades. In other words, to oblige the most rationalist debaters we should run the experiment to put ‘emotional’ arguments aside (the “fear” as well as the “compassion”) and find out if the “simple logic” that tells us what “everyone knows” stands the test of objective research.

In deference to the conservative commentators…

The ABC Drum recently published two pieces from Ben Ethlam and Tad Tietze advocating in favour of more open refugee. They pointed out that number of refugee arrivals are in line with broad OECD statistics and that the fear of an abnormal boat surge was not substantiated. Moreover they argued that “counting the boats” is a political game that refugee advocates are doomed to lose, as you only count what you want to cut.

Judging by the inflamed rhetoric and copious comments left on the website demanding to “crack down” on the issue, calling for a constructive long term vision might sound like an understatement. Instead we have a condensed  Westphalian liturgy reflecting a world order shaped by the model of states operating within strict geographic boundaries and dominated by the imperative to secure their own welfare.

People adhering to these world views tend to invoke the broad topic of national security, which they conveniently restrict to border protection and to the even narrower issue of refugee arrivals. As an example, right wing conservative columnist Andrew Bolt maintains a biased graph [as colourfully demonstrated by crikey blogger @Pollytics here] on his blog to track those numbers and apparently demonstrate how government policies work as direct incentives for people smugglers.

Another line of arguments is the outrage at “queue jumpers” trampling the existing immigration process. Those “chronic opportunists” apparently push the cynicism at abusing the generosity of our democratic nations.

The fear of the disruption of our social and economic order also features highly in the reactions which invoke more compete for jobs due to imported workers, increased population numbers in an already strained environment, as well as security risks linked to allowing immigrants who don’t ‘fit in’ the Australian.

Finally, if all those specific arguments were not enough, it is the customary left-wring “drivel” that gets the most pounding. Conservative commentators accuse their complacent opposites isolated in their inner city bubbles to not only threaten our national interest, but to also ignoring the migrants own interest in encouraging more human trafficking.

In deference to the conservative commentators, the Coalition and Labor have both promised they would halt the flow of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat, actually trading off an informed quality debate on immigration, foreign security, future vision of the social infrastructure of this country, against a populist campaign on refugees. As if “stopping the boats” was the solution for immigration issues, and enforcing it single-mindedly was going to act as a thermostat to keep the expansion of our population as well as pressure on jobs under control.

In order to make this populist focus palatable to constituents who would not appreciate to be blatantly told they are racists, politicians have had to develop a narrative by which Australians are inherently generous, and Australia has taken more than its fair share of refugees over the past sixty-five years. This positive narrative has been cited by the government of the day, irrespective of its party-political persuasion.

On those numbers …

The UNHCR numbers on refugees published in 2009 reveal that the top 2 countries refugees come from are Afghanistan and Iraq with 2,887,123 and 1,785,212 refugees respectively. Those two countries are war zones in which Australia has direct responsibility, being part of the ‘coalition’ who started military operations. So it would not sound unreasonable that in this geopolitical involvement Australia not made good to its military industry, enjoyed contracts coming out of the reconstruction but also fulfilled its responsibilities in looking after the civilian casualties.

The quantification of this effort is also worth looking at. In absolute numbers of refugee intake, Australia ranks #47 between Montenegro and Senegal. The countries accepting the most refugees being Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Germany!
Brought back to a ratio of number of refugees per inhabitants Australia ranks #68 between… Egypt and Mali!

Clearly those numbers show that by any international standard Australia is far from being swamped. However, even such quantitative analysis lead to endless disputes and toxic distractions to the real issue.

Arrival City: a considered piece of work for a mature debate

Progressing this debate in a mature manner, moving away from thinking like bean counters stuck behind their sandbags and understanding the global trends driving migration worldwide is exactly the approach proposed by Globe and Mail European Bureau Chief  Doug Saunders in his book Arrival City.

Saunders traveled across America, Africa, Europe and Asia and took notes of his encounters with the participants of this global migration. He visited them in their favelas, shantytows, banlieues, Gecekondu in those communities they land after leaving their rural conditions to come and knock on the doors of the urban world.

‘Arrival City’ is actually all the more powerful that it is not the perspective of a refugee activist or a migration advocate, but of what a ‘mainstream’ readership would consider a balanced journalist, whom they could not suspect of crypto-leftism. This might sound like a strange comment to make, but it is actually quite important in the context of this piece. Here is a considered experienced journalist, who has little bias towards an activist agenda, who spent the time to understand the terms of the migration issue, who conducted a proper anthropological study, and concluded that global forces will ineluctably keep driving this global migration. His work shows that nations who invest in making this process a success will not only do good to millions of migrants aspiring to join the global middle-class, but will also do good to themselves by boosting their economy and social fabric. In other words, despite taking a different route Doug Saunders reaches the same conclusion as the most fervent migrant advocates, and demonstrates that compassion and ethical choices will actually be rewarded economically.

The ineluctability of the migration is the first insight and should not come as a surprise. Pick a history book. What do you see? Maps. With lots of arrows indicating population movements. It is a feature of our species that started millions of years ago when our ancestors left the African savannah to colonise the rest of the world. It has not stopped since. Migrations have made and destroyed ancient empires; in a more recent period they changed the face of countries such as the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand because of the white man arrival. It would be a bizarre proposition in the context of this long term historical perspective to deny this right of migration to newcomers.

Saunders also points out that restrictive immigration policies have traditionally been implemented by authoritarian regimes that eventually collapsed under the pressure they tried to contain. So how can a modern open democracy achieve in the long run what the iron curtain could not in Europe 20 years ago? When the pressure becomes untenable, the authoritarian dam eventually bursts. It is in the nature of open democracies to be open to migrants. Political leaders who don’t understand that are flirting with professional incompetency.

Selective immigration is also an issue flagged in Arrival City. This form of guilt-free discrimination that consists in using a point system to select the preferred migrants with the right profile and skills ends-up being a long term error. “To bring in only urban educated elites to fill often low qualified vacancies is a waste of human potential and foreign policy”. Canadian statistics show that “in 2008 60% of immigrants with a university degree were working in jobs that required an apprenticeship or less. It leads to frustrating situations, whereas offering a social elevator to families really in need of it, will end up delivering far better outcomes in the long run.”

If historical and social consideration were not enough, it is by his prosecution of the long term and global economic benefits that Saunders really masters the case.

The economic circuits of remittance sent back to villages is often ignored benefit from this global migration. We are not exactly talking about pocket money: Saunders remarked that “each year Bangladesh receives almost $11b from resident living abroad, equivalent to export earnings. Far larger and effective than the foreign aid.” Similarly in Poland, “young villagers send home $11b a year, amounting to 2.5% of Poland’s entire economy, more that almost any other industry. This foreign-remittance money, combined with Polish government pensions and other government payments, has become the main source of farm income”.

This economic dimension puts a positive light on what is often associated with a negative process motivating the denial or rejection of host countries. Refreshingly, it is using a economic view that is not serving the interests of the top-end of town and their financial speculations.

This migration is a mechanism for millions to lift themselves to the global middle class. In doing so are ready to sacrifice a generation to make the transition. To paraphrase Saunders “their migration might not be one of happiness, but it is one of Hope.” They certainly don’t see themselves are losers, and have more hunger to succeed that the millions who have already arrived.

Their arrival is a shock to established populations: it can either awaken a dormant society (as Indians did in the UK, Italians and Greeks in Australia) or anger the established “white” residents. It is the task of the politicians to explain to the population that those migrants will thrive when there is proper investment in creating a positive future. Not in investing in erecting walls and barbwires.

Those politicians need to take to time to remind their constituents that this is not new. Their great-grand parents have been there before.

We have been there before

This mechanism has worked in the 18 and 19 century in Europe making it what it is today. Migrants, refugee were knocking at the doors of the big cities of Paris, London, Berlin as the countryside was getting enclosed to focus on intensive farming, leaving no space to landless peasants who would have been cultivating open fields. The assertion of property rights and title of the land threw millions on the roads who joined the ranks of the new industrial proletariat emerging with the Industrial revolution.

This first massive wave of rural-to-urban migration was not anticipated or managed by any government and it took more than a century to adjust.

Saunders highlights 1848 as the “fulcrum point” that forced governments to deal with the phenomenon, to pass bills and to launch social programs such as the first English Public Health Act, the banning of child labour, the first real public housing development that eventually made this migration process an engine of progress and growth. As a result “a man’s chances of escaping the income category of his birth rose from one in three at the beginning of the 19 century to one in two at the end.”

Freudian Slip: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on board HMAS Broome off Darwin during the 2010 election campaign – Picture: Brad Fleet

Globalisation, its discontent, and political courage

In conclusion, history is repeating itself. Tensions experienced in the past are now happening on a grander scale and part of the much decried “Globalisation”.

It is the great irony of this debate that the majority of the voters in favour of tough border protection are traditionally supportive of the globalisation of trades, being on the right wing of the political spectrum. If those voters were consistent with their pro-globalisation sentiments they would also reach the conclusion that not only goods and services but also ‘humans’ need to be free to move around in ‘open markets’.

This contradiction typifies why globalisation has been getting such a bad name. By chance or by design, a global ruling class has been steering it to serve its own economic interests at the detriment of any social consideration. For years barriers have been abolished and controls loosened to the benefit of financial markets and multinational corporations. However, when it comes to people, things have been schizophrenic: while wealthy tourists travel around the globe more than ever before, the migration of poorer demographics has not been made easier. If anything, the discrepancy between what is allowed to the happy few and refused to the masses is making the pressure intolerable.

The irony is that Sarkozy, son of an Hungarian immigrant, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, both born overseas should know better than anyone else. Political courage would require them and their party to explain to their conservative base that the exponential commercial globalisation they want to embrace cannot be dissociated from accepting population movements of the same magnitude. Cheap goods made in developing countries and migrants are the two sides of the same coin.

Those politicians and policymakers need to turn short term denial and sandbagging into a long term positive investment.

Because in the end those migrants will keep coming, no matter what Berlin Walls or border protection patrols we put up. Steinbeck wrote it decades ago… “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him—he has known a fear beyond every other.”

{ leLaissezFaire }

Young immigrants arriving in Australia, 1921 – National Archives of Australia