Immigration: Just What Do National Borders Mean?

Immigration is contentious because identity politics taps into so many of our primal fears -- the breakdown of political boundaries seems to imply the breakdown of cultural identity. I remember writing a book review on The Inheritance of Loss, which is part of an entire genre of diaspora narratives, and it seems to approach the immigrant experience as one would approach exile: lost, incomplete, and restored only when reunited with the homeland.

The context in which I wrote the following, however, is far less abstract though no less contentious. In the summer after my freshman year, I spent some time putting together a literature review for an economics professor then working on the relationship between immigration and trade. Many of the articles I read are referenced in the subsequent article, published in Harvard Economics Review in the spring of 2007. Due to the length of the article, this post will appear in five parts -- apologies!

Stealing jobs, dodging taxes, on the brink of religious extremism or political terrorism: even as negative images associated with immigrants fracture and multiply, developed nations must confront the challenges and opportunities presented by immigration.

Though immigration has made quite a place for itself in the political forum, the responses it elicits tend to be overwhelmingly one-sided. It might be acceptable – even commonplace – for American political leaders to argue for the free movement of goods under the banner of free trade, but far fewer dare apply the same liberalization to the movement of people.

Those few reckless enough to adopt such a stance do so at the risk of voter backlash. Former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle unexpectedly lost the November 2004 election, in part due to his perceived “pro-immigration” tendencies. In the same election, Republican Representative David Drier suffered at the polls after radio shows attacked his apparent laxity on immigration – in response, he wisely reformed and sponsored legislation that punishes the hiring of illegal aliens[1]. The European debate on immigration, on the other hand, occurs at the margins of politics, though it is no less heated than its American counterpart and is often accompanied by back-and-forth accusations of racism.

For all the uproar it causes, immigration essentially stems from the same root causes as trade: inequalities in the wages of labor. This is quite clear in the case of non-skilled labor or cheaply produced goods, both of which arrive in first world nations in droves. At the same time, it also holds true for skilled-labor -- thus the phenomenon of "brain drain" -- and the products and services generated by it. In the end, both goods and labor will, quite naturally, gravitate toward places where they command higher relative prices. So, if trade and immigration are fundamentally similar, it leads us to the sensitive question why the former is overwhelmingly preferred over the latter.

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[1] “Dreaming of the Other Side of the Wire”. The Economist (March) 2005.