Perception vs Reality

jamesmorgan

wotsthat wrote: »

I agree to an extent but the reason the migrant is wishing to travel here is because their home country has failed to provide better opportunities.

According to Alan Milburn last week on R4 there are 40,000 foreign doctors in the NHS. We could restrict these numbers - would that help the home countries or just provide an incentive for their governments to continue to fail to provide opportunities?

The first point I would make is that these are complex problems, and as such, simple solutions are unlikely to be effective. Economic migrants move country to achieve a better standard of living (and greater opportunity). This is largely a reflection of the different levels of productivity between countries. Whilst it is convenient to blame this on individual governments, in reality the situation is more complex, and often a reflection on centuries of imbalance of power. Powerful governments have a tendency to interfere with free markets (sometimes through tariffs, but more typically through subsidies). The interference with free markets is often an obstacle for poorer nations to improve their productivity. The EU is a good example of a powerful organisation talking a good story on free trade, but in reality is heavily protectionalist.

The primary solutions should not be about whether immigration is permitted or restricted, but how can we encourage countries to converge their productivity (aka standard of living). Within the EU this issue is exacerbated by freedom of movement of people. Whilst this should always be the end game for free trade, it is not a sensible policy where there are widely different productivity rates between countries. The free trade argument is that if there is freedom of movement of goods, services and capital, then capital will move to low productivity countries where labour is cheap, and in so doing will improve productivity in those countries. However, if freedom of movement of labour is added into the equation, the labour will typically move faster than the capital. You then get an exodus of people moving out of the country, so that the investment never gets a chance to move in.

Even just within the UK we see large migration of people from poorer areas of the country to London. It is very difficult for governments to stop this process. Perhaps the solution is try to equalise flow of capital and people (either speed up capital or slow down movement of people). However, as with all government interventions, this approach is likely to be full of unforeseen problems. Bottom line is that I don't know the optimum solution, but I'm not convinced that politicians have yet identified the real problem (which for me is that eastern European countries are losing their talent and future workforce).

N1AK

Bantex wrote: »

So you think that driving down wages is a good thing?

I think, which in itself is a considerable head start on some of the points being put out here.

And yes I do. Because I don't live in some fictional universe where everyone can be paid £100,000 a year to stock shelves at Waitrose a couple of days a week. Because it is a waste of human potential, and demeaning, to encourage people who are capable of more demanding skilled work to stick with entry level roles by artificially maintaining high wages.

If you really have to be so naive as to try and turn a nuanced issue like this into everyone having to be in favour of:
1/ Driving down wages
2/ Driving up prices
Then I'd happily stand by the former.

And that all remains true even though I strongly believe that the minimum wage is too low, and that there are areas in which employee rights should be strengthened

N1AK

jamesmorgan wrote: »

However, there seems very little discussion of the impact of this economic migration on the countries they are moving from. How will they cope with losing their best talent? At the moment there are 20 countries in the world with negative population growth - 19 of these are in Europe (mainly eastern Europe). Many of these countries are predicted to lose 25% of their population by 2060. This isn't an even loss of their demographic - it is striping out the young and productive and leaving behind the elderly.

I actually agree that it is a potential concern. Where I differ is that I am far more dubious about how likely it is to happen. The GDPs of the Baltic States have increase by something like 600% since the mid-90s even including the financial crisis. The continued growth will eventually, as living standards get closer to Western Europe's, draw emigrants and other workers from the west back in.

Even if that didn't happen then if population became an issue for these countries they could easily ease restrictions on immigrants from other nations.

N1AK

dktreesea wrote: »

They probably can't afford to move. From a cash flow point of view, for a while at least, it would be a disaster. They could have a council house so decent rent, even when they work, plus they currently have a steady flow of income. What if the job/relocation don't work out? They will have lost their council house. They could find themselves out of work and homeless in their new city.

All very true, and a real problem that politicians not only aren't fixing, but aren't even talking about fixing. I guess the polling they've done implies they'd lose more votes than it'd get them It seems pretty clear that "get on your bike" is still seen as a toxic message by the public at large.

However, it only emphasises that native unemployment can often have no relation at all to immigration. If someone in the North East isn't willing to move to find work then it doesn't matter if no immigrants take jobs in London or 10,000 do, they'd still be unemployed either way.

N1AK

jamesmorgan wrote: »

Yes, but you are making it from the perspective that it is a good thing that we have large economic migration. In reality it has benefits for the UK, but is greatly outweighed by the negative impacts on the countries where the immigrants are coming from.

I understand the argument that that is not our problem, but I fear that in the long run it will become our problem. A healthy Europe only works if all countries benefit.

One potential flaw with your argument is that even if the UK was allowed to, and chose to, limit immigration from these countries it doesn't mean that the vast majority of them wouldn't go elsewhere.

If the issue is the best and the brightest moving, and the ones we're talking about are the ones inherently willing to emigrate, then they'll move to another country in Europe or elsewhere.

Seabee42

Driving down wages is causing problems in this country because of working tax credits housing benefits etc. So yeah the employer can pay minimum wage but unless your packed in accommodation you can not live on it so we have this nutty system where the state is subsidising those wages. What should be happening is if people could not live on those wages the wages would go up to encourage people to apply. This should then lower state subsidies which really shouldn't exist.

So where an immigrant illegal or not might be prepared to live 6 to a shed to keep living costs down the job is filled. This is clearly great for the employer and possibly the immigrant but who else?

jamesmorgan

N1AK wrote: »

One potential flaw with your argument is that even if the UK was allowed to, and chose to, limit immigration from these countries it doesn't mean that the vast majority of them wouldn't go elsewhere.

If the issue is the best and the brightest moving, and the ones we're talking about are the ones inherently willing to emigrate, then they'll move to another country in Europe or elsewhere.

This is one area where the UK shouldn't be looking to implement any specific policy, but to influence the EU to amend its current policy. There isn't freedom of movement outside the EU, so whilst some EU citizens may be able to emigrate outside of the EU, numbers will typically be small.

jamesmorgan

N1AK wrote: »

Even if that didn't happen then if population became an issue for these countries they could easily ease restrictions on immigrants from other nations.

I'm not sure of the exact details, but I believe when you join the Schengen area, you agree to a common immigration policy.

This is a graph of Latvian population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population-of-Latvia.PNG. You can find similar graphs for other eastern European countries. If they could find easy ways of reversing their population decline, I'm sure they would be having some effect by now.

N1AK

jamesmorgan wrote: »

This is a graph of Latvian population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population-of-Latvia.PNG. You can find similar graphs for other eastern European countries. If they could find easy ways of reversing their population decline, I'm sure they would be having some effect by now.

Finding an easy way and implementing it certainly aren't the same thing, especially if the policies wouldn't be politically popular. Latvia has considerable scope to allow greater immigration from outside the EU but there is resistance to doing so from people who are concerned about immigration

Ultimately, any country with a birth rate as low as the Baltic nations have should expect to see considerable population decline.

* also that graph is awful. They couldn't skew the origin to make the change look bigger if they tried!

jamesmorgan

N1AK wrote: »

Finding an easy way and implementing it certainly aren't the same thing, especially if the policies wouldn't be politically popular. Latvia has considerable scope to allow greater immigration from outside the EU but there is resistance to doing so from people who are concerned about immigration

Ultimately, any country with a birth rate as low as the Baltic nations have should expect to see considerable population decline.

* also that graph is awful. They couldn't skew the origin to make the change look bigger if they tried!

Yes, sorry about the graph - agree that it is a distortion, just happened to be the first one I found. However, the situation in Latvia is pretty disastrous (http://qz.com/64717/latvia-is-the-best-example-of-an-economic-disaster-now-defined-as-success/). I also agree that nervousness about immigration may be an issue - not least that the most likely source of immigrants is probably from Russia. I suspect they could be a little worried that they become another Crimea (where all the 'local' population suddenly vote to join Russia). I don't think there are easy answers to sort this out. We may like to moan a little in the UK, but I think I know where I would rather be at the moment.