Immigration - the key to economic success?
Which comes first in a country: the immigrants or the economic success?
It’s like the chicken-and-egg paradox. If there was no promise of success, then immigrants wouldn’t come; meanwhile, if there were no immigrants, there wouldn’t be enough people to succeed (in cosmopolitan countries like the US). Of course, there are exceptions to the rule… China has enough residents to be successful without immigration and Qatar is a great example of a country that had money before they had immigrants (although the immigrants were clearly necessary to continue the success). But it’s hard to make any unbiased conclusions without at least looking at some data:
- The countries with the highest ratio of immigrants include Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Nobody denies that these countries have economies that are highly dependent on their immigrant class of laborers and intellectuals.
- The countries with the lowest ratio of immigrants are Vietnam, Indonesia, Iraq, Guyana, and Afghanistan. Need I say more?
- Australia is the only country with a population of over 20 million as well as an immigrant ratio of over 15% (the ratio is 19.93%). As I’ve mentioned before, Australia is a great place to be.
- The US has the highest overall population of immigrants (38.4 million, or 12.8% of the population). Anybody who lives in the US can tell you that most of these immigrants are part of the older generation, so they are more of a cause for the US’s success than the result. Also, it is common knowledge that the US’s immigration boom happened around the turn of the 20th Century (plus or minus 50 years).
- India and China both currently have immigrant ratios below 0.6%… they don’t need immigrants to be successful, since they already have plenty of people.
Of course, to make any real conclusions, we’d have to thoroughly analyze historical immigration data and compare it with per-capita GDP data. I think my little investigation, however, might suggest that such a study would not be unfounded. Opening the borders has always led to a positive effect overall, and I think that countries should seriously considering doing so. It will cost more money to have a larger pool of residency/naturalization applications, but I think that this might pay for itself with the increased revenue.
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Consider Qatar. 70% of the economy and 85% of the exports are oil and petroleum product. The prosperity of this country is not due to the immigrants, but to the oil. It is a fact that most (90% as of 2002) of the workforce is composed of foreigners, but that is because Qataris feel they do not need to work, they can just pay someone to work. These workers are not immigrants, they are “guest workers” in the purest meaning of this phrase. If there were no foreigners to hire, Qataris would pump the oil themselves, or get Exxons of this world to do it.
Similarly Kuwait and UAE — they are not rich because of immigrants, but due to the oil under their sand.
Singapore has one of the lowest birthrate in the world, so their workforce is augmented by guest workers (but not immigrants - it is not that easy to immigrate to Singapore).
So, to answer your question, no, immigration is not the key to success. An educated and motivated workforce is, regardless where it comes from; and large amounts of natural resources help as well.
Well, I don’t know if Qatar can be considered “successful” just yet. As we move away from oil, the key will be to see if they can maintain their success… and I think it’s quite possible that the immigrants will play a significant role (as they did in Dubai).