You're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Karl Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new measure that allows state law enforcement to arrest migrants who entered the US without authorization. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador m Low has accused the governor of using such measures for political gain ahead of the twenty twenty four US presidential election, and he says that his country will challenge the measure. No question that immigration ats front and center
as we enter the twenty twenty four presidential election. In fact, swing state voters see US Mexico border security is a greater priority than the foreign policy crises that have increasingly dominated President Joe Biden's attention over the last few months. We're talking Israel, Hamas, and then of course what's going
on in Ukraine. This, according to an October Bloomberg News Morning Consul poll, what we've got with us a great voice to help us understand migration and also to help dispel what he argues are common myths and misconceptions around migration. Heindehas is professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He's also the director of International Migration Institute and the author of the new book How Migration Really Works, The Facts about the most divisive issue in politics. Professor to
has good to have you with us this afternoon. How are you.
I'm fine, Thank you well.
Thanks for staying up late in Amsterdam and joining us. We really do appreciate it. Hey, if you go back in history, for pretty much as long as we'venn had historical record, migration has been politically divisive. I mean, this is the type of thing that sparked wars in the past for borders. Why has it been so politically divisive?
I think migration is this perfect issue to detract the attention away, distract your attention away from other issues where people aren'thappy about. And I think migration is the perfect scapegoat as well. But it also provides an opportunity for politicians to position themselves as strong leaders against the common enemy. So it is very attractive for politicians to draw the migration card. And we see that all across the West.
But like you said, it's not something new. I mean, if you go as century back in the US, there was a lot of hostility towards Southern European migrants, Catholic migrants, Jewish migrants, German migrants, and you see it for all countries. So this phenomenon as such is not new. I think what's worrying is the divisive of an inflammatory language we're
hearing from politicians. Of course, migration comes with its problems, but it's now being sort of magnified to this essential threat to societies, and I think that is really problematic because the debate is more and more disconnected from what's happening on the ground.
Can you walk us through maybe some of the most common misconceptions that you hear about migration and what your responses would be to those.
Yeah. Now, I think the most common sort of idea that many people share across the political board, from left to right, is this idea that the swelling miles of people from poor countries are moving to rich countries and that our borders are increasingly overwhelmed. And it's linked to this idea that poverty, inequality, warfare pushes more and more
people to live their homelands. Now, of course there are issues on the border, and certainly in the US case, that's not something we can ignore, but if you zoom a little bit out and you look at the overall volume of migration in the world, we talk about three percent of the will population, and that percentage remained remarkably
stable over the last century. Basically, there has been clear shifts in terms of directions of migration, but we don't really have evidence of migration as such as spinning out of control, although you'd get that impression of course if you look at particular border areas and the issues the US is currently dealing with. But I think if you zoom out, migration is essentially not driven by poverty and misery.
The main driver of migration also to the US has always been the economy and particular labor demand, and what you see right now both in terms of legal any legal migration in the US cannot be disconnected to the fact that use in employment as the fifty year low right now, labor shortages are huge. We have an unprecedented peak of vacancies topic topping I think ten million right now, which is really historical records. And these things are connected. So this is not so much about a sort of
poverty push what people think. It is really primarily about. There's opportunities and that's always been the case. It's always been the case with immigration.
It sounds like you and you're making the point, Professor, that the US can absorb the immigration that we're seeing.
Well, I think the problem is that quite a lot of migration is undocumented. It's about the legal migration, and that reveals I think a huge issue all across the West. There is simply not enough political support for creating more legal pannels for lower skilled migrants. And we need we
sorted to with the COVID pandemic. That these people do all sorts of essential jobs in the economy, but this is not the kind of migrants for which we give in our visas, which means that people find other ways to enter countries, and I think that is one of the biggest causes of the search and border crossings which you see. Besides of quarter, there's also people fleeing conflict.
So to put it simply, the best way to really really curb migration is to wreck your economy, and we see indeed in times with high unemployment economic recessions, migration goes down. When the economy does well, a lot of
people come. And it's partly what you see and most of the migration also to the US is about legal migration, legal temporary migrant admissions to the US reaching all time high under the Trump presidency up to six million, and after a sort of COVID slack, it's back to five million of last year, And it reflects the actually very good state of the US economy. So to put it differently, if you want, if you don't like immigration, that is the price you pay for being a wealthy, open market
economy as the US. But the same goes for the UK and many other European countries.
So under the framework that you're working with that you know the only way to solve micration yould Well, one way would be to wreck your economy. Obviously we wouldn't want to do that in the US. But underneath your framework, did you come up with ideas or solutions about I mean, we do have a lot of people trying to cross the border illegally. How do you solve that? How do you even begin to start finding solutions for that?
Well, you cannot do anything if you don't do anything about the demound factor. And I think what really shows that another thing sort of myth is that you know, politicians get tougher and tougher in immigration. Yet it's true on the level of rhetoric, but if you look at practices, we haven't found in a huge research project any difference between left leaning and right leaning politicians in terms of
the policies they implement. For instance, a lot of particularly Republican side you hear a lot of tough talk on immigration. At the same time, labor enforcement is symbolically low in the whole of the US. Just one statistic, the number of employers that get prosecuted for employing undocumented migrants is somewhere between ten and fifteen a year without any zero's added. It is roughly the same chance of being hit by lightning.
And it shows to whatever you call it, that's call it the hypocrisy of politicians that you know, I have a lot of tough talk to say about immigration, but a lot of these.
Yeah, and a lot of these A lot of the big examples of this are in actually states where that are most aggressively rhetorically anti this migration. Who are migrants Because in order to actually leave where you were born, leave where you're from, leave your family behind, that takes a person who's willing to make a lot of sacrifice and do these things and work, in my opinion, work very hard. What have you found in your research.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we find. That was true in the past of Europeans going to the United States. It's still true for migrants. Migrants are what we call a positive selection of people in home countries, which means these are the exceptional people, the entrepreneurial people. Three percent of the well population migrates, that means ninety seven percent
stays home. So migrants are almost by definition those who want to take risks or entrepreneurial who want to improve their lives, and that is still the case by and large. So migrants are a positive sub selection. And that is actually why research is found that immigration decreases crime, very contrary to what politicians say, because migrants are often very community oriented, business oriented. They don't come to countries to
become criminals. And that's why we find in research the exact opposite of what politicians tend to claim.
But I want to get back to a conversation with Heinde Hash, professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He's also the director of the International Migration Institute and the author of the new book, How Migration Really Works. The fact is about the most divisive issue in politics.
Professor Dehas joins us from Amsterdam this afternoon. So, Professor, one thing that I wanted to discuss was public opinion and what you've found in different parts of the world where you've studied this, and how democrats, how Republicans in the US think about immigration as a political issue, because your findings, I think would surprise a lot of people.
Yeah, what is interesting, it is indeed true, is most people would expect that more Republicans think negatively about migration compared to Democrats leaning voters who tend to be slightly more positive. But if you look at trends through time, it really becomes interesting. In the US, clearly the share of people who do positively up migration on both sides of the political divide between Democrats and Republicans growing, So there is no sort of public backlash against immigration, which
what you would think if you listen to politicians. And we find the same in Europe, and we can explain that because it's people get used to the presence of migrants' fheares often diminish and people start to think more positively about immigration. So there is no big public backlash against immigration. What you see is that the rhetorics have grown increasingly
tough by politicians. It is more on the level of political rhetorus that you see this huge polarization between a sort of pro and anti migration.
But is that rhetoric working. Does it lead to people changing their minds, does it lead to public opinion shifting, and does it lead to candidates being elected?
Well, in the broad sense not. But there is of course a share of voters that is worried about immigration, that sees immigration is a big threat, and that vote is being mobilized, and that is still a significant share. But the interesting thing is that the share of people thinking more positive will doop migration is actually increasing. It may, of course be that people on the fringes may be emboldened by divisive, inflammatory language, and that is of course
a problem. It could spark violence and discrimination and racism. But overall, there is no clear trend towards growing senophobia, growing racism. The trend is rather in the other direction. That is actually very surprising, and what it shows that there is I think there is a fair share of voters who wants to hear a different story because this pro anti division is simply not working anymore. Migration is of all times, migration comes with the share of problems.
It comes also with a lot of benefits. But it's not something that can just think away. And I always say to ask you know me, for instance, are you in favor against migration, to be like asking an economist, are you in favor against the economy. That's not a
serious way of talking about immigration. And that is partly why the debate is so incredibly stuck, because both camps sort of dig in, cave in, and cherry pick evidence, and there are not many politicians who dare to tell the true story about immigration, which bio necessity is a much more nuanced one than the one we usually hear when we listen to politicians.
So what did your findings find with the nuance of who actually benefits from migration in the countries that are bringing people in, that are seeing more migrants, who benefits there?
Well, migrants make the whole economy bigger basically, so the whole economic pie is simply growing. And if you look at average effects on wages, for instance, we find very very small effects. And there you can discuss about methods and data, but the fact the effect is so small that it is pretty insignificant. When you look at higher
and lower incomes, you see a clear difference. It is particularly already affluent to benefit most economically from immigration, because these are, of course the people using services migants provide, often owning businesses that help them to boost their profits. But the lowest income earners, amongst whom also many former migrants, of people living on minimum wage, for instance, don't benefit much from immigration, and in some cases they may lose
out a little bit. It doesn't mean that immigration is the cause for the long wage technoation we have seen for lower incomes in the United States. But it is in a way logical that people who earn really low wages have the feeling what's in it for me? Because these are also the people who see, of course the day to day consequences of immigration in their daily lives. So in that sense, the idea that they don't benefit as much from immigration as already effluent people is correct.
But it doesn't mean that migans take away jobs or are responsible for the long term wage technolu that we have seen in many Western countries amongst lower income owners.
Professor de Haas. Let's say that by some imaginary force, you became in charge of immigration policy here in the US. No question, we face a crisis at the US Mexico border. How would you solve it?
I think I would organize a national debate about immigration, and that is a serious debate, and that should the definition be a debate about the kind of society and economy you want to live in, particularly when we look at lower skilled jobs. Because there's broad support also in the US to allow people to come in who do higher skilled jobs. But it is a fact of life and certainly in the future that we need also lower skilled immigrants. So you can only solve this in two ways.
Either you create more legal channels for lower skilled workers that will avoid a lot of misery at the border. And these policies that we've been trying to implement a border enforcement that go back more than thirty years, and we've been trying to do the same again and again and again, and it doesn't work because people are still attracted by jobs, or you make those jobs not available anymore. I do enforce labor law, you know you're really going
to prosecute employers massively. I don't think that is very likely. I'd rather have a different debate about the kinds of jobs we create that are jobs that are not attractive for native workers, that attract migrant workers. We really need to think about how we organize our economy. For instance, if you think about care, who's going to take care
in the future of our children, our elderly. We need a serious debate about immigration where we no longer deny these economic realities, and on that base we can make decisions. But we really cannot divorce the whole debate on immigration from a broader debate how to organize our economy. Well, that's a long story, it's a complex story, and that
is the whole point. I think we've seen too much politics of denial over the last thirty years, and that also explains the mess we're in, not just in the US, but also in European Union, where this real demand follow is killed labor, which is going to stay because of aging, because of increasing education of the native workforce. All indicators show that we really need a debate about this, but also a debate about work and jobs and for instance,
minimum wage. These are all connected with immigration, and I cannot explain it fully right, Don't I think this is a serious debate.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's been really helpful and you got to come back and join us once again. Heinde Haas is Professor of sociology at the Diversity of Amsterdam. Check out his new book, How Migration Really Works The Facts about the most divisive issue in politics.