From the beginning of 17th century,
migration of people to a different country has always been in trend due to assortment
causes like immigration, refuge or employment. Study of Economics finds miscellaneous
benefits for both sending and destination (host/ accepting) countries. From
unskilled labor to professionals, researchers has always found reasons to
believe that increase in population to a certain extent through inviting
foreigners would gradually eradicate industrial crises and stabilizes the
economic growth of the host country in the long term. While the sending country
benefits over using the limited resources of their own, rationally.
However, population remains a global problem of underdeveloped
and developing countries. Extensive birth rate not only affects the per capita
income but also hinders the micro economy i.e. imbalance of demand -supply of
food and basic necessities causing inflation, social disturbances, health care and sanitation
problems. It has been noticed since decades that any developing country like China,
India, and Bangladesh with a higher population rate has more economic and non
economic problems than any other country. These problems multiply with number
of factors when the burden of immigration applies on such countries. Accepting
immigrants can play a vital role in the countries growth but an irrational
welcome of foreign citizens for a lifetime can also lead to a threat at the
same time.
The
Factor Question
Since few decades the world has witnessed millions
of immigrant’s movement from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran
and Iraq. People from these countries fled from their home countries to the
neighboring border nations due different reasons of conflict. Is it really
necessary for accepting countries to quantify the number of factors before
accepting those refugees? If the answer is yes, how can the people are
quantified in efficiency?
Quantifying
Human Efficiency
The host country always has the data of its own
population which can be used vis-a-vis gender ratio of the immigrants. Theoretically,
the country with imbalanced sex ratio would be desirous to stabilize the future
growth of the population. For e.g. On
average, Russia and Ukraine has 0.91 males per female on the contrary there are
4.81 males per female in Qatar. Thus, the host country might not accept massive
homogenous immigrants from foreign land to double the effect of their existing
sex ratio.
This essay used the data from the ‘2007 U.S. Survey of Business Owners’ that
immigrants are tend to be more laborious with entrepreneur skills in comparison
to the citizens of the home country.
Immigrants have been found to have higher
business ownership & entrepreneurship skill rate than the non-immigrants. Approximately
one out of ten immigrant workers owns a business and 620 of 100,000 immigrants
(0.62 percent) start a business each month. Nearly 20 percent of
immigrant-owned businesses started with $50,000 or more in startup capital,
compared with 15.9 percent of non-immigrant-owned businesses in United States
of America. This could be the reason that opportunistic immigrants comes from
difficult situations which stimulate and motivates them for growth and money in
new country. However, it has to be
figured out in advance the ratio of percentage population is skilled and
unskilled. United States of America has
the highest number of 14.2 percent of world’s population of total immigrants
followed by Germany. Educated Immigrants or Immigrant’s education can be the
best investment the host or accepting country can make. Apparently, the well
produced giants of two continents know the analytical and balanced infusion of
educated foreigners in their economy.
A well planned architecture of economic
layouts created the significance of required number of qualifications needed in
the host country. Undoubtedly, United Kingdom, India, United Stated of America,
Sweden has topped the most considerate and successful startup in the world
since a decade wherein not all has been initiated by the citizens of home
country.
Numbered 53rd in the
world Australia with the population of approximately 25 million has only 70
percent of Australian-born population (including those who moved out of country
as emigrants) and largely dependent on annual mass immigration for Accountants,
Nurses and IT Professional to cope up the country’s industrial requirements.
Economy of New Avenues: Does Immigration better off Natives?
Countries always chose methods before
accepting refugee like ‘Immigrations Policies’ to balance the professional,
skilled and unskilled labors. Almost half of the population in USA is dominated
by Mexico and other Latin American Countries which greatly influence the USA’s
per- capita income.
Realistically, the immigrants of any country bags
huge chunk of start-up ideas which are directly proportional to the industry
and economy growth rate consequently affecting its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
and Per Capita Income. According to David Card, who is a professor of Economics in University of
California, Christian Dustmann, and Ian Preston, "most
existing studies of the economic impacts of immigration suggest these impacts
are small, and on average benefit the native population". Immigrants
may often do types of work that natives are largely unwilling to do,
contributing to greater economic prosperity for the economy as a whole: for instance, Mexican migrant workers taking
up manual farm work in the United States has close to zero effect on native
employment in that occupation, which means that the effect of Mexican workers
on U.S. employment outside farm work was therefore most likely positive, since
they raised overall economic productivity. This would better off every American.
An unskilled or
skilled refugee and immigrant would work in an adverse labor condition with
lower wages than the native which is collectively a win-win situation to the
economic growth rate through payment of taxes on the income of immigrants.
This would open
new avenues of the perpetual industry and fair market conditions. Perhaps, the
diversification of the markets which has never been into the host country would
un-tap revenue creation along with usefulness of unexplored resources. A 2017 survey of the existing economic
literature found that “high-skilled migrants boost innovation and productivity
outcomes”. Immigrants can be a great way of finding new brains for
innovations and inventions. Another study, looking at the increase in Israel's
population in the 1990s due to the unrestricted immigration of Jews from the
Soviet Union, finds that the mass immigration did not undermine political
institutions, and substantially increase the quality of economic institutions.
A 2017 survey of leading economists
found that 34% of economists agreed with the statement "The influx of refugees into Germany beginning in the
summer of 2015 will generate net economic benefits for German citizens over the
succeeding decade".
A 2019 study found that “the mass infusion of 1.3 million Syrian
refugees to Jordan (total population: 6.6 million) did not harm the labor
market outcomes of native Jordanians”.
But statistically, every professional or highly
skilled foreign worker dilutes per capita income which affects the citizens of
the host country slightly creating unemployment for the native citizens and new
employment opportunities for themselves. Likewise, in central European
Countries like Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary with the barrier of English
speaking population, refugees and immigrants dominates in English speaking jobs
with relatively higher payouts.
The Break-even analogy scaling
shall be taken by host country before accepting immigrants. The significance is
to quantify the population in question which can contribute to the country’s
overall growth without sacrificing the native’s per capita income.
Immigration
in Social Economics
So far as the assimilation is concerned, the trend
of foreign born generations of immigrants and refugees has seen to be much and
equally familiar to the same culture of the natives. A study of Bangladeshi migrants in East London found that they shifted
towards the thinking styles of the wider non-migrant population in just a
single generation. A foreign born citizen mingle up with the natives same way
like any other native.
However, it is
difficult from the immigrant’s end to develop the skills of adaptability over
different civilization and culture where the natives remain dominants since the
later belong to their own homeland. This occurrence of psychological reciprocal
outlook from both ends becomes a sign of uncomfortable insecurity amongst the
society. Frequent occurrences of professional, social & judicial
discrimination leads to crimes of vary nature either from migrant of native
sides. With respect to criminal activity the general perception of the society
has always been that immigration and refugee population inflicts crime in the
society. Though there is no proven ground to defend the aforesaid statement however
some meta- analysis studies find that there is no direct relation between crime
and immigration.
Furthermore, we also found that the
criminal rates in the countries not accepting immigrants has gone up meanwhile
the countries with refugees remain the same.
Immigrants do have
an influential affect on social and public economy by using voting powers.
However, the impact of migrated culture on trust can last for at least three
generations while the impact on voting disappears after one generation.
Logically, the prices of food and
necessities must inflate due to the sudden increase of population through
immigration. But that inflation remains short term if properly planned, and
once the migrated population settles down it increases the average productivity
of the land in mid and long term.
Balances
of Immigration
The net
migration rate is ‘the
difference between the number of immigrants (people
coming into an area) and the number of emigrants (people leaving
an area) throughout the year’. When the number of immigrants is larger than the number
of emigrants, a positive net migration rate occurs. A positive net migration
rates indicates that there are more people entering than leaving an area. When
more emigrate from a country, the result is a negative net migration rate,
meaning that more people are leaving than entering the area. When there is an
equal number of immigrants and emigrants, the net migration rate is balanced.
Decisively, the host country while quantifying
the human efficiency of refugees and immigrants would discreetly ensure various
multipliers while inviting applications from foreign land. Lowering the number
of accepting application will create a recurring cycle of invitation process,
unintended cost, unwarranted documentation and time consumption while the high
density of immigrants could be a disaster for home country. The well balanced
break-even is the one where the annual increase of immigrants matches with
demand of economic and non-economic factors to maintain the Net Migration Rate.
Author: Dev Sharma
(Senior Associate & Team leader in Capital Markets & Stock Trading Firm, Lecturer (Msc. BPCG, DCL, CS, Bsc. BM) Prague, Czech Republic)
Instagram.com/thedavesharma
