Plan B Forum

Tim Harford The Undercover Economist

The real benefits of migration

‘The supposed costs or benefits of immigration always omit one crucial group: the migrants themselves’

Woman with the guts to tell the truth over migrants,” applauded the Daily Mail. “All the compassion of stage 4 bone cancer,” sneered a columnist in The Guardian. It’s no surprise that when UK home secretary Theresa May gave a speech about migration that was designed to polarise opinion, she succeeded.

Among policy wonks and fact-checkers, one statement in the speech found the spotlight: “The evidence . . . shows that while there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero.” (Translation: immigration costs us nothing but we want to reduce it anyway.)

Is May’s summary of the evidence correct? Probably not, although there is room for reasonable people to disagree. What is clear is that the recent large and uncontrolled rush of working-age immigrants from the European Union has undoubtedly been positive for the public finances, unlike British natives, who have been a huge drain on the public finances for some time.

But there was a far bigger lacuna in May’s speech, and most commentators have missed it: the fact that these supposed costs or benefits always omit one crucial group. That group is the migrants themselves. They prosper hugely from being allowed to migrate yet that prosperity hardly ever figures in debates about immigration.

This is odd. I would not expect schools to fare well on a cost-benefit analysis if we ignored any gains to the under-18s. Nor would hospitals look like a good investment if we counted only the advantages to non-patients. Yet it seems that migration may still be mildly beneficial even after disqualifying any benefit to the people most likely to gain — the migrants. That is remarkable.

Of course, one might make the case that because migrants are foreign nationals, we are entitled to make their welfare a lower priority. My colleague Martin Wolf is one of the few commentators to bother asserting this openly; most simply seem to assume that foreigners count for nothing. In a world where we rightly abhor racial and sexual discrimination, discriminating against people because of their nationality is widely accepted. It is also a legal obligation for UK employers. ... "