Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

Re-open the Borders 167
goods and services from the countries from which they come. Whereas
foreign aid and the conditions attached to it have on balance impoverished
rather than helped the peoples of the Third World, remittances go direct to
the families of the people who have emigrated, to use as they think fit.
With their usual self-serving hypocrisy, the authorities and some
orthodox economists of the rich countries argue that remittances are
misused. Much the same argument is, wrongly, used to justify tying aid to
projects chosen by ‘donors’ and the conditions attached to it. The recipients
of remittances are accused of using them for consumption rather than
investment. But the argument makes little sense. The native inhabitants of
the industrialised countries are not expected to invest their wages, and their
failure to do so is not used as a justification for not paying them. The reality
is that remittances are used for a variety of purposes, ranging from the satisfaction
of elementary needs to the acquisition of consumer durables and
sometimes for investment, in particular to buy land. Remittances may at
times cause some economic problems, but it is unlikely that they do so more
than other sources of foreign exchange, including exports. And alternative
sources of foreign exchange, superior or otherwise, may in any case not be
available. The criticisms of the economic effects of remittances are in reality
yet another example of the way in which the general prejudice against
immigration is reflected in a critical assessment of its effects. In the current
unequal state of the world, emigration and the resulting remittances are
probably one of the best mechanisms currently available for redistributing
the world’s income in favour of poorer countries.
Others display concern that migration causes a loss to the Third World of
skilled and enterprising people, even a new form of pillage of the Third World,
using the brains and skills of its peoples for the benefit of the rich countries.
Calculations of ‘losses’ are made on the basis of totting up the costs of
educating the migrants in their countries of origin. This concern is hardly
compatible with the fact that existing immigration controls impose few
restrictions on the movement of people with skills that are needed or desired
in the industrialised countries, such as scientific, business, medical,
computing, artistic, cultural and sporting skills. It is estimated, for example,
that in the period up to 1987 sub-Saharan Africa lost 30 per cent of its highly
qualified people through legal emigration. It is the unskilled whose
movements are restricted or prevented altogether. To be consistent, this
concern ought to imply that restrictions on the movement of unskilled people
should be removed, while skilled people should be forced to stay where they
are (which of course would contravene the provisions on free movement in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). It is true that many immigrants
who work, sometimes illegally, in unskilled jobs in the industrialised countries
are people who are enterprising and sometimes also highly educated and
skilled in a formal sense. This is particularly the case with asylum seekers and
refugees. In their case it might even be argued that they should stay at home
and carry on their struggle against repressive and corrupt regimes. But it is