Open Migration: Burma

Here's a good piece on Burma in the New Yorker by George Packer. Burma's military junta, although it resembles North Korea's government minus the personality cult, is far more inept that North Korea. For one thing, it allows or even encourages some of its citizens to leave the country. As Packer writes, "The endgame seems to be a regime virtually without citizens."

So, Burma could be a good test case for my theory of open migration. What will actually happen to a regime that mistreats its citizens once they have all left? Will it become a no-mans land, populated only by the few remaining generals smoking cigars in their villas overlooking the deserted city streets? What would the costs of this sort of outcome be? There is value, for instance, in the history and resources of the land. Is it appropriate to forfeit these in order to "starve" a corrupt regime of its citizens? Also, will the regime be able to support itself even as it loses its potential workforce? North Korea, which prevents its citizens from emigrating, in effect holds them hostage, forcing South Korea and the US to send aid. This aid, even when in the form of food, is essentially just money in Kim Jong Il's bank. But, even if all of North Korea's citizens left and the aid stopped flowing, the regime would last for quite a while, I'd assume, by selling off natural resources, counterfeiting money or selling nuclear secrets. Will Burma's regime be able to similarly sustain itself? Will China continue to support it? We shall most likely see, since it is unlikely, unfortunately, that the regime will collapse without first losing all of its citizens.

Global Migration: Status of S. Korean Migrant Workers

Here is a helpful little snapshot of the working conditions of migrant workers in Korea. According to Lee Cheol-seung, the head of the Office of the Gyeongnam Migrant Worker’s Council, migrant workers' "working conditions hover just above the level of slavery.” This is the point of supporting open migration: these workers are obviously necessary for the South Korean economy (otherwise they wouldn't be here), but because they are not given citizenship they are not given the rights afforded to citizens. It is worth noting that this figures appear to be for legal migrant workers, that is, resident aliens. God knows what the situation is like in Korea for illegal workers.

Global Migration: Tangential clarificatory observations

In a previous post, I advocated a sort of open market for migration. Perhaps now I should seek to clarify my points a little. As it happens, Korea provides two concrete examples of policies that conflict with my open migration proposal. It will be worth examining these two examples in order to figure out what my proposal means, in practice.

South Korea faces a similar if more pronounced version of the problems facing many developed countries: In my previous post, I mentioned the Filipino and Malay migrant workers in Korea, and the fact that they cannot get citizenship. According to the city of Seoul, the number of alien residents has been increasing rapidly in the past decade, especially those from China, India and Vietnam. So why aren't these aliens becoming citizens? I'd chalk that up to two factors: supposed Korean ethnic homogeneity and amazing population density (which I have had occasion to mention before). The Korean idea of Koreanness includes ethnic Koreans, even those who live abroad, and excludes "foreigners," even those who live in Korea. In addition to this, it is simply hard to be a supporter of immigration when your country is already overcrowded.

But that's what Koreans should do. They have a great infrastructure and their unemployment is low. The system can absorb more people. And business, especially blue-collar business, can too. In the past thirty years, Korea has made the leap from developing to developed, from third-world to industrialized. Now, the population is completing the complimentary shift from laborers to educated professionals. A whopping 75% of the younger generation graduate college. (Compare this to 25% in the U.S.) This leaves a lot of vacant spots in the old labor industries--including especially construction and manufacturing--which remain vital to the economy.

It is true that college grads have a hard time landing a first job, but this makes the job market seem tighter than it is. College-educated jobs are in short supply; blue-collar work is still readily available. This is an imbalance that cannot be corrected, and may even be exacerbated, by limiting migrant workers. In fact, a large part of the reason that professional jobs are hard to find is that women are getting more education and are working a lot more than they used to. Korea's workforce today is holding steady now only because women are joining it. This, however, has lowered birthrates even further, and the future decline in the workforce can only be corrected by bringing in outside help.

Few Koreans are likely to dispute this conclusion. But here's the point I am making, and that I was making in my earlier post: this outside help that the Koreans are bringing in needs to be treated fairly--i.e. they need to be given a chance for citizenship. Strict immigration laws are not really meant to protect average working Koreans, but to protect some notion of Koreanness. This is a notion that, along with nationalisms all over the world, I think we can do without.

(Let me dwell on this point for a second. Has everyone really forgotten that the idea of national membership by no means predates the existence of nations? Koreans consider themselves to be a distinct race as well as country (or two countries), but the history is much more complicated. There is a band of Korean-speaking Chinese nationals living in the provinces of China that boarder North Korea. Most Koreans consider these people to be Korean, but their "race" is certainly mixed, with Mongols over the past millennium and Chinese more recently. But, wait: why do we consider "Chinese" to be a race? Or, for that matter, "white"?)

The topic of nationalism provides a nice segue to North Korea, my promised second example. I'm not going to make policy suggestions for Kim Jong Il; that seems a bit presumptuous. Instead, North Korea provides an example of how open migration, if supported and implemented globally, can weaken a poorly run, "rogue" state. The idea is this: there are many North Koreans who would love to leave the country. If all of them left, Kim Jong Il and his cronies would be out of the laborers they need to grow rice and pick ginsing and fight in the army. This would be nothing but good for the global community. Rather than confront a tyrant like Kim Jong Il directly, we would simply open the gates and let his citizens, his life-blood, drain away. There is not much point being a totalitarian without a bunch of people to oppress. A similar tactic could drain all of the warriors--and civilians--out of war zones.

North Korea does it's part to prevent its citizens from fleeing, but they can only do so much. If other countries granted amnesty to North Koreans, it would be much easier for them to escape. Of course, the countries that actually boarder North Korea will be the most important. South Korea happily (if warily, because of spies) accepts North Korean defectors, and it certainly shares a boarder with North Korea. The problem is, this border is guarded by something like a half-a-million troops and there is a big wall there. Most North Koreans who make it to the south do so via boat from China. (Cf. Aquariums of Pyongyang)

So that leaves China and Russia. If these countries started making it easier for North Koreans to escape, the regime would feel it immediately. Check out this post, from way back in 2006, about an op. ed. that foretold the imminent collapse of Kim Jong Il simply because China recognized a couple North Korean defectors as refugees. If China were to give North Koreans asylum, North Korea would collapse in days, I imagine. This is a large part of the reason why China is unlikely to pursue this strategy, as I wrote about elsewhere.

Leaving aside geopolitics, if North Koreans could escape North Korea, that would be nothing but good for the North Koreans. This is the humanitarian aspect of immigration. So, open immigration, in my view, can accomplish two things: it can support ageing economies, like in the West and in developed Asia--and I think that this should be done fairly, by offering citizenship--and it can aid people trapped in war zones or other bad situations. So, what the U.S. should do is simply set the example. Open our own boarders, and encourage others to do the same. Accept refugees. Give citizenship to migrant workers. Simple as that.

Global Migration: Am I a post-American?

Mark Krikorian, head of the Center for Immigration Studies, a "pro-immigrant, low-immigration" think-tank, introduced the term 'post-American' to refer to someone who has renounced the sanctity of the American nationality, and supports throwing open our doors to immigrants. His writings (here and here, for instance) have mostly to do with the debate about whether or not to offer amnesty to illegal immigrants--a debate that, oddly enough, seems to be happening mostly within the Republican party (correct me if I'm wrong here), and seems to hinge fundamentally on the question of whether or not Latino voters can be conned into voting Republican.

I'm not here going to write about what to do about illegal immigrants who are in the U.S. right now. I agree that simply opening our fences seems impractical, and that "rewarding" law-breakers we might set an unwieldy precedent, etc. Since, thankfully, no one has yet entrusted me with the responsibility of drafting policy, I am going to focus only on the abstract issue of immigration in general. I'm going to throw my ideas out there, and I hope that, if anyone out there actually reads this blog, and I have reason to believe that someone, at some time did, you will put in your two cents as well.

Here's my idea: the world needs to have an open migration market. Just as liberal economists argue that the world needs an open financial markets, in order to allow money to flow to where it is needed, so should the world open its boarders to emigration and immigration. We need to move beyond national identity. Nations should become mere record keepers, tax collectors, service providers. Global citizens should be as free to move from country to country as they currently can from city to city. Imagine!

Well, it's not too hard to imagine. This is essentially already the case in the EU. (In the EU you can live and work wherever you want, although you do not change citizenship.) But even outside of the EU, there is already a mobile class of global citizens, people who are able to live and work in a wide variety of places because they possess skills that they are willing to sell at marketable prices. This class includes not only finance managers, scientists, engineers and academics, but also skilled and unskilled laborers--from oil-rig workers to produce pickers.

Given that this sort of world is at least possible, I'll give a few arguments why it might be desirable. First of all, it is worth pointing out that on the current system, highly educated or skilled workers are usually able to secure citizenship if they should so desire. It is the unskilled migrant workers who get the short shrift. This is true in the U.S. certainly--most of the illegal immigrants are the low-skilled ones, ones who are nonetheless necessary for the economy--but it is also true, for instance, in Korea. There is a whole segregated class of Filipino and Malay construction workers who are certainly necessary but who are never granted citizenship, even when they do come legally. Opening migration would be beneficial primarily, and most obviously, to these sort of migrant workers.

But more generally, it seems to me that an open migration system would reward good governance. Just as a free capital market rewards a well-run company with profit, an open migration "market" would reward well-governed countries with immigrants. Immigrants should be seen as capital inflows, as increased production potential. A net outflow of migrants would punish a government for incorrect policy; a net inflow would reward good governance.

Wouldn't people from poor countries simply flood the rich ones, you might ask, overflowing all public services and entitlements. Certainly there is a limit to how many citizens a county can ever support, but ideally, migration would level out at about the point at which the country/government could no longer absorb more immigrants. If we are really to a point in the U.S. where another citizen cost the country more than he put into it, then we really are in trouble. Immigrants are, anyway, cheaper than home-grown citizens, because we don't have to educate them or pay for their childhood medical care.

Nevertheless, I agree that people from poor countries would mostly move to richer ones. There might be some concern that a world with open migration policies, as I am suggesting, would simply cement the current geopolitical order, with rich countries on top and poor countries on the bottom. What I am proposing is one giant brain- and muscle-drain. On the other hand, if we are serious about ending global poverty, open migration would be the most efficient way to redistribute global wealth. Rather than try to reform and prop up bad governments around the world, we would simply allow their citizens entry into our country, if they should so choose.

There would be some practical limit to this, as immigration itself cost money, and cannot be afforded by everyone, but I'll leave these sort of merely practical concerns out of this post. The idea, in theory, would be that citizens of a failed state could at first emigrate to neighboring countries safely, and from there spread out further. In the meantime, the complete loss of population--and, crucially, international support--would hopefully have undermined the bad government.

Would this be a return to the Middle Ages, with roving bands of outlaws and refugees? Would there be much more Darfur-like violence or terrorist safe-zones, ungoverned space opened up by weakened national governments. Steps would have to be taken to ensure some level of global law and order. We have found ways of doing this when it comes to global finance; I see no reason why we cannot find ways to regulate and police the movements of global citizens as well.

Finally, in the world I'm imagining, it seems like there would basically never be any need for war. War could be in the interest of governments who are trying to secure resources so as to secure immigration. But who would fight it? If a county's citizens can move about freely, then why would they commit to attack--or, for that matter, defend--another country? If everyone just decided to leave the vicinity, the war would dissolve pretty quickly.

Perhaps this fact should set off alarms in our heads, since historically any political system that promised the end to war was doomed to fail. But, anyway, I'm just theorizing here. I welcome any vitriol-filled comments you may have.