6 ms·

Some Countries See Migrants as an Economic Boon, Not a Burden

26 points by dsr12 11y ago

hbogert 11y ago
If you want to say that you're[Canada] doing a better job than Europe, please prove, or at least make likely, that the Canadian migrants are similar to the migrants in Europe. The article also doesn't define the relation between migrant and refugee. If you're cherrypicking migrants, which I believe Canada is doing, you'll have a easier job at integration.
- jobu 11y ago
  There's also some self-selection for highly motivated individuals moving all the way to Canada. And a person that can afford to move that far is going to have a better starting point than most of the people walking or floating into the EU.
- pakled_engineer 11y ago
  The gov cherry picked whole family refugees from Jordan, who left the fighting early in the civil war. They screened them for health problems, criminal records, education, ect. It's not masses of N African migrants flooding in through lawless Libya.
datalist 11y ago
How many migrants from the current events are in Canada? According to http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/syrian-refugees-canada-united-states-comparison-1.3340852 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/syrian-refugees-canada-united-... Canada pledged to "welcome" 25,000 by next year. That's almost as many as crossed the borders to Europe only within a few days. As the title says "Canada focuses on assimilating educated foreigners who fill job needs, in sharp contrast to Europe", so basically cherry picking like hbogert said. In this case it is easy to assimilate and integrate. Try the same with hordes of "less educated foreigners". If we draw comparisons then please not apples to oranges.
- seivan 11y ago
  From my experience education doesn't dictate how well they integrate, culture does. Obviously anecdotal but I know doctors that feel like apostates should hang. They may pay their taxes but in long run its a loss for the host nation.
gedy 11y ago
WSJ is a big proponent of cheap labor, which open borders and loose immigration helps. (Pointing this out is not somehow anti-immigrant BTW)
- dominotw 11y ago
  so, whats your solution? Place minimum income restrictions on immigrants ?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - skylan_q 11y ago
    One idea: that they bring capital with them. Increasing the supply of labor while not increasing the supply of capital can drive down productivity and wages in the nation getting migrants. If they come with accompanying capital, it could help maintain or improve productivity.
  - gedy 11y ago
    I was basically pointing out that WSJ is biased towards loose immigration and to take the article with a grain of salt. I favor legal, limited, and controlled immigration. Immigration en masse of poor, low skilled labor to a developed country like the US (where manufacturing is on the wane) is not a net benefit in the long run.
- jaredhansen 11y ago
  WSJ is a big proponent of cheap labor, which open borders and loose immigration helps That's only true if you limit your definition of "cheap" to mean "cheaper than historical norms in geographies that have historically had high labor prices relative to those prevailing in migrants' original locations". There's a common myth that immigration somehow reduces the cost of labor. This is nonsense. It reduces the price of labor in the location receiving the migrants (by increasing its supply) while simultaneously raising the price of labor in the migrants' original location by reducing such supply (both by direct labor outflows and by the increased leverage held by those who don't migrate, since they can now credibly threaten to do so). Pretending that free migration is bad for workers is incredibly parochial and ignores the vast, vast majority of the world's workers, who currently live in places like India and southeastern Asia, and who would strongly benefit from the upward wage pressure that freer migration would bring about.
awl130 11y ago
it's colder and more isolated in canada and fewer people want to live there. same for scandinavia. hence state-sponsored incentives in addition to market-driven ones. it is the economics of supply/demand that drive culture (state-sponsored and otherwise), not the other way around. we know this from states in the usa. north dakota pays farm workers higher than california. should we conclude that n. dakota is culturally more accepting than california? we over-attribute these kinds of effects to cultural norms.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...
  - vmorgulis 11y ago
    "But the puppetry expands past individuals toward whole empires and movements. If God reached into the year 1900 and removed every single Communist, and every Communist book, and erased all memory of Communism, I think it would take about five minutes before someone reinvented something much like the movement, because there were a bunch of very poor people who felt desperate and cheated crammed up against a bunch of very rich people who weren’t afraid to flaunt their wealth. The new movement might have differed from Communism in minor details – maybe their color would have been blue instead of red – but it wouldn’t be hard to identify." I think it's green...
seivan 11y ago
Maybe stop seeing migrants and refugees in general as homogenous group. Some will not integrate and has other purposes than to flee either war or poverty. Some do it unconsciously. Either way I wouldn't say immigration from certain cultures has served Scandinavia well. I'm from one of them that's been a huge burden. The future looks bleak, for everyone involved. Worse for those stranded between Islamists and Assad l obviously.
goodcanadian 11y ago
I have mixed feelings about this article. On the one hand, I accept that Canadian immigration policy is among the best in the world. Further, Canada is more accepting of immigrants than many countries, perhaps because we have had better experiences with them, or perhaps just because of general cultural attitudes. However, it confuses the issue to bring in the recent refugee crisis in Europe. As several other commenters have pointed out, accepting 25,000 hand picked Syrian refugees, while laudable, is on a completely different scale than 1,000,000 refugees of random backgrounds flooding across the border.
collyw 11y ago
Fairly relevant: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/european-immigrants-contribute-5bn-to-uk-economy-but-non-eu-migrants-cost-118bn-9840170.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/european-immi...

26 points by dsr12 11y ago

If you want to say that you're[Canada] doing a better job than Europe, please prove, or at least make likely, that the Canadian migrants are similar to the migrants in Europe. The article also doesn't define the relation between migrant and refugee. If you're cherrypicking migrants, which I believe Canada is doing, you'll have a easier job at integration.

jobu 11y ago
There's also some self-selection for highly motivated individuals moving all the way to Canada. And a person that can afford to move that far is going to have a better starting point than most of the people walking or floating into the EU.
pakled_engineer 11y ago
The gov cherry picked whole family refugees from Jordan, who left the fighting early in the civil war. They screened them for health problems, criminal records, education, ect. It's not masses of N African migrants flooding in through lawless Libya.

datalist 11y ago

How many migrants from the current events are in Canada? According to http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/syrian-refugees-canada-united-states-comparison-1.3340852 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/syrian-refugees-canada-united-... Canada pledged to "welcome" 25,000 by next year. That's almost as many as crossed the borders to Europe only within a few days. As the title says "Canada focuses on assimilating educated foreigners who fill job needs, in sharp contrast to Europe", so basically cherry picking like hbogert said. In this case it is easy to assimilate and integrate. Try the same with hordes of "less educated foreigners". If we draw comparisons then please not apples to oranges.

seivan 11y ago
From my experience education doesn't dictate how well they integrate, culture does. Obviously anecdotal but I know doctors that feel like apostates should hang. They may pay their taxes but in long run its a loss for the host nation.

gedy 11y ago

WSJ is a big proponent of cheap labor, which open borders and loose immigration helps. (Pointing this out is not somehow anti-immigrant BTW)

dominotw 11y ago
so, whats your solution? Place minimum income restrictions on immigrants ?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- skylan_q 11y ago
  One idea: that they bring capital with them. Increasing the supply of labor while not increasing the supply of capital can drive down productivity and wages in the nation getting migrants. If they come with accompanying capital, it could help maintain or improve productivity.
- gedy 11y ago
  I was basically pointing out that WSJ is biased towards loose immigration and to take the article with a grain of salt. I favor legal, limited, and controlled immigration. Immigration en masse of poor, low skilled labor to a developed country like the US (where manufacturing is on the wane) is not a net benefit in the long run.
jaredhansen 11y ago
WSJ is a big proponent of cheap labor, which open borders and loose immigration helps That's only true if you limit your definition of "cheap" to mean "cheaper than historical norms in geographies that have historically had high labor prices relative to those prevailing in migrants' original locations". There's a common myth that immigration somehow reduces the cost of labor. This is nonsense. It reduces the price of labor in the location receiving the migrants (by increasing its supply) while simultaneously raising the price of labor in the migrants' original location by reducing such supply (both by direct labor outflows and by the increased leverage held by those who don't migrate, since they can now credibly threaten to do so). Pretending that free migration is bad for workers is incredibly parochial and ignores the vast, vast majority of the world's workers, who currently live in places like India and southeastern Asia, and who would strongly benefit from the upward wage pressure that freer migration would bring about.

awl130 11y ago

it's colder and more isolated in canada and fewer people want to live there. same for scandinavia. hence state-sponsored incentives in addition to market-driven ones. it is the economics of supply/demand that drive culture (state-sponsored and otherwise), not the other way around. we know this from states in the usa. north dakota pays farm workers higher than california. should we conclude that n. dakota is culturally more accepting than california? we over-attribute these kinds of effects to cultural norms.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-flesh-and-blood-but-against-powers-and-principalities/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/07/we-wrestle-not-with-fle...
- vmorgulis 11y ago
  "But the puppetry expands past individuals toward whole empires and movements. If God reached into the year 1900 and removed every single Communist, and every Communist book, and erased all memory of Communism, I think it would take about five minutes before someone reinvented something much like the movement, because there were a bunch of very poor people who felt desperate and cheated crammed up against a bunch of very rich people who weren’t afraid to flaunt their wealth. The new movement might have differed from Communism in minor details – maybe their color would have been blue instead of red – but it wouldn’t be hard to identify." I think it's green...

seivan 11y ago

Maybe stop seeing migrants and refugees in general as homogenous group. Some will not integrate and has other purposes than to flee either war or poverty. Some do it unconsciously. Either way I wouldn't say immigration from certain cultures has served Scandinavia well. I'm from one of them that's been a huge burden. The future looks bleak, for everyone involved. Worse for those stranded between Islamists and Assad l obviously.

goodcanadian 11y ago

I have mixed feelings about this article. On the one hand, I accept that Canadian immigration policy is among the best in the world. Further, Canada is more accepting of immigrants than many countries, perhaps because we have had better experiences with them, or perhaps just because of general cultural attitudes. However, it confuses the issue to bring in the recent refugee crisis in Europe. As several other commenters have pointed out, accepting 25,000 hand picked Syrian refugees, while laudable, is on a completely different scale than 1,000,000 refugees of random backgrounds flooding across the border.

collyw 11y ago

Fairly relevant: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/european-immigrants-contribute-5bn-to-uk-economy-but-non-eu-migrants-cost-118bn-9840170.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/european-immi...