>Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive: >> Workers become far more

>Firstly, the core thesis of the argument is that merely by moving to a richer country, people become automatically more productive: >> Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers >This can only be described as some sort of fantasy. People who have spent their lives making mud bricks by hand don't suddenly become qualified crane operators by mere virtue of migrating to a developed country. They need the same training any native born person would, but they also need to learn the local language and customs too. Um, what? Of course they do. Capital is a complement to labor. Moving to a high-capital country means the fruits of your labor are multiplied because you can take advantage of that capital to increase your productivity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_intensity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_intensity >Indeed, a common effect of mass immigration is that mechanical diggers and cranes are less used, because why buy expensive automated machinery when labour is nearly free? Labor is sometimes a substitute for capital, and we can observe this substitution at the margin as you describe. However, overall, capital is a complement to labor once scale effects are taken into account — as overall output increases after a right-shift in labor, demand for capital increases as well. This is the same effect behind why Luddism is wrong. http://www.wwnorton.com/college/econ/labor-economics/supplemental/88147_WEB_ONLY_26_001-046_r2_ra.pdf http://www.wwnorton.com/college/econ/labor-economics/supplem... >A clear counterpoint is the state of Germany. Over 1 million migrants from Africa and the ME let in with no border controls worth talking about. Did they all immediately become high earning crane operators. No. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”. Refugees in Germany face significant regulatory obstacles to participating in the labor force. http://www.dw.com/en/when-refugees-want-to-work-in-germany/a-18737104 http://www.dw.com/en/when-refugees-want-to-work-in-germany/a... >This problem is not theoretical or simply scaremongering. The sad tale of Lutfur Rahman is a warning sign of what can go wrong when large numbers of people settle in the west from parts of the world where western values are not well established - they don't simply change overnight and instead western political systems start to look like third world countries too: An immigrant from a third world country was corrupt, therefore corruption is endemic to all immigrant populations because they don't know any better? Not touching this one.