Five ways to help the ‘left behind’
Migration: Oxford University economist Paul Collier says there are better methods than immigration to help the world’s poorest people
The frequent photo opportunities are designed to emphasize one of the powerful emotions at play in Canada’s approach to immigration: Compassion.
Canadian politicians of all stripes go out of their way to appear in colourful photos with immigrants, refugees and members of minority religions, often wearing traditional costumes of their homelands.
One of the latest photo opportunities took place Saturday in Vancouver, when smiling Immigration Minister John McCallum was featured hugging a Syrian refugee family at Rogers Arena.
The message advanced through such events is that Canadians should pat themselves on the back for welcoming more migrants per capita, including refugees, skilled workers and entrepreneurs, than almost any major country.
But how compassionate is Canada’s immigration policy, especially for those in poor countries?
After all, it’s clear to most that another motive for the Liberals this month hiking the immigration rate to 305,000 a year is to boost the country’s gross domestic product.
What do Canada’s policies really do for the hundreds of millions of people whom polls show want to move to Canada but will never win our immigration lottery?
That question is particularly relevant to the one billion who live in extreme poverty in Africa and Central Asia. Stuck in chaotic, corrupt and stagnant economies they are in many cases the most desperate of the “left behind.”
In a much-watched TED talk, noted Oxford University economist Paul Collier told a North American audience there are better ways than immigration to help the world’s poorest, whose ongoing plight will eventually destabilize the globe.
“How can we give credible hope to a billion people? Through a combination of the two forces that change the world for good, which is the alliance of compassion and enlightened self-interest,” Collier said.
Collier cited how the massive Marshall Plan was key to rebuilding Europe after the Second World War. Through the plan, the U.S. and other countries moved out of isolation and offered Europe financial aid, trade opportunities and military security while supporting development of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and European Union.
Similar daring forms of outreach are needed today to help the world’s struggling, says Collier, author of the Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It.
Collier is arguably the most important voice today on the confused relationship between migration and global poverty.
Unimpressed with pet policies of the left and right, he bases his recommendations on pragmatism and the empirical data of fellow researchers such as Anke Hoeffler, Stefan Dercon, Catherine Pattillo and Jan Gunning.
Collier’s team is especially critical of the “business and liberal elites” in the West who moralistically act as if “open” immigration to wealthy countries will combat global poverty, when it’s mostly designed to stimulate already-affluent economies.
Instead of just hiking immigration rates — which an Ekos poll found half the Canadian population already believes are too high — here are five alternative actions the West could engage in to assist the world’s disenfranchised:
Rethink the brain drain
One of the strongest ethical arguments against wealthy countries welcoming skilled, educated or entrepreneurial immigrants is that it drains source countries of sorely needed talent and hope.
The so-called brain drain is particularly devastating for the world’s smallest poor countries, which are robbed of precisely the people they need to catch up to wealthier nations.
One innovative idea of Collier’s team is to financially subsidize developing countries that train their citizens only to lose them.
“The brain drain is funded by the education spending of the governments of countries of origin. Their investment in the education of children who then emigrate to high-income countries is an inadvertent aid program to host countries,” Collier says.
“So there is a case for compensation,” says Collier, who has come up with formula for immigrant-receiving countries repaying poorer countries for educating citizens who leave.
Provide aid, more boldly
There are those who think rich countries don’t give nearly enough in foreign aid, such as Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, who wrote The End of Poverty. And there are those who dismiss virtually all aid as wasted, such as William Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden.
Since Collier thinks both sides exaggerate, he wants rich countries to be bolder in choosing where and how they offer aid. To do so, they will have to overcome public skepticism about allegedly bloated and corruption-rife aid efforts.
“Aid agencies should become increasingly concentrated in the most difficult environments. That means that they will need to accept more risk, and so a higher rate of failure. They should compensate by increasing their project supervision, which means higher administrative overheads.”
Increase fair trade
Fair trade, including the prudent export of oil and other resources, is more valuable to developing countries than aid will ever be, Collier says.
But the West is polarized. Many Western governments are too ruthless in their negotiations with poor nations, Collier suggests. And many development agencies believe international trade is nothing more than a tool for exploiting the Third World.
“For trade policy to become an instrument of development, ministries of trade (in the West) have to be ordered to change their priorities from extracting the best bargain to fostering development in the bottom billion.”
Support remittances, to a point
The tens of billions of dollars that immigrants and temporary foreign workers transfer back to their homelands add up to arguably the most beneficial thing poor countries get from losing their people to rich nations.
However imperfect, remittances are a hidden, individualized form of aid from high-wage countries to low-wage regions.
But economists have discovered the amount of money migrants send home goes down as the family-reunification levels of a host country go up, as they have under the federal Liberals.
“There is solid evidence that remittances to most countries would be increased were the migration policies of most countries somewhat more restricted, in the sense of not letting in the relatives of immigrants,” Collier said.
“The effect is quite powerful: Not being able to bring in mother makes educated migrants considerably more generous in their remittances.”
Strengthen security and governance
Similar to the Second World War era, it is essential for welloff countries to help poor countries achieve military stability and good governance.
Even after the debacle of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, it’s not acceptable for the West to wash its hands of military intervention. Big countries, including bystanders such as Japan and Germany, Collier says, have a crucial role to play in supporting fledgling democratic leaders.
Affluent countries need to do more to promote international charters and legal standards that can assist reformers in poor countries often beset by bribetaking officials.
The UN, the World Bank, the British Commonwealth and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative are some of the institutions that can encourage democracy, economic fairness and good governance in troubled nations. In light of such novel recommendations from Collier and his team of researchers, it should be clear the humanitarian crisis facing the poorest nations has little to do with whether Canadians or others in the West feel good about allowing in a certain number of immigrants.
Real compassion for the world’s marginalized requires entirely new ways of acting globally.