In a major study published last week,
the OECD has concluded that the costs and contributions of immigrants
in most OECD member countries sum to a net positive outcome. That is to
say, that in most OECD countries the benefits of taxes, v.a.t. and
other payments by immigrants into the economy amount to more than the cost of
pensions, child care and other elements of social welfare that immigrants receive.
This encouraging message hides the less
comforting truth that the data the study uses to reach its
conclusions does not distinguish between the countries of origin of
the immigrants. They are merely classified as either “native-born” or “foreign-born”.
However, it so happens that the countries of immigrants' origin tend to be of
basically two rather different kinds: 1) countries more or less
similar to the receiving country, e.g., immigration to European
countries from other European countries; 2) immigration from non-OECD
(mostly third world) countries.
It is well known that immigrants from
the first group have come to find work and are usually qualified for it, hence are overwhelmingly contributors to their host
country. Large numbers of immigrants from the second category are poorly qualified for the labor markets of OECD countries, even though many have come for work or economic betterment, and so represent mostly costs.
Hence, the OECD is misleading and
confusing the debate about immigration policy by treating European
(or: “industrialized world”) immigrants and third world
immigrants as if they were comparable units. The report occasionally
refers to the lack of separate data for third world immigrants as a
technical statistical problem, but I have little doubt that with the
use of a little more imagination this problem could have been solved.
As it is we now have a 400-page study with lots of superficially
relevant statistics, but less of the incisive analysis that this
problem requires.
A policy that regards country of origin
as immaterial is bound to overlook the challenge of insufficient
resources in the receiving countries, and of injustice to the
remaining (non-emi/immigrating) third world population who stay at home. This debate is of course continually being suffocated by
the stereotypical charges of racism, exclusivism, anti-islamism etc.
With the OECD now so generously helping out, there seems to be no way
out, only further rounds of irrelevant talk, in this “benevolent” circus of immigration debate.
