Washington shouldn’t automatically try to copy ideas that work in other advanced economies. But policymakers should pay close attention to what their counterparts in lots of other rich countries are doing about immigration. Many of them, looking at long-term declines in their working-age population, have upped their game in competing for global talent. And America should be doing the same.
An enlightening piece in the Wall Street Journal
notes
that “around five million more people moved to affluent countries last year than left them, up 80 percent from prepandemic levels.” The WSJ then examines the 10 countries that received most of the migration, including the US, Germany, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Spain. Some of these countries have been changing their immigration laws to become more immigrant friendly.
Germany is rewriting immigration laws to bring in more college graduates as well as blue-collar workers under a new points-based system. Points will be awarded based on age—younger people receive more—educational qualifications, work experience, and German-language competency. Canada announced plans late last year to take in nearly 1.5 million more migrants by 2025. . . . South Korea plans to admit 110,000 low-skill foreign workers this year to work in industries such as farming and manufacturing, up nearly 60% from last year’s quota. Japan, which is opening new visa paths for high-skilled foreign workers, announced in April plans to offer blue-collar workers—including those at factories and farms—a chance to extend their stay and even bring their families. Both countries have been longtime skeptics of immigration.
The case of Spain is particularly interesting. It continues to suffer from extremely high unemployment, 13% Yet it still decided to change its laws last year to allow in more non-EU workers to fill blue-collar jobs. One government official told the WSJ that most unemployed tend to be 50 or older and aren’t the best fit for jobs such as agriculture or construction. And many younger people might be reluctant to take those sorts of jobs anyway. The piece tells the story of a German butcher who needs to replace four of his workers preparing to retire. But he got zero responses to a job ad he posted.
Meanwhile, the story here has basically been one of stasis for more than three decades. Another three decades or even three years seems like it would be a massive mistake. One bright spot is what’s been happening with refugees:
More than 300,000 Ukrainian refugees entered the U.S. since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, many through a Biden administration program called Uniting for Ukraine. That number is more than the total number of refugees admitted into the U.S. through legal channels over the previous seven years. In North Dakota, energy companies are tapping Ukrainians to fill jobs in the Bakken oil fields. Around 450,000 migrant refugee workers—largely from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Latin America—entered the U.S. legally in 2021 and 2022 and are working under temporary government protections in industries with labor shortages, according to an April report by FWD.us, a pro-immigration think tank. Those workers are estimated to have filled about a quarter of total job openings this year in such industries as construction, food services, and manufacturing, the report said.
These are stories that need to be told if we are to make real pro-growth progress in immigration policy.
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This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.
