The fear of the "other"

Consider Germany and the US.  If I were asked which country is the land of immigrants, well, the answer is a no-brainer.  That's what I would think.

As with many things in life, what I think might not be correct!

Take a look at the chart below:

Source

Really?  Germany's foreign-born population slightly exceeds (percentage-wise) that of the US?

Sure, a significant component of the foreign-born in Germany are from other EU countries.  But, still, that high a percentage?

We live in a remarkable time when it is so easy to physically move to a new place that could be far from where we are born.  A plane ticket and a few hours later one could be on the other side of the planet.  It is practically magic.

But, the magic does not happen more only because countries--we, the people--prevent the movement.  And collectively we are losing:

If everyone who wanted to migrate were able to do so, global GDP would double, estimates Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global Development, author of a forthcoming book, “The Walls of Nations”. No other policy change comes close to generating such colossal rewards. If there is $90 trillion a year up for grabs, you might think that policymakers would be feverishly devising ways to get a piece of it. They are not.

How bizarre our behavior is!

It has become physically much easier to move, but bureaucratically much harder. Only 2% of those who arrived at Ellis Island a century ago were turned away.

Ahem, a century ago, those arriving at Ellis Island were not brown-skinned people!  But, ok, point taken.

Now it is extremely difficult to migrate legally from a poor country to a rich one, unless you are highly skilled or a close relative of a legal resident. America’s green-card lottery last year attracted 294 applicants for each of its 50,000 slots. Partly because of Mr Trump’s efforts to make life hard for them, the net inflow of all migrants fell by 74% in 2018, to 200,000 people. Globally, many more people would like to move than can. A Gallup poll suggests that 750m people—15% of the world’s adults—want to settle permanently abroad. That includes 33% of sub-Saharan Africans and 27% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We can do better. But, when even an American citizen of Iranian descent is suspect, when the President's adviser on immigration wants to peddle racist tropes, ... I will conclude by quoting Branko Milanovic again:

[As] economic migration faces increasing obstacles in rich countries (and, it has to be added, not solely because of xenophobia but for economic reasons as well), the ideal of a world “without injustice of birth” recedes.