Jeune Street

Sahara Desert, Burkina Faso

Some interesting comments in reply to the post below has me thinking about why people oppose immigration. And I think there are really two answers, which come along with movie references:

1. Prejudice.

People have always had a hard time accepting 'foreigners' on equal terms, primarily because their lifestyles, worldviews and languages are different. Consider Clint Eastwood's recent film, Gran Torino. A vet from Korea is living in a neighbourhood that is increasingly populated by new migrants, and he develops a profound distrust of his neighbours. Trust and compassion only develops as he is forced into a relationship with their more culturally 'American' youngsters, and experiences both the violence and family bonds that feature among the Vietnamese community.

Eastwood's character is not racist in the film, just ignorant. And the extended contact with the 'other' brings about acceptance and an expansion of his conception of 'American'. Our communities -- even the most nurturing -- always have boundaries that keep outsiders out. The encounters with diveristy along this frontier is what sustains the dynamism within the community, as we learn to accommodate 'outsiders' and engage in the difficult process of mutual learning. Along these lines I came across a fascinating quotation by John Stuart Mill this evening, which is as true today as it was in 1848 when he wrote it:

It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar... Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.

2. Local and short-run economic costs (or their perception).

It may be said that the benefits of immigration are collective, distributed, and long-term, while the costs are local and short-run (and tend to be felt more by the lower classes). The perception by a few that foreigners are 'stealing' their jobs can feed into wider felt feelings of prejudice to produce a dangerous political constituency.

The film This is England by Shawn Meadows illustrates this phenomenon -- it takes place during the height of Thatcherism in the UK, within a council estate in Nottingham. A few older men profess to be free of prejudice but nevertheless object to recent 'non-British' migrants taking scarce low-wage jobs, and they manage to ensnare a few young boys who also troubled by the poverty that surrounds them. What begins as an education in British nationalism gradually transforms into sinister and violent attacks on non-white members of the local community.

The argument that immigration makes low-wage jobs more competitive may have an ounce of truth in it, but shouldn't we ask the question: why does one person inherently deserve an low-skilled job more than another, simply because of their place of birth? Furthermore, isn't the conception of job scarcity somewhat of an invention? Also, there is substantial evidence to show that immigrants tend to be more innovative and entrepreneurial than native-born residents, suggesting that they are creating far more jobs than they are otherwise competing for.

We should be asking the question that John posed below: when people oppose immigration, on what grounds are they really doing so? And why don't we embrace immigration for the primary benefit that it offers to any society: diversity -- that great stimulant of new ideas, technologies, business, and most of all, better ways of understanding ourselves.