I find it somewhat troubling that this analysis only mentions positive effects of immigration without once mentioning or trying to determine the probability/impact of any negative effects. This seems to me to be
epistemically not great
possibly reflective of a general left/right skew for/against immigration
There are many plausible arguments as to why low-skill immigration has negative effects. A few of the classic lines of argument for this are:
mass immigration inhibits growth as the most able leave their host countries
I am personally unconvinced by many of these arguments and don’t think they are true or impactful enough to outweigh the positive impacts of more migration, but I would expect them to at least be assessed to some extent and to see them enter into an EV calculation.
I think we do address the potential for negative impacts. As we say in section 2.2 (and elaborate on in Appendix B.3:
“From 11 studies we estimate that a 1% increase in immigrants as a share of the population is associated with a (non-significant) decrease of −0.004 SDs of SWB (or −0.008 WELLBYs) for the native population.”
Additionally, we have a subsection (3.2) called “risk of backlash effects”. Again, these may not be the concerns you have in mind, but to say we’re only mentioning positive effects is wrong. We mention throughout the report that we’re concerned with potential negative impacts and include speculative estimates of these in our BOTECs.
And in section B.2 we say
One concern is that emigration could limit the ability of the origin country to improve its institutions. This could be true if emigration drains high-skilled individuals from the country, making it poorer and less likely to reform. We expect this concern to be blunted somewhat by high rates of return (29% globally, Azose & Raftery, 2018) and remittances (which are three times the size of development aid). Remittances seem correlated to beneficial political (Williams, 2018) and economic (Yoshino et al., 2017; Kratou et al., 2015) effects at the country level. Historical quasi-experimental evidence from Sweden found that Swedish emigration led to a higher likelihood of reform for local governments in Sweden (Karadja & Prawitz, 2019). However, this study may not generalise to other contexts. We think that the positive effects of emigration may be less likely in authoritarian countries where potential reformers may emigrate at higher rates.
I find it somewhat troubling that this analysis only mentions positive effects of immigration without once mentioning or trying to determine the probability/impact of any negative effects. This seems to me to be
epistemically not great
possibly reflective of a general left/right skew for/against immigration
There are many plausible arguments as to why low-skill immigration has negative effects. A few of the classic lines of argument for this are:
mass immigration makes the countries migrants move to more like the countries they left aka worse institutions/governance/norms (e.g: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320112681_Do_Immigrants_Import_their_Economic_Destiny)
mass immigration inhibits growth as the most able leave their host countries
I am personally unconvinced by many of these arguments and don’t think they are true or impactful enough to outweigh the positive impacts of more migration, but I would expect them to at least be assessed to some extent and to see them enter into an EV calculation.
Dear Srdjan,
I think we do address the potential for negative impacts. As we say in section 2.2 (and elaborate on in Appendix B.3:
Additionally, we have a subsection (3.2) called “risk of backlash effects”. Again, these may not be the concerns you have in mind, but to say we’re only mentioning positive effects is wrong. We mention throughout the report that we’re concerned with potential negative impacts and include speculative estimates of these in our BOTECs.
And in section B.2 we say