Although I agree with your headline points, the argument doesn’t consider counter arguments—the potential negatives of immigration aren’t properly explored. The only one dealt with is the staff replacement issue. These are 2 potential negatives that I think deserve consideration in this debate.
1. (See @huw below) The best people leave, people that could be innovating, inspiring, leading and starting the best businesses that could grow the country. When you skim off the top 1%, you can “replace” them by training others, but you can’t replace their natural brilliant traits that could have led them to transform their countries.
2. “Japa” Syndrome and social destabilisation. The “Japa” syndrome in Nigeria and other countries can destabilise the social milleu, slow institution building and potentially reduce individual wellbeing. When everyone is wanting o leave who then is committed building the country and its institutions? Who among young people is committed to improving their own country? Also all those left behind and wanting to leave will probably feel just alittle worse about their own life.This phenomenon has already been fairly well researched by social scientists, and its effect on both institutional growth and individual wellbeing and could be a significant negative to high emigration.
Anecdotally as well talking with Nigerians its a real negative vibe, and I’m happy this phenomenon hasn’t yet reached Northern Uganda here!
I think its very fair to argue that remittances and other benefits might well overcome these negatives, but these should be deeply considered and thought through rather than either being quickly dismissed or ignored like they are here, and seem to be in most pro-immigration arguments. These are easier to ignore though because of measurability bias—they are harder to measure than people and money movement. The effect of immigration are more complicated than the common simplistic framings of people-out/people-in and money-in.A
lso although I generally agree with much of the replacability argument, I disagree with the Nigerian doctor example. “You might keep a few doctors from moving away, but far fewer Nigerians will want to become doctors.” I
n Nigeria far more people want to be doctors than can be doctors. The limiting factor isn’t aspiration, its training opportunities and your grades. Every year in most countries, thousands of people want to be doctors but can’t. You could make the argument (like happened in the Phillipines) that training places will increase as a result of demand, but the aspiration argument doen’t make sense to me. A
lso the data doesn’t (as far as I can see) doesn’t seem to support this conclusion that we don’t need to worry about doctors leaving. The WorldBank dataset (which I don’t overly trust), the doctor per person ratio in Nigeria steadily increased from 1870 until 2005 and since then has plateued. There’s a high chance that immigration is a core reason for that plateau, and even if there are other causes based on this data its hard to make the argument that immigration is helping Nigeria’s doctor situation. Based on this, the reactionary policy of countries like Nigeria trying to keep more of their doctors at home may or may not be bad policy, but I wouldn’t call it “completely misplaced.”h
Although I agree with your headline points, the argument doesn’t consider counter arguments—the potential negatives of immigration aren’t properly explored. The only one dealt with is the staff replacement issue. These are 2 potential negatives that I think deserve consideration in this debate.
1. (See @huw below) The best people leave, people that could be innovating, inspiring, leading and starting the best businesses that could grow the country. When you skim off the top 1%, you can “replace” them by training others, but you can’t replace their natural brilliant traits that could have led them to transform their countries.
2. “Japa” Syndrome and social destabilisation. The “Japa” syndrome in Nigeria and other countries can destabilise the social milleu, slow institution building and potentially reduce individual wellbeing. When everyone is wanting o leave who then is committed building the country and its institutions? Who among young people is committed to improving their own country? Also all those left behind and wanting to leave will probably feel just alittle worse about their own life. This phenomenon has already been fairly well researched by social scientists, and its effect on both institutional growth and individual wellbeing and could be a significant negative to high emigration.
Anecdotally as well talking with Nigerians its a real negative vibe, and I’m happy this phenomenon hasn’t yet reached Northern Uganda here!
I think its very fair to argue that remittances and other benefits might well overcome these negatives, but these should be deeply considered and thought through rather than either being quickly dismissed or ignored like they are here, and seem to be in most pro-immigration arguments. These are easier to ignore though because of measurability bias—they are harder to measure than people and money movement. The effect of immigration are more complicated than the common simplistic framings of people-out/people-in and money-in.A
lso although I generally agree with much of the replacability argument, I disagree with the Nigerian doctor example. “You might keep a few doctors from moving away, but far fewer Nigerians will want to become doctors.” I
n Nigeria far more people want to be doctors than can be doctors. The limiting factor isn’t aspiration, its training opportunities and your grades. Every year in most countries, thousands of people want to be doctors but can’t. You could make the argument (like happened in the Phillipines) that training places will increase as a result of demand, but the aspiration argument doen’t make sense to me. A
lso the data doesn’t (as far as I can see) doesn’t seem to support this conclusion that we don’t need to worry about doctors leaving. The WorldBank dataset (which I don’t overly trust), the doctor per person ratio in Nigeria steadily increased from 1870 until 2005 and since then has plateued. There’s a high chance that immigration is a core reason for that plateau, and even if there are other causes based on this data its hard to make the argument that immigration is helping Nigeria’s doctor situation. Based on this, the reactionary policy of countries like Nigeria trying to keep more of their doctors at home may or may not be bad policy, but I wouldn’t call it “completely misplaced.”h
ttps://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?end=2021&locations=NG&start=1960&view=chart
Also have signed up to your substack, looking forward to more :).