Immigration as a policy of development

From Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails by Christopher J. Coyne. Page 190.

As it turns out, migration policies can play an important role not just in long-term improvements in standards of living but also in responding to immediate humanitarian crises. In fact, Michael Clemens and Tejaswi Velayudhan argue that migration policy can be a powerful tool in helping the victims of disaster recover. They focus their attention on how migration policy could help Haitians in the wake of the 2010 earthquake, but the implications of their analysis can be generalized beyond that case. Among other facts, they note that the average Haitian male who moves to the United States increases his productivity and income by at least a factor of six, that four out of every five Haitian citizens who have escaped poverty have done so by moving to another country, and that remittances to Haiti by family members are not only greater than foreign aid but go directly to people in need. What this implies is that granting Haitian citizens greater economic freedom by allowing them to emigrate to the United States would contribute to alleviating their suffering, the very goal of humanitarian action.

Compare the alternative proposed by Clemens and Velayudhan to the ongoing state-led humanitarian efforts in Haiti. Charles Kenny, of the Center for Global Development, notes that progress in post-earthquake Haiti has been slower than expected due partially to the “often snail-like pace of heavily bureaucratized assistance efforts in the chaotic post-catastrophe conditions of weakly governed states.” He goes on to indicate that the special “temporary protected status” granted to 200,000 Haitians living in the United States without proper paperwork at the time of the earthquake has been more effective in delivering assistance, in the form of remittances, to those in need in Haiti. This leads him to conclude that granting these Haitian citizens special status “may be the greatest contribution America has made towards Haiti’s reconstruction to date.” To the extent that Kenny’s claim is accurate, the implication is that further reforming U.S. migration policies could do even more to help those suffering from immediate humanitarian crises, both in Haiti and elsewhere.

But this is where systems thinking comes into play. American foreign policy is not only about creating conditions that improve the lot of others elsewhere. That objectives sits in second, and complex, order with creating conditions which improve the lives of Americans.

This becomes especially challenging when we take into consideration class or income quintiles in the US. Letting in many more Haitians (the most accomplished) into the US might both improve their individual life outcomes AND improve economic development in Haiti AND therefore crisis recovery, it might also come at no effective cost to the top three quintiles of Americans by income or class. But we have to take into account the impact of X thousands of Haitians on the bottom one or two quintiles of Americans as well. Maybe such a policy is beneficial to them as well. Perhaps not. But at the very least we need to take that into account.