This link has been bookmarked by 2 people . It was first bookmarked on 03 Nov 2007, by tony curzon price.
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03 Nov 07
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A good starting point is whether a country is morally entitled to restrict migration. Philippe Legrain, a notable economist and author, takes a strong position on this, most recently in a robust contribution on migration to a report from CentreForum, a liberal, London-based think-tank*. His argument is that freedom of movement is a human right. The implication is that a country should be defined as a set of institutions that controls a given territory. Its people have no right to determine the composition of its population.(...) let us try to have an honest discussion, based on the best possible analysis and consideration of the ethics. If immigration is to continue at a substantial (if reduced) rate, all these issues must be confronted. If not, the debate is certain to become ever more unpleasantly xenophobic. This is not an area for stealth, but for policies that are far more open, transparent and better justified than hitherto. Let the debate begin.
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Yet even if one agrees that a country has a right to restrict immigration, it does not follow that it ought to do so. Mr Legrain argues that it is not just in the global interest to have free migration, but also in that of recipient countries. A standard “gains from trade” analysis would suggest that this should be true. But if one is to argue for free movement of labour on economic grounds one needs a sense of the likely consequences. Analyses of free migration in the presence of huge real wage differentials suggest that we would end up with vast informal sectors and shanty towns. That is what happens within poor countries. Why should it not happen across the globe? I cannot see how one would persuade a host population that this outcome would be in their interests.
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