Categories:
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Last week, a friend sent me this link about immigration to Italy. Both my friend and the author at the link seemed to think that this was a problem.
I pointed out, though, that the number of immigrants on an annualized basis would be about 180,000, and also pointed out that Italy’s population is about 59 million.
So immigrants this year will be about 0.3 percent of Italy’s population.
Unfortunately, the author at the link did not say why he thinks such a small percent would be such a big problem.
READER COMMENTS
steve
Oct 13 2023 at 12:35pm
This is not a lot different than what we are experiencing. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it is a lot of people for social services to handle. If that many people like you or me decided to immigrate there we would, I hope, make sure we had a place to live before we moved, made sure we could communicate OK, made sure we had adequate funds to safely move and live on if didn’t have a job. They people showing up largely don’t do that. I think its also a bit seasonal so those who come get concentrated into a few months.
Steve
David Henderson
Oct 13 2023 at 6:43pm
What’s your basis for those factual claims?
steve
Oct 14 2023 at 10:09am
Not a lot of data but I do know a few people who have moved out of the US. None waited to find housing until they arrived in their new country.
The seasonality is well documented. Check any number of sources that track arrivals.
This NBER paper, among others , shows that while in the longer run refugees/immigrants are a net plus on govt expenditures initial relocation costs are about $16,000 and refugees are net negative for the first 10 years.
https://www.nber.org/digest/aug17/what-happens-when-refugees-come-united-states
4) Looked at the number of shelter, emergency, transitional housing beds Philadelphia has. It’s about 4500 with about 90%-95% occupancy rates. Philly is now over 1000 arriving in less than a year. Due to the seasonality the arrivals are a bit clumped. NYC has received about 50,000 in the last year. They didnt have enough shelters of housing so they are using hotels adding 3%, unexpectedly, to the city budget.
So if they were spread out more in time, if cities had a better chance to prepare, if funding could be planned ahead of time it would be much less stressful. Even if you think it is a good deal in the long term there are up front costs and hassles.
Steve
Mark Barbieri
Oct 14 2023 at 8:38am
I feel like low skilled immigration has been a big help to the US because there are many opportunities for those people to be productive here. A country can absorb a significant number of immigrants if there are paths for those immigrants to support themselves. I don’t know if Italy, with what seem to be tighter labor market regulations, is as capable of letting immigrants become productive members of society.
Jim Glass
Oct 14 2023 at 4:26pm
It’s not the number of immigrants that matters, it’s the quality — who they are.
I spent my life in NYC where more than 35% of the population is foreign-born and 200+ languages are spoken. My experience with them all is “Yea, immigrants!”, they’ve always been a great driver of the economic prosperity and vitality of the city.
But look at the terrible situation in Sweden, not long ago one of the safest countries in the world…
Jose Pablo
Oct 14 2023 at 10:39pm
I find it very difficult, to go to a foreign country where you don’t know anybody and don’t speak the language a manage to organize successful criminal gangs.
And even if you go as far as claiming that this is precisely what Italians managed to do in New York and Chicago, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Italian immigration contribution to the development of these two cities was “negative”. It wasn’t.
But even taking your claims at face value, you fail to pose the most significant question: is the (supposed) “loss of utility” cause to Swedish citizens bigger that the “increase in utility” the foreign born got from moving to Sweden?
If even the (unreal) picture of immigration you paint increases “global” utility it is something that should be supported not opposed. Unless you think there is “something special” about Swedish that makes their well-being more valuable that the well-being of other humans.
Mactoul
Oct 16 2023 at 1:24am
What is special about Swedish is that Sweden is their territory– their own state, their national home.
So, they get a say in who moves into their national home. Computations of utility and disutility are entirely unable to decide, there being no objective measurements of such things.
Jose Pablo
Oct 16 2023 at 2:54pm
They can try to defend their “say” on whatever they claim is “their” territory by force. As they actually do.
What they can’t do is claim to have any moral right to their self-proclaimed “right”. What they can’t do is expecting “foreigners” to respect their self-proclaimed rights. Particularly if the alternative to respect such an arbitrary “right” is living horrible lives.
To deny other human beings access to their basic needs just to get a little bit more of unnecessary well being, is just morally outrageous. To do so using the very feeble excuse that “we arrive inside these invisible borders first”, add nothing of relevance to the moral claim.
Computations of utility and disutility are entirely unable to decide, there being no objective measurements of such things.
You are very likely right. But that’s the only thing governments do (or claim to do). You are stripping them of the only justification for their existence. Happy to see you joining the club! Welcome!
Jose Pablo
Oct 16 2023 at 3:09pm
But that’s the only thing governments do (or claim to do). You are stripping them of the only justification for their existence
And, by the way, this includes the “government (because it is the Swedish government not “Sweden”) having a say in who moves into their national home”.
I am sure that some Swedish are pro-immigration (pro-open borders even) either because they understand the moral implications (which are very compelling) or because they benefit economically (or culturally or sexually or whatever) from the flux. Other individuals in Sweden feels they are worse off because of this very same flux (for real or, most of the time, imaginary reasons).
So, what the government does is to increase (try to, at least) the utility of the individuals of this latter group at the expense of the utility of the individuals of the former. Since the government cannot claim that the “global utility of the Swedish” has increased due to its immigration policy (as you rightly pointed out, such calculations are just impossible), what the government is doing is just arbitrary, with no justification whatsoever.
Jim Glass
Oct 16 2023 at 11:51pm
You raise a good point! And when you compile a measure of utility that shows the immigrant crime gangs have via their crime and violence increased their utility by more than the victims of their crime and violence have lost in utility, do publish it! You may change the whole world’s view not only of immigration but of crime and violence too! And why stop there?
Show that the Germans who immigrated into nations across Europe circa 1940 increased their utility by more than the amount of utility that the residents of those nations lost, and you may change the whole world’s view of war and peace! Maybe we were on the wrong side in that war? Bentham Rules!
Jose Pablo
Oct 14 2023 at 10:52pm
And, by the way, I really doubt that the 180,000 people arriving in Italy last year manage to organize drug gangs (as seems to be the problem in Sweden) more successful than the existing “local” ones. Not in Italy.
So, maybe the problem in Sweden was the lack of a “healthy ecosystem of local drug gangs” previous to the arrival of the foreign-born. Not in Italy.
And definitely not in the States where between 70 and 100 million “local” people have criminal records. I bet for the local guys as far as criminal activity is concerned. Local team advantage, you know.
David Henderson
Oct 15 2023 at 8:14pm
I agree that quality matters. Also what matters is whether it’s hard or easy to get a job and whether the government has a fairly extensive welfare state. One thing that the U.S. has done better than most rich countries’ governments is not put as many barriers in the way of employment and not had as extensive a welfare state. The welfare reform act in 1996 made it so that immigrants can’t immediately get certain federal benefits. That matters.
But what’s missing from your point, besides that, is a numeracy test. Does the Swedish government allow only a 1/3 of 1 percent increase annually in its population due to immigrants? I had thought it was much more. Remember the question I asked.
Jim Glass
Oct 16 2023 at 11:28pm
Does the Swedish government allow only a 1/3 of 1 percent increase annually in its population due to immigrants? I had thought it was much more.
Sweden’s annual immigration rate has averaged about 1% of its total population over the last decade. Doesn’t seem daunting. But there weren’t so many coming from Norway and Germany. The majority came from Libya (3x any other source), Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Eritrea and Iran — violent lands with cultures rather different than the Scandinavian.
Violence and tribalism (gangsterism) is the norm in many cultures, indeed throughout all history. There’s no more basic economic incentive than “We take your stuff because we can”. It takes generations of history to tamp that down. If that history’s not there in an arriving population … well, if over 10+years they refuse to assimilate and become 5+% of the population, that’s a real problem.
I agree that quality matters. Also what matters is whether it’s hard or easy to get a job and whether the government has a fairly extensive welfare state. One thing that the U.S. has done better than most…
Good policies matter and are good. But people aren’t atoms, their responses to the same policies and incentives differ a lot. As to Swedish policies and incentives, Germans and Norwegians respond very differently than Libyans.
But what’s missing from your point, besides that, is a numeracy test … Remember the question I asked.
My answer is that numbers don’t matter so very much. If your immigrants cross an ocean to work to make new lives for themselves under their new land’s rules, “if I can make it there I can make it anywhere”, they can be 35% of the population and speak 200 languages, everybody wins! Proven by test! But if they are violent gangsters, is the argument really: “Well, they are only <1% of the population so they don’t increase murder and extortion by very much”? Reminds me of the joke about ‘making it up on volume’.
Also, the numbers that do matter aren’t relative to the whole national population but to the locality where the immigrants land. When the Russian Mafia arrived here it may not have mattered much to the USA, but it sure did to the population of Brooklyn.
Marcus Decius Cornelious
Oct 14 2023 at 9:29pm
I dont know about Italy, but there is a disproportionate leverage effect in representative democracies, one that we have seen in Australia, an effect pointed out by David Leyonhjelm (a former Senator)
In Australia, a significant % of new immigrants (and generally as soon as possible voting citizens) are settling in a relatively small concentrated enclaves. Our politics – similar to elsewhere – has been geographic & demographic gerrymandered some that something like 80-90% of seats are fairly “safe” for one of the 2 major parties. In effect, in most elections, 80-90% of voters make no difference.
The 10-20% of seats that are so-called “swing seats”, which regular oscillate between the 2 major parties. In Australia, whichever major party wins most of the small number of swing-seats wins parliamentary majority and thus gains power. As such, the swing-seats are the primary focus of our politics, with the people living in those swing seats having significant disproportionate political power over the rest of us.
More so, the settlement pattern of concentrated migration has seen many of the swing seats now become controlled by the demographic of new Australians. Politicians in both major parties thus heavily appeal to this demographic block and the local community leaders of this demographic.
Overall, it means a newly minted immigrant Australian who settles near cultural aligned enclaves into one of these swing seats has a vote that has VASTLY more political weight than the votes in many other parts of the country. This inevitably distorts political priorities and public policy.
Overall, the story answers your underlying question -> in a socio-political climate where most elections are decided by (stylistically) close 51-49 type splits, a very small % of the population concentrated in key leverage points can have disproportionate socio-political-culture influence.
Jose Pablo
Oct 15 2023 at 11:23am
This is an example of the typical nonsense of anti-immigration positions.
Australia has an extremely high turnout at elections and yet, between 15% and 20% of Australians don’t even bother to vote.
But, you know, there are the 0.3% of immigrants the ones who shape elections! … because, you know, the first thing they do when they illegally arrive in Australia is … register to vote!. And, of course, the turnout is extremely high among immigrants because they are so politically conscious. Politics are at the forefront in their minds.
After all they risked their lives moving to Australia mainly for having the great experience of voting there!
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