How Should Countries Approach Immigration?

The Words Matter More Than Usual

Write first: should countries have open immigration policies?

Then five definitions you'll use all fortnight. An immigrant moves somewhere permanently. A migrant moves to find work or better conditions. An undocumented immigrant is living in a country without legal papers — which includes people who crossed a border without permission and people who arrived legally and stayed after their visa expired. A refugee is granted protection while still outside the country they're heading to; someone granted asylum gets that protection after arriving. That last distinction trips up almost everyone, so learn it now.

Then the long view: people first walked out of Africa 70,000 to 100,000 years ago, and humans have been moving ever since. Borders with passport control are a recent invention.

And two ways to become a citizen at birth: by where you were born (the US does this, along with 30-odd countries) or by who your parents are. France, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia all used to grant citizenship by birthplace and stopped.

Why Let People In — and Why Not

• Reasons countries encourage it: filling job shortages, new ideas, more tax revenue, more working-age people; reuniting families; and taking in people fleeing war or persecution.
• Reasons people oppose it: competition for jobs and the cost of public services; the belief that a nation's identity is tied to a particular ethnicity, religion, or language; and worries about crime and security.

Here's the puzzle worth chewing on. Birth rates across wealthy countries have been falling since the 1970s. Ageing populations strain pensions and health systems. Immigrants are younger and have more children. Immigration looks like the obvious solution — and yet worldwide there's no relationship between how low a country's birth rate is and how many immigrants it accepts. One suggested explanation: older populations tend to be more hostile to immigration, so the countries that need it most want it least.

Also worth knowing before you argue: in a survey of 18 countries, majorities in 10 of them said immigration was a strength rather than a burden — including the US, UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia.

Who Belongs?

This isn't only an American argument. In South Africa, a movement called Operation Dudula — "force out" — organises against immigrants from neighbouring countries. Myanmar's government treats the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and has attacked them militarily. In Europe, parties campaigning on cultural identity gained ground after 2015.

• Which is fairer — citizenship by birthplace or by parentage? How might a country's history shape which one it picked?
• Should people be allowed to be citizens of more than one country?
• Do the arguments change depending on where an immigrant is from, how educated they are, or what religion they practise? If they do — what does that tell you about the arguments?
• Should countries with falling birth rates open their borders?

Before you leave, find a resource to bring on Thursday.

Immigration and Crime — Read the Graph Carefully

A study tracked immigration and crime across 200 US metro areas from 1970 to 2010, later extended to 2016. In 68% of those cities, the immigrant population grew while crime stayed flat or fell. On the scatterplot of undocumented immigration against crime, across five categories of crime, the trend line is almost perfectly flat.

Now be precise about what that means. A flat line is strong evidence against the claim that more undocumented immigration causes more crime. It is not evidence that immigration reduces crime. Being able to hold that distinction is worth more than either conclusion.

Score Your Own Week

What went well, what to improve, what you learned, and whether anything you believed changed. Then the participation matrix.