Reading Zeke Hernandez’s excellent book, The Truth About Immigration, makes clear some challenges we experience given bias in public policy discussions. All of us have — to a greater or lesser extent — a skewed view of the world. This can impact public policy when enough of us have the same skewed views. We might all agree, but we are all wrong. Look for these four biases when you hear discussions of immigration and the public policy actions we should be taking.
Short-Term Thinking
Many decisions at work involve investing for the future. Personnel decisions are included in that. Hiring at an organization can often have a short-term cost but a long-term benefit. After employees have learned the necessary skills they can then make a positive contribution to the organization but it takes a while. In business, cutting spending in the short-term can often look great, until later you find out it was a terrible idea. Short-term thinking abounds in business. (And is encouraged by our accounting systems but that is another story).
Thinking about immigration is surprisingly similar. Societies need new people to continue but kids are expensive. You have to feed them, house them, educate them, and listen to whatever music they think is exciting. Then it takes twenty years before you get anything of practical value from them in return. When coming to a new country, even if the person isn’t a kid, they can take a while to make a positive impact. Yet they mostly do make a positive contribution eventually. Immigrants are often young, they pay taxes, and being young they put little strain on social services even when they are permitted to use them.
In general, immigrants can help pay for the social safety nets that Western countries have established but, typically, did not think to fund properly. Bringing people into the country by birth or by immigration is an investment. Sometimes it will take a while to pay off but it is short-sighted to refuse to pay short-term costs that can bring long-term benefits. (Plus you really should support your children for other reasons too). Humans tend to focus excessively on the short-term costs rather than the payoff. Let’s not do that in our discussions of immigration.
Homogeneity Bias
One fear people have with immigration is that the newcomers will take jobs from the locals. Hernandez in his book notes that this concern is overblown. Immigrants often create jobs. They have new ideas and have access to new sources of investment. It is precisely that they are different which drives these benefits.
The fear of job taking is so prevalent because we don’t think through the differences between people. We see people as homogenous (the same) when they are all different. Often our intuitions, and a lot of economic theory, sees workers as interchangeable. But are they? A new immigrant isn’t going to take most jobs. They often don’t speak the same language, have the same experience, or benefit from the same social ties. (Indeed, any qualifications they might have often aren’t recognized). The immigrant may even be willing to work in jobs that are hard to get the native population to take benefiting the receiving society. Immigrants can have something to offer precisely because they bring something different, not because they can instantly be dropped into any job currently held by a native.
Replacing a similarity-based model with a difference-based model– which evidence validates — allows us to move from a win-lose mindset to a win-win mindset. Both native workers and immigrant workers can be better off.
Hernandez, 2024, page 96
Excess Fear Of Others
People can be afraid of those who don’t appear to be like them. Immigrants tend to have customs the native population isn’t familiar with and often look different.
…we’re much more afraid of foreigners than is warranted.
Hernandez, 20204, page 170
That said, worldwide people have a lot in common. We all want the same basic things; food, safety, and opportunities for our kids. Over time this becomes clear when a community settles. The story of immigration is of waves of newcomers who were initially seen as frightening becoming less frightening as the receiving population became used to them. E.g., Irish, Italians, Germans, and Eastern European immigrants were all seen as a problem. They had different customs, religions, and languages. Eventually though they got their own parades and now these groups are seen as a vital part of the makeup of the population. It is always useful to think of what our biases are. Are we letting our bias — excess fear of others — inform our public policy decisions?
Status Quo Bias
Does everyone emigrate that can? No, they don’t.
Even if it is economically better for them to move many people often stay where they are. This is true of both movement within the US and movement internationally. People often stick with what they have. Allowing people to move doesn’t mean they all will move. So a more relaxed border policy doesn’t instantly mean everyone in the world will move to the richest country in the world. (There are many benefits to immigration, but even I have to accept if all 8 billion of us were to move to Luxembourg overnight that might cause a few challenges with the public transport system).
Just because people can move doesn’t mean they will. It often has to be awful in a country for large numbers of people to leave. My advice to those who don’t want loads of immigrants? Help other countries get better. This seems like a sensible way to prevent large numbers of migrants if that isn’t something you want.
For more bias and public policy discussions see here, here, and here.
For immigration from Ireland see here.
Read: Zeke Hernandez ( 2024) The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers, St. Martin’s Press