270,000,000 Reasons to be Grateful
November 28, 2021
In a black and white image, A gentleman is walking away from the camera, into a rural landscape, as a lady, with a small child in arms, and five standing children look at him. The lightning is such that the perspective shifts from darker to brighter contours as the spectator’s eye moves away from the group. The picture, taken somewhere in Latin America, allows the audience to consider the possibilities of a distant trip. The sunnier landscape in the background evokes a feeling of hope, of possibilities, of the good things that destiny might bring. Every single image in Sebastião Salgado’s Migrations: Humanity in Transition collection is equally impactful, showing the humanity of the millions of immigrants across the world.
In his series of pictures, not only does Salgado documents human migrations from Mexico to the United States, but also African migrants crossing the Mediterranean, Muslims crossing the Balkans, or Jews leaving the former Soviet Union. The phenomenon of people searching a new home, better economic opportunities, and safety might very well define the times we live in. In fact, according to the United Nations, two-hundred and seventy million people live in a country different than their place of birth. According to the Migration Policy Institute there are currently 45 million immigrants in the United States. To put this in context, roughly one of every sixth person in the United States was born abroad.
The great irony of our time is that while the world has become more globalized during the last thirty years, we have liberalized international trade and capital flows, only international migration remains highly regulated. Harvard economist Dani Rodrik highlighted twenty years ago: “If international policymakers were really interested in maximizing worldwide efficiency, . . . they would all be busy at work liberalizing immigration restrictions.” The economist Michael Clemens, of the Center for Global Development, estimates that liberalizing people flows and allowing people to move where they would be most productive would add tens of trillions of dollars (23 trillion or 23% of GDP) to the total world output.
I am one of the many immigrants who have benefited from the opportunities in their new home. Born in Mexico, I came to the United States in 2003. I have benefited from the generosity of my adopted home: I met my wife here, the daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. We have two wonderful American children. I have a job that most days makes me fill the most fortunate person in the world.
I will never know what had I become if I had stayed in Mexico. Perhaps I would still be a professor, just in a different country. We will never know. We would also not know whether my job in the United States would exist if our immigration policies were less generous. (Most of my students are also immigrants or the children of immigrants.) Inferring these hypothetical outcomes is precisely the unobserved counterfactual challenge of causal inference: only one of an infinite number of potential outcomes is realized and observed. Guido Imbens (another immigrant) was just awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for finding ways in which we can econometrically estimate these different potential outcomes.
One question that economists still debate is whether people in host countries benefit from immigration. Some argue that immigrants hurt the labor market outcomes of those who compete directly with them. Others argue that any negative effects are inexistent or naggable. The answer to this question remains contested, and different estimates are sensitive to the sample analyzed and the methodological strategy that the researchers employ. Yet, one thing is pretty certain: immigration increases a country’s total output, and immigration redistributes resources. It increases the size of the pie but changes the slice everyone receives. When the gains from migration are so large, policy should not focus on diverting flows, but rather on a more equitable distribution of the total gains from migration.
Salgado, who has a doctorate in economics, one day asked himself whether “pictures may reveal more than statistics.” Since then, he has traveled the world documenting the human experience. He has visited more than forty-three countries photographing people on the move. Salgado’s Migrations book is composed of three hundred pictures that show the hardship of the migration experience. Images that reflect the despair of struggling against a system built to oppress the world’s poor, to stop them from seeking a better life. In the documentary “The Specter of Hope,” the photographer reflects: “if you add all the images in this book, you do not get more than one second [of the migration experience], three hundred images shot at an average speed of three hundred and fifty images per second.” These images reflect one second of hope, human resilience, and the entrepreneurship that leads many to seek to improve their condition.
I would never claim that my migration experience is that documented by Salgado. It is not. I did not suffer the hardship of struggling against a system designed to stop me from moving. My father, whose migration predated mine, sponsored me. But I have benefited from moving to the U.S. and becoming an American like so many others. These holidays, I am grateful for my adopted home and for the two-hundred and seventy million fellow migrants, from all over the world, who work to make the world a better place.
Fernando Lozano is professor of economics at Pomona, College in Claremont, CA. He is also a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors and the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. He tweets @fdolozano . All ideas expressed in this opinion piece are his.
