....The flow of workers across borders is heavily impeded, leaving the global market for labour far more distorted than those for capital and commodities. The world price of capital may be set in America, and that of oil set in Saudi Arabia....there is no such thing as a world price of labour. Wages can differ by a factor of ten or more depending only on the passport of the wage-earner.
Relaxing the movement of labour even a little would thus generate large efficiency gains.... letting poor workers into rich countries, in modest numbers (equivalent to 3% of the hosts' labour force) for a limited period, could reap benefits to the developing world worth $200 billion a year. With numbers like that...(one) wonder why so much energy is spent freeing trade and capital, and so little expended freeing labour.
....Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, set up the Global Commission on International Migration almost two years ago. The commission, 19 members of the great and good from around the world plus a secretariat in Geneva, was charged with inspiring debate and reflection on all aspects of international migration and policy....Of its 33 recommendations, the most consequential is indeed a call for more temporary migration from poor countries to rich ones. Guest-worker programmes would realise some of the efficiency gains...Opening up new avenues of legal migration might also help reduce the flow of illegal migrants, the report hopes.
...history lends little support to their optimism. The Gastarbeiter programme in Germany—which invited Turks, Yugoslavs and others needed at the time to fill the factory jobs created by the country's post-war economic miracle—failed, at least on its own terms. Many of Germany's “guests� never left, and their families soon arrived. The bracero programme in America—which, from 1942 to 1964, recruited Mexican field hands to pick cotton and sugar beets in Texas and California—fared no better. The entry of hundreds of thousands of farm workers provided camouflage for a substantial flow of undocumented labour.
....the logic of temporary migration appears irresistible. Rich countries want migrants' labour, but do not want to look after these newcomers when they grow old. Ideally, rich countries would like a constant rotation of workers, arriving while they are young and active, leaving before they grow old and dependent.... “temporary and circular migration� is also better for poor countries. One reason is remittances: the longer an immigrant stays away from home, the smaller the share of his wages he sends back.
If temporary worker programmes make a comeback, how should they be designed? ...Some countries set a simple quota, filled on a first-come, first-served basis. The British government is more calculating, allocating visas to specific sectors, such as food processing, that express a need for cheap labour. Singapore is the most ambitious....“foreign worker levies� that employers must pay to hire an immigrant. The levies differ by industry and by skill. To hire a skilled foreigner in construction, for example, an employer must pay S$80 ($47) a month. To hire an unskilled migrant, the employer must pay S$470. With these levies, the ministry can fine-tune the demand for immigrant labour.
In Germany, ...the availability of cheap guest-workers in German factories slowed the adoption of new labour-saving technology. As the saying went at the time: Japan is getting robots while Germany gets Turks.
Some economists argue that governments should simply set a quota of visas and auction them..... they could set a price for the permits designed to achieve more or less the same number of sales. The principal virtue of both schemes is that they allocate visas according to private perceptions of their worth, not government guesses about need.
How can governments ensure that guest workers do not overstay their welcome? In South Korea, temporary workers contribute to a special account that is refunded to them if they leave on time and forfeited if they linger. The British government is thinking of asking some migrants to post a bond, like a defendant on bail, which they will lose if they choose not to return.
...the market forces and demographic pressures that make temporary migration worth considering anew.
The following chart gives an idea of destination of immigrants.
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