All posts by Vipul Naik

Vipul Naik founded the Open Borders website in March 2012. See also: Vipul Naik's personal statement Vipul Naik's description of open borders on his personal site Page about Vipul Naik on Open Borders

Helping North Korean refugees: an evaluation

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Roughly speaking, we can estimate the value of rescuing people from a totalitarian regime or otherwise dysfunctional system by considering the difference between the quality of life they’d experience once rescued and the quality of life they’d experience if not rescued. Given how unchanging life is in North Korea, the quality of life they’d experience if not rescued is about the same as the quality of life they were leading prior to being rescued.

North Korea seems a particularly promising place because we have good reason both to believe that people lead low-quality lives there currently, and that they are likely to lead high-quality lives if they are successfully rescued (though there are some important caveats to the latter).

Life in North Korea at present

Estimates put GDP (PPP) per capita in North Korea at around $1800 per year. This is not the lowest in the world, but it’s at the low end; the poorer countries are mainly Haiti, Afghanistan, and some small countries, most of them in Africa. Further, because of the closed and highly restrictive nature of the North Korean economy, prospects for economic growth in North Korea look bleak unless there is some kind of political change.

Potential for North Korean who escape

In general, there are serious questions about the extent to which refugees will be able to adapt to their new enviroments. Although life for them will most likely be better than where they came from, the size of the gap depends on a number of factors. Below, I list some factors to consider:

  • According to official estimates, North Korea has a 99% national literacy rate. This is better than the global literacy rate (estimated at 84%) and dramatically better than literacy rates in other countries with incomes in a similar ballpark. For comparison, Nigeria and India, both large countries that are wealthier per capita than North Korea, have literacy rates 61.3% and 73.8% according to this table.
  • However, the official statistics are hard to interpret, because literacy could be defined in many different ways and statistics are hard to corroborate in a country where there is little scope for outsiders to independently verify claims.
  • Further, it seems that most North Koreans don’t learn any language other than Korean, which makes it difficult for them to immediately settle anywhere other than South Korea.
  • The educational system in North Korea indoctrinates people into worshipping their leaders and often teaches blatant falsehoods to boost national glory and prevent people from being attracted to knowledge that might undermine the regime. Thus, people have to “unlearn” a lot when they move out of North Korea. This might be an argument in favor of rescuing people when they are younger.
  • The anecdotal story of Joseph Kim (video) suggests that many North Koreans are unable to put their best in school because they are constantly looking for food and battling hunger — a concern similar to that in many other countries. Joseph Kim describes himself as having been a F student back in elementary school in North Korea, and he says he didn’t even go to middle school. Upon moving to the United States, Joseph Kim was able to turn around his academic performance. It’s unclear how unusual he is relative to other potential North Korean refugees.
  • Genetically, North Koreans are quite similar, probably indistinguishable, from South Koreans. Thus, to the extent that we consider South Korea’s rapid recent economic growth and technological progress as being linked to genetic potential, this is an argument in favor of North Koreans having huge potential when they leave. Whether this counterbalances the concerns surrounding indoctrination and wasted childhoods is unclear. Note also that at the individual level, higher IQ doesn’t lead to substantially higher earnings or life satisfaction, so this connection is not that strong.
  • There is some weak evidence of high ability for North Koreans, but it is hard to interpret. North Korea, despite having a population of only 25 million, consistently does well at the International Mathematical Olympiad (here are their historical scores). There were some accusations of cheating in 1991 and 2010, but these were not well-substantiated and in any case the consistently good performance over many years is not explained. However, it seems that, since North Korean education stops after grade 10, the IMO team gets intensive separate training (i.e., they study primarily for Olympiads, rather than juggle that with schoolwork). This arguably gives them an advantage over people in other countries for whom excelling in Olympiads is just one of many things they are juggling. There is little evidence of other significant accomplishment, but the indoctrination and the closed nature of the society probably explains that completely. Also note that Communist countries have historically performed well at mathematics. Part of the reason may be that the regime is happy to encourage mathematical excellence, considering mathematics a relatively harmless outlet for intellectual curiosity that would not threaten the regime’s indoctrination attempts.
  • The North Korean regime ruthlessly prevents people from escaping, both by suppressing information and by using physical force. Thus, the set of people who manage to successfully escape are likely to be highly selected. This could be an argument that strengthens the case for rescuing people (since the people rescued are likely to have unique talents that make them likely to both gain and contribute more once they have escaped), but it could also be an argument for diminishing returns from scaling up rescue operations (as rescue becomes accessible to people who are not that well-selected). Note that diminishing returns could still be pretty huge returns in absolute terms — it’s just that extrapolating from the gains to current refugees might lead one to overstate returns.

Escaping and returning

Do those who escape from North Korea regret it? Surprisingly, many do desire to return, and some sneak back in.

It is very, very difficult to escape directly across the border from North Korea to South Korea. The typical route for defectors is to escape to China and from there to other places (Mongolia, South Korea, Thailand). One escape route is to China, then Mongolia (via the Gobi desert), where they are arrested by the Mongolian government and deported to South Korea.

Those who manage to escape to China but aren’t able to escape further have to live underground as illegal immigrants, in constant fear of deportation. Here’s what Wikipedia says about North Korean defectors in China:

In China there are 20,000−30,000 North Korean refugees.[citation needed] There was a continued decline in the number of North Korean refugees in China, with around 11,000 in the country at year’s end,[when?][13][14] mostly in the northeast, making them the largest population outside of North Korea; these are not typically considered to be members of the ethnic Korean community, and the Chinese census does not count them as such. Some North Korean refugees who are unable to obtain transport to South Korea marry ethnic Koreans in China and settle there; they blend into the community but are subject to deportation if discovered by the authorities. Those who have found ‘escape brokers’, try to enter the South Korean consulate in Shenyang. In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened the security and increased the number of police outside the consulate.

Today there are new ways of getting into South Korea. One is to follow the route to the Mongolian border; another is the route to southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, who welcome the North Korean defectors.[15]

According to a source from 2005, “60 to 70% of the defectors [in China] are women, 70 to 80% of whom are victims of human trafficking.”[16] Most of the clients of North Korean women are Chinese citizens of Korean descent, largely elderly bachelors.[17] Violent abuse starts in apartments near the border with China, from where the women are then moved to cities further away to work as sex slaves. Chinese authorities arrest and repatriate these North Korean victims. North Korean authorities keep repatriates in penal labour colonies (and/or execute them) and execute the Chinese-fathered babies “to protect North Korean pure blood” and force abortions on pregnant repatriates who are not executed.[16]

China refuses to grant refugee status to North Korean defectors and considers them illegal economic migrants. The Chinese authorities arrest and deport hundreds of defectors back into North Korea, sometimes in mass immigration sweeps. Chinese citizens caught aiding defectors face fines and imprisonment. In February 2012, Chinese authorities repatriated North Korean defectors being held in Shenyang and five defectors in Changchun from the same location. The case of the 24 detainees, who have been held since early February garnered international attention due to the North’s reported harsh punishment of those who attempted to defect. Beijing repatriates North Korean refugees under a deal made with Pyongyang, its ally. Human rights activists say those repatriated face harsh punishment including torture and imprisonment in labor camps.[18]

North Koreans are escaping the impoverished country every day, across the heavily guarded border to mainland China to avoid persecution and starvation. The escapees might face death, if returned to their homeland. South Korean human rights activists are continuing to stage hunger strikes and appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Council to urge China to stop the deportation of the refugees.[19][20][21]

Human rights organizations have compiled a list of hundreds of North Korean defectors repatriated by China.[22][23] For some of them the fate after repatriation to North Korea is described, ranging from torture, detention or prison camp to execution. The list also includes humanitarian workers, who were assassinated or abducted by North Korean agents for helping refugees.

Thus, simply escaping to China is not much good. It’s a first step, but one that can easily be reversed without complementary steps.

Many people from North Korea currently living in South Korea evince desires to return. Commonly cited reasons include:

  • Many of them are saddled with the debt they had to pay to the people who smuggled them out. Although the South Korean government does give them some money to get started with their new lives (about $3,000 according to a comment in a discussion of LiNK on the Open Borders Action Group) this isn’t enough to repay the debt (about $7000).
  • They miss their families acutely. The situation for North Koreans is considerably harder than for migrants from other countries because of the absence of communication channels with their relatives. Also, unlike migrants from other countries, they cannot easily send remittances to their family. (There do exist informal channels of smuggling in foreign currencies, but these are quite costly because of the clandestine nature of operations).
  • Those who escape as children often have difficulty adjusting to South Korea’s highly competitive educational system. Coming from a place with low educational standards and significant indoctrination, they find it hard to readjust to the intellectual expectations in South Korea. Affirmative action (intended to help them) often places them in universities with higher academic standards than they are prepared for.
  • The ones who escape as adults often lack the necessary skills to get good jobs in the South Korean economy, and they have difficulty affording the high living costs, particularly housing costs.

See here, here, and here for more.

The cost of rescue and resettlement

Obviously, one factor that would go into determining whether rescuing people from North Korea is cost-effective is the cost of rescue and resettlement. I’ve been told that people who pay for smugglers generally pay about $7,000 to get all the way to South Korea (it’s cheaper to get to China alone, but, as noted above, that is often not enough and could even make things worse). Liberty in North Korea claim that they can execute a rescue for $2,500. Their 2012 budget is about a million dollars, of which about $149,000 were spent directly on rescuing 40 people (average about $3,700). The figure of $2,500 may reflect cost reductions since then. If we assume that their entire budget was necessary in order to facilitate the existing rescues, the effective cost per rescue comes at $25,000. It’s unclear how to interpret the figures, because of many hidden costs and questions regarding the scalability of operations. I would expect the cost of rescue to range between $2,500 and $100,000 per person for the next few thousand people to be rescued. At the lower end of the estimate range, it seems that the cost of rescue is very small relative to the other considerations, so that even a slight net of benefits relative to costs makes rescuing people arguably competitive with GiveDirectly. At the higher end (which is probably more realistic), it does start becoming comparable with the net of other costs and benefits, though I still think rescues are potentially cost-competitive with other philanthropic options (but more on this later).

Spending resources on better resettlement might help increase the value of rescues (by reducing the rate at which people regret their decision to migrate), so that might need to be factored into the total cost of rescues but also increase the benefits from rescues.

Other factors

Some other considerations:

  • More rescues mean that the world gets a better understanding of life in North Korea.
  • Existing rescues may facilitate further rescues, and also facilitate political change in North Korea as more people in North Korea get to learn more about the world outside.
  • An increase in rescues could lead to further tightening of the border, specifically the North Korean border with China, further immiserating the population.
  • The South Korean government and society get a sense of the challenges that they might face under an eventual reunification.

Nepal and India: an open borders case study

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This blog post builds upon this Open Borders Action Group post and its comments.

Nepal is a small mountainous country, with much of the Himalayas running through it, and is home to some of the world’s tallest peaks, including Mount Everest. It is bounded by China on the north, though the Himalayas form a fairly impenetrable barrier for getting to China by land. it is also bounded by Tibet to the northwest and by India on all other sides. The border between Nepal and India is relatively easy to cross by land (compared with the border with China).

Map of India, Nepal, and other nearby countries
Map showing India and Nepal. Source Himalayan Homestays

According to many indicators, Nepal is somewhat less developed than its southern neighbor India:

  • GDP (PPP) per capita in Nepal is in the $1300-1500 range, relative to India, where it is in the $3800-4000 range. Thus, GDP estimates suggest that Indians are 2-3X as well off as Nepal.
  • Literacy rate in Nepal is 66% versus 74% for India.
  • The population of Nepal, according to the official 2011 census, is a little over 26 million, or about 2% of the Indian population (over 1.2 billion). The CIA World Factbook from July 2011 estimates the population at a little over 29 million.

Nepal-India land borderThe open border between India and Nepal, source Nepal Mountain News
Nepal and India have good diplomatic relations. The aspect that interests us most, obviously, is that the two countries have had open borders throughout their history (since long before Indian independence from the British). In fact, the border is literally open — it’s largely unmanned, people can cross any time, and natives of the two countries are not even required to have a passport to cross by land. Here’s what the description says (same as previous link):

Nepal-India border is unique in the world in the sense that people of both the countries can cross it from any point, despite the existence of border checkposts at several locations. The number of check posts meant for carrying out bilateral trade is 22. However, only at six transit points out of them, the movement was permitted to nationals of third countries, who require entry and exit visa to cross the border. As the whole length of the border except police does not patrol the checkposts or paramilitary or military forces of either country, illegal movement of goods and people is a common feature on both sides of the India-Nepal border.

So, the puzzle: given that India has 2-3X the per capita GDP of Nepal and substantially more economic opportunity, and given that the countries have open borders, why hasn’t there been labor market convergence between the countries? Why hasn’t a larger fraction of the Nepalese population moved to India in search of economic opportunity?

Here are a few other articles on Nepalese migration to India:

Open borders is a political non-issue

Indians aren’t necessarily welcoming of Nepalese as individuals: attitudes to Nepalese range from welcoming to hostile. But the total size of the Nepalese population is small relative to the Indian population (about 2%, and certainly not more than 3%). So far, nothing terrible has happened in India due to Nepalese migration. Even if the entire country of Nepal were to move over a decade to India, it wouldn’t be noticeable to most Indians. For the most part, therefore, Nepalese migration seems a non-issue.

There are a few issues. Smuggling of goods along the border could lead to a tightening of border security, and that might get in the way of peaceful migration. Maoists in Nepal have connections with Maoist-Naxalites in India. This too could lead to tightening of borders for security-related reasons. Overall, however, I don’t expect the open border between the two countries to be closed even in the face of Nepalese migration picking up significantly. This is in sharp contrast with Bangladeshi migration, which has caused a nativist backlash particularly in the state of Assam.

Are the GDP numbers reliable?

The GDP estimates carry a lot of uncertainty. In particular, they can be bad measures of standards of living in cases where:

  • A lot of economic activity goes unreported, or
  • government is a large share of the economy and spends the money on things that people don’t really benefit from.

Both problems exist to some extent in India and Nepal, but not to the same extent as they would in a country such as Somalia (the first problem) or North Korea (the second problem). Further, there’s no reason to believe that the figures are unreliable in a direction that would overstate the disparity between the two countries.

Reasons for economic disparity

Why is India so much richer than Nepal? A number of reasons suggest themselves:

  • Better geography: Nepal is covered with mountains that are unsuitable for many economic pursuits. It’s also landlocked. India is geographically diverse, and has large areas of flat plains suitable for agriculture, industry, and dense urban life. Moreover, India has a long coastline with great sea ports.
  • Larger population: Having a larger population allows for a larger diversity of activity and an economy with a greater level of specialization.
  • Historical advantages: The British developed a number of institutions in India that were bequeathed to the Indian government at the time of Indian independence. Even prior to the British, India, though very poor, had a diversity of historical institutions. These historical advantages gave India more growth potential, even if the country failed to realize that potential until very recently.
  • Economic freedom: Economic freedom in Nepal has been somewhat lower than India. According to the Economic Freedom of the World report, Nepal has had economic freedom in the 5-6.5 from 1980 to now, and even though its absolute level of economic freedom has increased, its ranking has fallen, as the rest of the world liberalized and it didn’t. As of 2011, it ranks 125th out of 152 countries with a rating of 6.19/10. Economic freedom in India started out lower than Nepal in the 1970s and 1980s, but with liberalization, overtook Nepal. In 2011, it ranks 111th out of 152 countries with a rating of 6.34/10. The difference isn’t huge, and arguably within the measurement error, but Heritage Foundation’s Index of Freedom reports a similar small gap in India’s favor. This probably accounts for only a small fraction of the economic difference, though.

How many Nepalese are there in India?

The size of the Nepalese population in India is highly unclear, both due to the fact that migration between the countries is not properly recorded by either, and because of the lack of clarity in definition. Table 3.3 in the Being Nepali Without Nepal chapter estimates that, as of the 1981 Indian census, there were 500,000 Nepal-born people in India, whereas the size of the Nepali community construed more broadly (to include descendants of Nepalese who spoke the Nepali language) may be as large as 2.25 million. Wikipedia claims that there are 4.1 million Nepalese Indians, without citing a source, but the data on the page seems to be taken from the 2003 CIA World Factbook (I cannot find a direct link for the specific claim). If correct, this is a huge increase relative to 1981, and more recent estimates may yield even higher values. The World Bank data for 2010, included in the Migration and Remittances Factbook, states that there are 564,906 Nepalese in India. It’s unclear what to make of these varied figures: the number of Nepal-born in India may be anywhere between 500,000 (~2% of the Nepalese population) to 5 million (~20% of the Nepalese population). The size of the Nepalese diaspora more broadly defined as descendants of Nepalese is probably at least 5 million, though probably not more than 10 million.

Recency of divergence

Indian GDP (PPP) per capita has been modestly higher than Nepal for quite a while, but the difference was fairly small until the Indian economy began liberalizing. As recently as 1992, one data set shows Nepalese GDP (PPP) at $800 per capita and Indian GDP (PPP) as $1200 per capita — hardly a big difference. India’s geographical and historical advantages, and more importantly, its much larger population, have always given it more growth potential, but the potential started getting unleashed only with liberalization measures in the 1990s. This caused the Indian economy to gallop ahead in relative terms, leading to the current situation where Indian GDP (PPP) per capita is $3800-4000 while that in Nepal is $1300-1500.

The recency of divergence might explain why Nepal hasn’t caught up with India and also why there aren’t more Nepalese in India: the Nepalese haven’t yet fully adjusted to the knowledge of India being a more attractive destination for economic opportunity. In other words, although India and Nepal have had open borders since forever, the “open borders with a large income disparity” is a relatively recent phenomenon, about as recent as the addition of poorer member states to the European Union. If Indian economic growth continues, we should expect to see Nepalese migration pick up, and I’d also expect that the gap in GDP (PPP) per capita is unlikely to widen beyond the 3X level.

Paul Collier’s diaspora dynamics model suggests that migration flows at any given point in time are far less than what either polling data on migration or economic models (such as John Kennan’s) predict.

However, if borders have been open for a sufficiently long time, then the fraction of the population with genetic origins in the source country that is in the target country does come close to the high levels suggested by polling data and economic models. Now, Nepal and India have had an open border for quite long, but the recency of divergence suggests that the “open border with huge economic disparity” is a relatively recent phenomenon for the country pair, and the size of the Nepalese diaspora in India at present is not inconsistent with the levels predicted by diaspora dynamics models (I’m just using a crude sense of the numbers and haven’t done any formal quantitative checks).

Prosperity of nearby states

One possible explanation for the wide disparity and low migration rates despite the disparity is that the Indian states near Nepal aren’t that prosperous. Consider this list of gross state domestic products. The five Indian states that share a land border with Nepal are Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Sikkim. Of these:

  • Bihar, one of India’s worst performing states, has a per capita GSDP pretty similar to Nepal’s (emigration from Bihar to the rest of India is significant, though I haven’t compiled quantitative measures). The state has also historically been linked with violence based on caste and class lines. It’s understandable that this is not an attractive target for Nepalese migrants.
  • Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s largest states, with a population of about 200 million (so only four countries have a higher population) has per capita GSDP about half India’s national per capita GDP. Assuming the same PPP adjustment factor, this would put the per capita GSDP at about $1900-2000, somewhat but not significantly more than Nepal. This is not a very attractive target for Nepalese migrants.
  • West Bengal and Uttarakhand have per capita GSDPs fairly close to the Indian average. These states should at least in principle be attractive targets.
  • Sikkim has a per capita GSDP about twice the Indian average, but it is a very small state, and India’s least populous. The most recent population estimate (based on the 2011 census) is 610,000, about 0.3% the population of Uttar Pradesh. It is the only state in India with an ethnic Nepali majority. The economy runs largely on agriculture. In recent years, tourism has been promoted. Despite being well-to-do, Sikkim may not offer many job opportunities to facilitate large-scale Nepali migration beyond the level that’s already occurred.

(The question of why significant economic disparities between Indian states persist despite internal open borders will be the subject of another blog post).

Apart from going to the immediate bordering states, Nepalese also go to other parts of the country, including the major metropolitan cities such as the capital cities, as well as the north-eastern states. But the lack of economic attractiveness of the states very close by could be part of the reason why Nepalese migration isn’t greater in magnitude.

Lack of information

Until I looked up the data, I wasn’t aware of the huge GDP (PPP) per capita disparity (I had been aware of the level for India, but not for Nepal). And I’m relatively well-informed about economic matters. Is it possible that many Nepalese simply aren’t aware of, or haven’t given active thought to, the prosperity levels in India? The recency of divergence is important here: information may take time to percolate.

Possible reasons for information not having flown fast enough within Nepal:

  • Low population density, making it more difficult for information to flow quickly (the population density is actually not all that low — at about 180/km^2, it is in the mid-range, but Nepal doesn’t have dense population concentrations where information flows really quickly)..
  • Low teledensity (less than 50%) suggesting that information about the outside world and about friends and relatives living abroad may not flow in as quickly and in as much detail as it needs to for people to be inspired to migrate. For comparison, teledensity in India is about 70% and teledensity in First World countries is close to 100%.

Explanations for differing attitudes in India to immigration from Nepal and Bangladesh

The following explanations have been posited for why India has an open border with Nepal, with little political resistance to it, yet a lot of unrest over illegal immigration from Bangladesh, despite Nepal being poorer than Bangladesh.

  • Population: Bangladesh has a population of 150 million, about 5-6X the population of Nepal. So, having open borders with Bangladesh is (considered) less feasible, or at any rate, would be a bigger and more transformative change.
  • Greater cultural similarity propelling more migration: Bangladeshis share close cultural roots with West Bengal (indeed, Bangladesh and West Bengal were both part of the state of Bengal in British India). Thus, there is likely to be much greater migration of Bangladeshis since they may have more confidence they’ll be able to adjust to life in West Bengal.
  • Religion: Bangladesh is an officially Muslim country with a Muslim majority. Although not as hostile to India as Pakistan, it still has some hostility. Nepal is a Hindu majority country with small amounts of Buddhism and Islam — religious demographics very similar to India.
  • Historical accident: Bangladesh and India actually started off somewhat well, because India supported Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in its struggle for independence against West Pakistan (~1971). But political changes in Bangladesh led to a worsening of relations.

We’ll explore Bangladesh and India more closely in a subsequent post (UPDATE: The post is here).

Nepalese in Bhutan

India also has open borders with a very small country called Bhutan (population ~750,000). Bhutan has a much higher GDP (PPP) per capita, somewhere in the $7000 range, but the economy runs largely on tourism, suggesting that it may not scale well with increased population. A large number of Nepalese have migrated (via India) to Bhutan, and Nepalese form a significant minority in Bhutan. Although richer, Bhutan also has more political oppression, so many Bhutanese (including some of Nepalese origin) have sought refuge in Nepal (see here).

Related reading

Citizenism: how do we deal with it?

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Regular readers of the blog are quite familiar with citizenism, but for those who’re new here, citizenism is basically the view the government policies should discriminate in favor of current citizens and their descendants, relative to prospective migrants and any descendants those migrants might have. Citizenism is one of the more common philosophical bases for anti-immigration arguments. The term is due to Steve Sailer, and more discussion can be found at our backgrounder page on citizenism and our blog posts tagged citizenism.

In a previous blog post, I argued that citizenism is an important under-current in the way people think about issues related to migration, even if very few people explicitly subscribe to it. However personally distasteful it might seem to people who support open borders, they (or shall I say, we) need to deal with it. But, how should we deal with it? In this blog post, I discuss some possibilities.

Approach #1: Avoid explicitly addressing citizenism (either favorably or unfavorably), while keeping citizenistic tendencies of the people you’re addressing in mind

Citizenism is only one of many under-currents in people’s thinking. Different choices of framing can put emphasis on different under-currents. One option for open borders advocates is to concentrate on a framing in terms of equality, human rights, opportunity, freedom, justice, or what not (see our moral case for starters) that does not either condone or challenge citizenism.

The logic behind such a strategy is that most people behave citizenistically only if citizenship and national identity are brought to the fore in the framing presented to them. If we explicitly mention the concepts, whether favorably or unfavorably, or even discuss them neutrally, it primes people in a certain way that will not redound to the benefit of open borders advocates. This is not to deny the possibility of a citizenist case for open borders. However, any such case typically depends on other factors (for instance, economic literacy, willingness to challenge taboos against putting a price on things) that may be even harder to sidestep or remedy than citizenism.

Obviously, this strategy will not work with hardcore citizenist restrictionists such as Steve Sailer. But such people form only a small minority and one might argue that, in public messaging, it’s worth sacrificing the need to address or steelman these individuals if that allows for easier outreach to people who don’t have strong priors on migration.

Note that one danger of this strategy is the sip taste test problem: even if ignoring citizenism might yield significant short term positive results in terms of how easily one seems to convince people, it might lead to worse long term results once the hardcore restrictionists issue responses (whether in comments on the website, letters to the editor, or separate responses in articles or talk shows). Thus, even people who choose to strategically ignore citizenism when making the “first round” of their case need to be prepared to address it if somebody brings up citizenistically laced arguments in response — and need to address it in a way that does not make them look bad for having ignored citizenism in the first place.

Approach #2: Make arguments within a citizenistic framework, without personally endorsing citizenism

The idea here is to point to the many benefits that migration may confer to receiving countries, and in general, point to the citizenist case for open borders. Perhaps even endorse keyhole solutions such as immigration tariffs or migration taxes that are designed to meet explicitly citizenist goals. All this, without holding citizenism as a moral standard or personally endorsing it.

Such arguments may be combined with other arguments in favor of migration that describe the benefits to migrants, their home countries, and the world at large. The difference is that the benefits to immigrant-receiving countries are treated more saliently and given particular importance as a guiding principle in the design of keyhole solutions.

Approach #3: Challenge citizenism, or at any rate, challenge some aspects of citizenism

The blog posts on citizenism on our site have largely followed this approach: challenging citizenism in part or whole. This does not mean that we argue that citizenism is completely wrong. Rather, various bloggers on the site have argued that there should be limits on citizenism and that arbitrary denial of the right to migrate falls outside those limits. Bryan Caplan’s post on Himmler and Nathan Smith’s follow up post stressed this point: citizenists need to specify more clearly the moral side-constraints they are operating within, and explain why they think that arbitrary denial of the right to migrate does not violate those moral side-constraints.

Where I stand

In the first year and a half of Open Borders, Approach #3 got a lot of prominence, with Approaches #1 and #2 getting some prominence, but less so. Over time, I’ve gravitated in favor of Approach #1.

The problem with focusing on Approach #3 is that, after laying out the basic arguments, there’s not a lot to say. It’s also very combative, and tends to degenerate into a game of signaling moral superiority without making substantive progress. So with Approach #3, I’d say it’s good to make the point clearly a few times, but not to make that too much of a focus of argumentation.

The problem with focusing on Approach #2 is that it doesn’t distinctively make a case for open borders, and it plays too closely to the mainstream moderate pro-immigration arguments, as opposed to the radical brand we offer here. The moderate arguments are useful, but there are already a lot of people making them. The value of adding to them at the margin is unclear.

Approach #1, by ignoring citizenism as an explicit view to address, most closely reflects the natural universalistic thinking of many open borders advocates. In that sense, it’s more honest, even if it seems evasive. It’s honest in the same way as an atheist would be more honest not to provide biblical arguments for a position every time he argues for it — the absence of explicit coverage of citizenism correctly reflects the low importance of citizenistic reasoning in the minds of open borders advocates. Of course, it’s good to have thought through and written stuff along the lines of Approach #3 to handle pushback, and even to have stuff along the lines of Approach #2 to occasionally add to the arguments.

PS: The very fact that this blog post is the first after several months that explicitly mentions citizenism is some evidence that we’ve increasingly moved to Approach #1 on the blog.

Would migration levels under open borders be optimal, too high, or too low?

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A common criticism of free markets is that due to market failure, the level of supply of a particular good or activity may be too high or too low. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a case for government intervention. Governments may fail too: they may exacerbate the problems further, overcorrect in the other direction, or introduce a new dimension of problems. But the question of market failure is worth considering, whether one comes up with a governmental solution, non-governmental solution, or concludes that there is no solution.

The question for migration: under open borders, will the level of migration be optimal, too high, or too low? The majority of open borders supporters (or at least, those who consider the question sufficiently well-posed) probably adhere to the view that the level of migration under open borders would be closer to optimal than under the status quo. That still leaves open a range of possibilities for the situation under open borders: perhaps there is slightly more migration than optimal, or perhaps there is slightly less, or even a lot less, migration than optimal. Most open borders skeptics who consider the question well-posed (and particularly those coming from a universalist angle) probably feel that the amount of migration under open borders is a lot more than optimal (hence their support for migration restrictions).

I will lay out some possible reasons why there might be “too much” or “too little” migration, though it will be difficult to arrive at a conclusion. In future posts, I might talk more about how to weigh the considerations and how to address the issues raised.

Here’s a quick summary:

  1. Wealth effects: inability to afford the upfront costs causing too little migration
  2. Hyperbolic discounting combined with large upfront costs of migration causing too little migration
  3. Overestimation of the private importance of material gains causing too much migration
  4. Under-accounting for positive flow-through effects and externalities (growth of other parts of the global economy) causing too little migration
  5. Under-accounting for negative flow-through effects and externalities (including goose-killing) causing too much migration
  6. Under-accounting for the benefits accruing to future generations causing too little migration

UPDATE: Mike Carey points out in his comment below that (1)-(3) in my list refer to ways that the migrant miscalculates his/her personal gain or loss, whereas (4)-(6) in my list refer to ways that the migrant fails to account for effects on other people.

1. Wealth effects: inability to afford the upfront costs causing too little migration

Some prospective migrants may benefit greatly from migrating, and wish to do so, but the upfront cost of migrating may be so high that they literally cannot afford it. Joel Newman discussed this case in his recent post. Prima facie, I don’t see this as a big issue long-term: I expect that to the extent that people care deeply about migrating, loans (repaid through greater post-migration earnings) and private charity will help fund the upfront costs.

The catch: people need to be sufficiently eager to migrate to avail of the opportunity of a loan (along with the attendant liabilities). But the failure to do so is more a problem of hyperbolic discounting (next on our list) than of an inability to afford the move.

Intranational migration, or the lack thereof, offers important lessons. There’s a great deal of intranational migration, but a lot less than one might naively expect given the cost-benefit analysis, raising the possibility that wealth effects constrain intranational migration, and therefore are also likely to constrain international migration under open borders.

GiveWell’s shallow overview of intranational migration discussed a study by Bryan, Chowdhury, and Mobarak. Quoting from GiveWell’s summary of the study:

Both the 0% interest loans and the conditional cash transfers led to large increases in seasonal migration, while “information only” treatment had no apparent effect,7 leading the authors to combine the cash and credit groups and information only and control groups into “incentivized” and “non-incentivized” groups, respectively, for the remainder of their analysis.

In the year the study was conducted, incentives led to a 22 percentage point increase in migration on a baseline level of 36% in the non-incentivized group, a 60% increase.9In the following year, when incentives were no longer provided, migration was still 10 percentage points higher in the villages that had previously received cash or credit incentives. Three years later, an 8 percentage point increase persisted in these villages. This increase in seasonal migration led to large and well-identified gains for the families of migrants at the origin, who benefit from remittances.

2. Hyperbolic discounting combined with large upfront costs of migration causing too little migration

People value the future less than the present. This isn’t considered ipso facto irrational. Economic models typically use exponential discounting. Roughly, this means that the ratio in which you value today and tomorrow is the same as the ratio in which you value tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. In other words, a constant increment of time leads to a fixed proportion change in value.

In practice, though, people tend to engage in hyperbolic discounting. They value the present highly, and the future a lot less, but the proportional dropoff from the present to the near future is much greater than the dropoff between dates in the future. In other words, people value their present a lot more than their selves six months into the future, but they’re pretty much indifferent between 30 months in the future and 36 months in the future. Hyperbolic discounting is not invariant under time translation and therefore leads to dynamic inconsistency. What this means in practice is that people might avoid migrating now because of the huge upfront cost, even in the face of numerically larger benefits within six months of migrating. On the other hand, if they are asked now whether they’d be willing to migrate 2.5 years later to achieve huge gains 3 years later, they are more likely to express willingness.

Hyperbolic discounting isn’t a problem per se if people have access to commitment devices that can allow them to force themselves to migrate at a later date (a bit like Save More Tomorrow). But such mechanisms are hard to develop and implement without morally impermissible coercion, particularly for a weighty decision such as migration. This argument points in the direction of there being far less migration than people would like from a non-present-biased vantage point.

3. Overestimation of the private importance of material gains causing too much migration

An articulate critic of Bryan Caplan has made this point in detail. The relevant passage is quoted below:

It seems clear that many immigrants chose to immigrate in-order to obtain better economic standing. Surveys from around the world have found that improvements in their material condition is the first thing people list when asked about how their lives might improve. They think that they will be better off if they have more money. This is an area in which immigrants might plausibly make a mistake: they overestimate the importance of absolute wealth to their well being and in so doing under appreciate other factors, such as their relative wealth and their sense of belonging in their community.

First, I am going to look at the relationship between absolute income, relative income, and happiness. To be clear, relative income is how much money you make relative to the people around you. If you live in a third world country and make a third world income then you have a pretty average income relative to the people around you. If, on the other hand, you move to a first world country, you could have a significant increase in the total amount of money you are making and still be making less money than the people around you. That is, you can experience an increase in your absolute economic standing and a decrease in your relative economic standing. And if relative income is more important to your mental well being than absolute income is then you could experience a decrease in happiness as a result.

Some of the most important data on this topic has been documented by economist Richard Easterlin. He has documented that, over the course of the twentieth century, the absolute income of people in the United States more than doubled. Yet, levels of life satisfaction haven’t increased in any substantial way. What this suggests is that absolute income effect on life satisfaction isn’t very large. Similarly, following the second world war Japan rose from a third world nation to one of the richest nations in the world in about 30 years. Over that period, Japan’s GDP per capita increased fivefold and major lifestyle changes were experienced by Japan’s inhabitants as they rose from international poverty to affluence. Yet, average reported levels of life satisfaction in Japan remained unchanged. Further still, an analysis of economic growth and life satisfaction in 9 European countries over a 16 year period found no relationship between economic growth and changes in happiness. A similar relationship exists between individuals happiness and changes in their incomes over their lifespan. Several studies have shown that individuals do not typically experience an increase in happiness between the ages of 20 and 40. And yet, their income increases substantially over that same time period.

In-spite of all this data showing that individuals can experience massive changes in their absolute wealth with no corresponding change in their mental well being, many studies have found that there is a correlation such that the more money people have the happier they are. One way to explain this finding is by positing that the people who end up with the most money are the happiest to begin with and that their income is therefore not the cause of their happiness. There is some good evidence for this position. For instance, in one study researchers interviewed around 15,000 participants at ages 16, 18, and 22, and obtained information on their income at age 29. During the interviews in adolescence and young adulthood they assessed how happy the participants were and preformed a statistical analysis to see if happiness at this earlier period predicted income at age 29. What they found was that not only did happier people go on to make more money than less happy people but that happier siblings grew up to make more money than their less happy siblings. This means that coming from a wealthy family cannot explain why happier young people end up making more money. After all, siblings come from the same family. Thus, the correlation between happiness and income is partially explained by the fact that people that are happier to begin with make more money.

On a related note, see the article on the Gallup website titled Worldwide, Migrants’ Wellbeing Depends on Migration Path.

This is an interesting argument, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on it (see Will Wilkinson’s detailed review of happiness research, that I draw upon somewhat):

  • I think that revealed preference says a lot, not just in that people choose to migrate, but that they don’t choose to return, and that people continue to migrate even after learning of conditions in the area that they want to migrate to. If anything, migration tends to increase with the presence of diasporas.
  • It is more likely that people’s attempt to provide a numerical estimate of their happiness level is based on relative wealth and other considerations, whereas their actual happiness levels correlate with actual wealth.
  • One’s absolute level of wealth may not be important, but the opportunity to earn wealth might matter. People who have this option, and then choose not to exercise it, may not be too unhappy. People who choose not to exercise the opportunity still benefit from its existence, insofar as they are making a conscious tradeoff.
  • One reason why people’s happiness predicts their future income is that people are aware of their future income, and make present life choices, including choices of consumption levels, taking that into account. If you know your salary ten years from now will be millions of dollars, you have less inhibitions taking out a bigger loan to buy a bigger, better house.

4. Under-accounting for positive flow-through effects and externalities (growth of other parts of the global economy) causing too little migration

For most jobs, doing the job benefits not only the person doing it but also benefits other people, including the person’s customers, employers, and (perhaps) co-workers. People who migrate to take up a job with higher productivity are likely to increase their own income, but in addition, they’re also likely to benefit the people around them to a greater extent than they did with their earlier job. The increased flow-through effects, spillover effects, and externalities are something that people may not consider in their personal accounting. Thus, they may migrate less than they “should” from a universalist perspective.

In particular, as Carl Shulman pointed out (continuing on a theme I blogged about), economic models focused on finding arrangements that are most economically efficient routinely predict substantially larger migration flows than polling data indicate, and it’s believed that the polling data themselves are either about right or an overestimate.

Flow-through effects and externalities should be internalizable through compensation: for instance, employers can pay relocation costs for workers, and local governments can give special tax breaks to people when they move (similar to the discounts that subscription services offer for the first few months). However, there may be practical problems associated with compensation mechanisms.

5. Under-accounting for negative flow-through effects and externalities (including goose-killing) causing too much migration

Concerns such as brain drain and delay of the reform of political institutions might lead to more migration than is optimal under open borders. One culprit is wealth effects: people in poor countries can pay less (for the same subjective benefit) to their doctor than people in rich countries. When a doctor moves from a poor country to a rich country, attracted by a higher income, the doctor’s private gain might overstate the social gain from migration. Note that the claim here isn’t that brain drain justifies the status quo, or even that most skilled migration is bad, but rather that complete free migration might lead to somewhat more skilled migration than is socially optimal. Then, of course, there’s the concern about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

6. Under-accounting for the benefits accruing to future generations causing too little migration

Migrants have to pay both the upfront costs of moving and the costs of adjusting to a different culture (this may include learning a new language, familiarizing oneself with a new culture, or adjusting to new types of work). Their children, born in the new country, however, do not need to “adjust” in the same sense, though they do need to juggle the somewhat different cultural and linguistic traditions of their parents and the ambient culture. The grandchildren face even lower adjustment costs. In the case of migration from poorer to richer countries, the children and grandchildren can acquire more relevant skills and human capital early on in their lives, and therefore have greater earning potential than the parents. In other words, the place premium for migrants understates the long-term gain from migration because the place premium only accounts for improved earning capacity of migrants without a change in their skill level, whereas their descendants have an opportunity to acquire more skills right from childhood.

It is thus likely that prospective migrants are less willing to migrate because they give insufficient weight to the life satisfaction and earnings of their descendants, particularly their as-yet-unborn descendants.

For a somewhat extreme example, consider Africans who were brought to the United States as slaves in the late 18th century. They were brought against their will, and the vast majority would not have voluntarily migrated. Further, it’s likely that their life (or even their children’s) was worse as slaves in the US than it would have been in Africa, though this isn’t completely clear — they may have been enslaved in Africa in worse material conditions. But there’s strong reason to believe that their descendants today are much better off than the descendants of comparable people who stayed behind in Africa (as can be seen from a variety of health and development indicators). The point here isn’t to endorse slavery, but rather to point out that migration could benefit potential descendants even if it is a net loss for the migrants themselves. (Even if this were true, I don’t think it would justify coercing people to migrate, let alone endure slavery, so that their descendants can lead better lives than the counterfactual. There are other ways of encouraging migration if migration levels are lower than optimal).

In a subsequent post or posts, I’ll look at empirical data relevant to weighing the above considerations and at possible ways to encourage or discourage migration to fix any “market failure” that might occur under open borders.

Against conflating open borders with other migration-related beliefs

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For a lot of people, both “pro-migration” and “anti-migration” people, questions about how open the borders should be are almost synonymous with their answers to questions such as:

  • Do you believe that immigration (or its correlates, such as diversity of various sorts, or a larger population) is good for your country?
  • Do you believe that having more people, or people of diverse (races/religions/ethnicities) is consonant with the values of your country?
  • Do you identify with the idea of having more people, having immigrants, and/or having people of diverse (races/religions/ethnicities)?
  • Do you think immigrants are really awesome people?

The reason for the perceived equivalence in most people’s minds is, I think, that people:

  • fundamentally concede the state’s authority to have carte blanche control of migration,
  • view moral obligation to migrants per se as having minimal relevance, so that the decision of how to answer these questions is driven more by one’s belief about the benefits to current citizens and/or one’s general mood affiliation with the sort of people one wants to be physically close to, and
  • link the question of the morality of migration restrictions in a strong way with how much they like migrants or consider them exemplars of virtue.

I think that it’s somewhat unfortunate that people conceptually conflate these questions. Just to clarify:

  • It’s not unexpected or unfortunate that people’s views about the effects of migration correlate with their views on open borders — clearly, if you’re a hardcore consequentialist, then effects are all that matter, but even if you mix deontology and consequentialism, consequences have some relevance.
  • It’s also not unexpected that many open borders advocates have resoundingly positive views about how nice immigrants are, or how much they enjoy interacting with immigrants, or how good immigration is for their native economies. Both the objectively measurable and the subjective aspects of these may well be true. I’m not being critical of people for holding these views while simultaneously supporting open borders.
  • It’s more unfortunate that the focus seems to be on hinging the case for open borders on a framing that views migrants, or potential migrants, as a tool to enrich oneself, or provide one with diversity value, and setting unusually high standards of belief about the awesomeness of migrants (which may well be satisfied in some circumstances, but would not be robust to significant liberalization of migration).

When I say that both pro-migration and anti-migration people seem to make this mistake, I’m not trying to make a half-hearted attempt to be evenhanded — I think that in some ways, pro-migration people might be more susceptible to these problems in how they articulate their case. Part of this is seen in pro-migration forces congratulating themselves on being less bigoted and more tolerant of diversity than their anti-migration counterparts. But a bigger aspect might be the extent to which they tend to valorize migrants as uniquely awesome and courageous people in a manner that suggests that such beliefs are central to the arguments for free migration. “The immigrant works 16 hours a day to send money to his family, and you don’t want to let him in!” This can certainly be a valid counterpoint to the claim that migrants are lazy, but ultimately the point worth stressing is that lazy people have the right to freedom of association as well.

Apart from people debating the merits of migration, many social scientists seem to reinforce this conflation in their analyses of attitudes to migration. This type of conflation isn’t unique to migration — for instance, beliefs about the abilities or moral character of people of different races, and beliefs about how helpful it is to have people of different races around, are often treated as proxies for attitudes to treatment of people based on race, with all of them being grouped under the comprehensive header of racial attitudes.

I’m not the first to make this point. Responding to commenter Brian, Bryan Caplan had written this:

For many other important libertarian issues, appeals to self-interest are factually correct but, to use Brian’s word, “unworthy.”  Immigration is such an issue.  Yes, doubling GDP by opening world borders will enrich most people in the First World.  But these economic benefits for First Worlders are not the main reason why I advocate open borders.  The main reason I advocate open borders is that immigration restrictions are a terrible injustice against people from Third World countries.  Once someone retreats to, “Yes, immigration restrictions are a terrible injustice, but doing the right thing would be very costly,” I’m happy to delve into the social science with them.  Until then, they’re just missing the point.

Similarly, when writing about Mark Zuckerberg at the time of launch of FWD.us, co-blogger Nathan Smith had written:

Immigrants who are sort of dumb and/or a bit lazy can also gain by coming here, and we can gain by hiring them, renting them accommodations, selling goods to them, maybe even marrying them (e.g., if we have no other marital options, or if in addition to being sort of dumb and/or a bit lazy, they’re beautiful and nice). Meritocracy has its place, but is there really a good reason for the mere right to reside in the US to be allocated in a meritocratic fashion? And even if you want to discriminate in favor of the “smart and hardworking,” how?

Yet I think the point can sometimes be forgotten.

What do other think of the extent to which such conflation occurs? In particular, I’m curious to hear people’s views on questions such as:

  • Do you think such conflation is more common among pro-migration or anti-migration people? My impression is that it’s about equally common on both sides.
  • How do you think moderate pro-migration forces and radical open borders advocates compare with respect to such conflation? My impression is that moderate pro-migration forces engage in it more, because they do not fully embrace the moral presumption in favor of free migration, so see migration policy as more closely tied to beliefs about the virtue of migrants or how much they think natives can benefit.
  • Do you think the conflation is epistemically unsound? How unsound is it? Just a minor matter, or as serious as I’m making it out to be?
  • Do you think such conflation has strategic benefits when appealing to a large audience, and is that one reason why many people engage in it? I think that when appealing to larger audiences (that tend to take a more citizenistic perspective), we’re tempted to conflate the issues, and this might lead to corrupting (in my judgmental view) our own thinking on the subject as well.

PS: The Frameworks Institute has put out some memos on immigration where they claim that talking about the goodness of particular migrants actually makes listeners more resistant to migration liberalization, because once they start thinking about the moral character of migrants, they are also reminded of the bad ones, and the bad stuff is more salient in their decision-making process than the good stuff. The Frameworks Institute calls this the “Bill Cosby effect.” What they suggest is emphasizing moral arguments as well as general “the economy will grow”-type arguments. I blogged about the memos a while back.