Jockeying for economic advantage is as old as human civilization and as new as President Donald Trump’s “America First” mantra. Today, economic advantage is typically pursued by firms, which benefit most directly, with their employees also gaining in the form of good, stable and well-compensated jobs. And when firms are strong, societies also gain enormously in the form of high living standards and the services and social protections that distinguish wealthy societies from less well-off ones.
At the heart of these virtuous cycles are cultural norms and social institutions that reward lifetime learning — and adapt smartly to shifting economic environments — as well as governments that are creative in offering incentives for private sector investment in the ongoing training of workers.
All this points to a simple truth: Well-trained and educated workers — human capital — are at the heart of economic well-being and competitiveness. But as knowledge and access to capital and technology have become widely available and products and services move freely across national borders in an incessant search for new markets, more and more countries have begun to seek to gain the edge that openness promises.
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As the race for first-to-market advantage heated, interest exploded in tapping the global labor pool for qualified workers — as quickly as possible. As a result, immigration systems have been called upon to facilitate the identification, attraction and retention of well-qualified workers wherever they can be found.
The response of immigration systems to human-capital needs falls into two distinct tracks. The first has chosen to emphasize increasing the supply of human capital by selecting foreign workers through a points test, whereby individual characteristics and experiences are awarded points based on what the economy is thought to need most and the country can absorb well. Most applicants reaching the points threshold were admitted as immigrants — that is as prospective citizens. Canada conceived of this approach in the late 1960s and its innovation has been adopted and adapted over time by virtually all English-speaking countries.
Host-country language proficiency, education and work experience (especially if received in the destination country), age and a job offer are among the individual characteristics typically receiving the highest preference. And priority often is also given to such criteria as in-demand occupation and to those who might not otherwise fully qualify for admission but agree to go to less desirable areas and commit to stay there for a certain period of time. These settlement stipulations, another Canadian innovation, are becoming more common.
At the core of these types of systems is ongoing evaluation and regular tweaking of the selection formula on the basis of research that targets the labor market results of each attribute or priority — thus putting integration outcomes high up on the policy agenda. This, in general terms, is the “merit-based” immigrant selection system that President Trump became attracted to following his first meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and that the inner circle of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has advocated for about a decade.
The second track — the counterpoint — to relying on points to select economic stream immigrants has emphasized admitting immigrants to fill specific jobs. As a result, employers are at the heart of the selection process, rather than the government. The archetype of this approach is the United States, which typically allows employers access to foreign workers across all skill levels as long as they can demonstrate that there are no U.S. workers available and willing to take a given job. Both temporary and permanent jobs are filled this way, although not all such jobs are tested against the availability of U.S. workers. For instance, the well-known H-1B foreign worker program does not require such tests, although employers must meet wage and other requirements, some of which can be (and often are) easily circumvented.
Both admissions tracks are ideal types — that is, not all economic stream admissions follow a single set of requirements and not all foreign workers come in through these processes. Moreover, and as noted, points selection systems constantly evolve as states that use them actively manage them and adjust them regularly, unlike the U.S. system, which has not been changed since 1990.
[MORE: The U.S. Immigration System Faces Criticism From All Sides]
However, as more countries have embraced the necessity of economic migration — there is no such thing as labor-market self-sufficiency when it comes to skills — each approach undergoes constant adaptation. As a result, both tracks have been converging toward each other, creating systems with hybrid selection practices. For instance, one now sees points systems that pay much greater attention to employer needs, and thus look more like demand-driven systems; once more, Canada is leading the way but the U.K., Austria, Australia and others also do so. Similarly, employer-led systems are supplemented with open-ended or points-like admissions, such as self-immigration for the most talented and accommodations to the admission of those in start-ups and sectors that promote innovation or intend to concentrate in strategic growth areas. In addition to the U.S., Sweden, Norway, Germany, Spain and others follow similar routes.
But there is another change that is not yet evident to most, policymakers among them. As the economic benefits of access to very talented workers have become widely recognized and ever more countries enter the most-qualified immigrants sweepstakes, these very same immigrants may be wondering how to choose among those courting them. To put it more provocatively, the next decade’s economic migration dilemma for countries may well be, “Will the highly skilled choose us?” Clearly, we are in the early stages of a revolution in the way we think about, and will need to act toward, the most talented immigrants.
This op-ed has focused on the economic immigration stream. Immigration systems, however, have three additional entry routes: the humanitarian stream, composed of refugees and asylum seekers to whom states are legally required to offer protection; family reunification; and illegal immigration.
Of all streams, family is most frequently the largest, though in some European states, such as the Nordic countries, most immigrants enter as protection cases. And in the U.S., illegal immigration has at times vied with family immigration in terms of annual entrants — though not in the last decade or so, when net illegal immigration from Mexico, by far the largest continuous source of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S., has been at about zero.
With immigration having again become a highly contentious issue in many destination countries (Canada being the major exception), it is difficult to project its likely future size and composition. The key question is this: Will today’s pronounced skepticism about immigration of all types, centered on concerns about loss of cultural identity, job competition with natives and in some quarters terrorism, lead to smaller numbers and a system that prioritizes the most qualified immigrants?
Only time will tell as it is not yet clear who will come out ahead in the next decade: the skeptics behind the robust populist movements in so many countries or the much better organized pro-immigrant advocates who look at immigration through the lens of human rights and as the wealthy world’s responsibility to right through immigration the wrongs of poverty and inequality abroad.
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The Global Immigration Revolution Has Begun originally appeared on usnews.com
