The great distraction

Distraction (Source: here)

Immigration has been the biggest political distraction in Western economies for nearly twenty years. The obsession with immigration has been extremely costly, resulting in neglect of reforms that would actually make a real difference to the lives of ordinary voters. After more than two decades of barking up the wrong immigration tree, it is high time to direct the policy focus away from immigration and back towards the underlying economic issues that really matter to quality of life.

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The main political impact of the Global Financial Crisis was to undermine the credibility of mainstream politicians in favour of populists, especially on the Far-Right of the political spectrum. The rise to power of Far-Right populism has had discernible effects on the quality of both politics and economics in the Western world; politics has become more nationalistic and economic policy has become more myopic.

Rather than trying to recover lost credibility by facing up to the West's difficult underlying structural problems, politicians opted instead to scapegoat vulnerable groups for society’s ills.

And the scapegoat of choice was - almost uniformly across the Western World - the immigrant. The reasons politicians turned against immigrants were legion, but the three most important ones were:

1.     Immigrants were a weak and vulnerable group without political representation, which meant they were unable to defend themselves when attacked. Over the past decade and a half, politicians have dramatically raised the bar for entering, let alone taking obtaining legal residence in rich countries. Deportations have also surged, often leading to tragic outcomes. Some Western economies have even gone so far as to call for dismantling of basic human rights that were put in place at the end of World War II to protect refugees among others.

2.     Immigrants come from unfamiliar cultures, which makes them suspicious in the eyes of many locals. Immigrants tend to know a lot about the West due to the global reach of Western culture, but Westerners often know next to nothing about the cultures of immigrants. Western politicians ruthlessly exploit this information asymmetry to, say, tar Muslims with the ‘terrorism brush’. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants are entirely harmless people, who, like everyone else, want to work hard and improve their lives. Yet, in the eyes of the average Western voter, Muslim immigrants have now become dangerous radicals and suicide bombers. This is testament to the effectiveness of Far-Right and even mainstream political rhetoric aimed at vilifying Muslims. Indeed, one can now reasonably draw parallels between how Jews were treated in early stages of Nazi rule in Germany and how Muslims are treated in the West today.

3.     Scapegoating of immigrants dovetails well with another carefully-designed deception – attributable to Donald Trump – that Western economic malaise is due to foul play by emerging nations, notably China. Anyone with a modicum of economic education will recognise that the West controls the vast majority of global economic power and that China, while growing in economic importance, continues to be remarkably un-Western in its imperialist ambitions. Still, the labelling of emerging economies as the enemy has helped to sell the xenophobia message at home.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that most of the West’s economic challenges owe nothing to immigration and everything to major domestic policy failings. I could go on and on, but let me just list three common policy failings in Western economies that are clearly homegrown: myopic taxation and spending policies that have undermined productivity growth; poor regulation of monopolies that have created grotesquely rich economic elites; erosion of essential public services that have contributed in a big way to rising inequality, which in turn has fueled both populism and economic underperformance.

After nearly two decades of thus sacrificing real issues on the alter of scapegoating immigrants, Western economies now face not only these economic problems, but also a profound moral one. Our treatment of people from other countries – because, let us not forget, immigrants are people – has become deeply dehumanised. On a daily basis, we are presented with proposals from our elected representatives for how we can unwind hard-won democratic and human rights in order to hound immigrants even more than we are already doing. What the hell are we doing? It is sick! Can't you see it?

I believe our generation will go down in history for its broad acceptance of our governments’ inhumane schemes against immigrants. Future generations will look back on this time, upon us, and feel the same disgust that we feel for Hitler’s persecution of jews, the Ottoman purge of the Armenians, Apartheid South Africa, Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza, and the discrimination against black people in the United States prior to the civil rights movement.

Still, I am far too jaded to believe that appealing to our common humanity will achieve anything whatsoever in terms of ending this travesty. Anti-immigrant attitudes have assumed such cult-like acceptance in most Western societies today that most of us actually think is it absolutely fine to treat these people like animals.

Which leads me to think instead that if we genuinely want to fight for more humane immigration policies then we must change tack entirely. Our new approach should be to appeal to Western selfishness, to draw attention to the enormous opportunity cost of our governments’ obsession with immigration.

Western governments have abandoned their core duties due to their obsession with immigration. Can you remember the last time a Western government implemented a policy – any policy – that was not directly or indirectly aimed at deterring immigration? When was the last time your government implemented a pension reform? When was the last time your government meaningfully addressed inequality? When is the last time your government launched root-and-branch overhaul of infrastructure? When was the last time your government did anything other than tamper at the edges of education and health?

And, as a European, I am struggling to think when was the last time I heard a European politician admit that we need more European integration in order to stand up to live and present threats like Putin! And, come to think of it, when was the last time we had democratic reform designed to ensure that politicians actually deliver what we want? 

All these urgent issues are simply being ignored due to the great immigration distraction and it is devastating our societies. We have lost sight of the fact that the most important function of government is simple – boring even – management. Such as making sure institutions run effectively and efficiently. Such as making sure policies are fine-tuned to the constantly changing needs of the real economy.

When we look at our politicians today they are doing none of that! Instead, they are falling over themselves trying to launch one hare-brained anti-immigrant scheme after another in a mad race to get ahead in the cruelty-stakes versus the other guy. It is pathetic, but it is the truth; today’s politics is all about who can be biggest asshole.

We need to rise above this. We need to grasp that when our politicians are being assholes they don’t stop the public debt from sky-rocketing, they don’t prevent the environment from collapsing, and they don’t do anything to halt inequality from getting worse and worse. Nor do they help central banks fight AI bubbles before they inflict untold damage on our already vulnerable economies. Nor do they protect us from Russian drones and American trade wars.

The biggest irony about our obsession with anti-immigration policies is that we desperately need immigrants to prevent our own prosperity from collapsing. As I explain here, Europe alone requires more than 40 million immigrants over the next 15 years to replace European workers lost to population ageing and declining birth rates. In other words, contrary to current political discourse on immigration, immigration is part of the solution rather than the cause of the problem. It is just that, for now, most of us are still too blind, too prejudiced, too ignorant, too hoodwinked, too xenophobic, and too racist – take your pick – to see it.

It is time to wake up and realise that policies to round up immigrants, like ICE is doing in the US, or to extend to twenty years the time it takes for an immigrant to become a citizen, as the UK is doing, or any of the other crazy anti-immigration ideas that are making the rounds in Western capitals will not help us. Their only purpose is to distract us from the real fundamental problems that our politicians are too cowardly to face.

Ask yourself this: are you a coward like your political representative? If not, then demand better! Stop wasting your vote on an anti-immigration tickets, which only inflict pain on the weak and ignore the issues that really matter you.

The End