Flight of the Creative Class (Immigration Edition)

Form George Borjas terrific (relatively) new blog:

We always tend to think of the U.S. as a "nation of immigrants." About 12% of the U.S. population today is foreign-born. It is eye-opening to put this number in perspective. Just look at some of the data collected by the U.N.

• Sweden, 12.4%
• United Kingdom, 9.1%
• Greece, 8.8%
• Spain, 11.1%
• Austria, 15.1%
• France, 10.7%
• Germany, 12.3%
• Netherlands, 10.1%
• Switzerland, 22.9%

It's not just the relative size of the immigrant population in these countries that is remarkable. Equally interesting is that these countries became immigrant nations in a very short time--with little prior experience handling large population inflows. Combine this with an explosive mix of ethnic and cultural conflicts, and very generous welfare systems. No wonder the immigration debate in Europe is at least as heated as it is in the United States.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand also rank highly. And India and China are retaining more of their top people and attracting them back from the US and elsewhere. The erosion of the US century-long "immigration advantage" is already upon us. Its effects will be slow to register, as this is a long-term accumulated advantage, but they will be felt.

Comments

[Michael Wells]

In the US, the wide mix of varying cultures gives more cross-fertilization than say the preponderance of Turks in Germany. I think the school districts around here say they have kids speaking 30-50 languages at home, and I expect that's not unusual.

Yesterday I was in a little convenience news stand buying lemonade. The TV was on and it was two women in 1950’s Donna Reed dresses and hairdos making a cake, a throwback cooking class or maybe a family sitcom. Except they were Asian, talking an Asian language and there were Asian subtitles. I asked the young woman behind the counter and she said “Oh, they’re speaking Vietnamese but the words at the bottom are Korean.” How many kinds of cross-cultural influence are going on there?

A much noticed difference from past US immigration is that immigrants are moving to Southern and Midwestern states and to the suburbs. Being a big country make a difference, the US has the largest total number of foreign born by a factor of three. We have 36 million foreign born, number two Russia has 12 million.

Looking at the UN chart, by and large countries with over 10% foreign born are rich and under 5% are poor. The question of course is whether it's cause or effect. The answer probably depends on how much the countries absorb and learn from their immigrants. The US, Canada, etc. are undoubtedly gaining from the cultural cross-fertilization. Kuwait and the UAR import domestic laborers but isolate them and I'd guess draw little benefit.

And yet, 97% of the world's people live in their country of birth. In 1960 it was 97.5%, so what seems like a flood is actually a trickle.

[Richard]

Michael - Most people do live in their home countries. That's what makes the small fraction of the globally-mobile so interesting. How is it that they have such impact. The US would simply not have the level of industrialization and technology or science without its global migrants - Einstein and Fermi, Carnegie (steel), Sarnoff (electronics), Grove (semiconductors), Kleiner and Khosla (venture capital), plus yahoo, ebay, hotmail, google - the list is endless. The effects of immigration are at the margin. It is top talent at the top end of the distribution that is most globally mobile. Where this group ends up has and will continue to make a big difference to who innovates and who grows.