【英语生活】谈谈移民政策

ChenSome years ago, I suggested a five- year experiment in which all immigration controls were lifted and the distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants removed. Needless to say, this has not happened. Political and public attitudes have become more restrictive and we have had a backlash from countries such as the Netherlands previously known for their liberal outlook.It is time to look for second best approaches. The parrot cry is that economic migrants and asylum seekers should be strictly separated. No such hard and fast distinction is possible. My own parents came to the UK between the two world wars. They came, as the saying goes, in search of a better life. But they also felt that the outlook for Jews in their part of the world in central and eastern Europe was distinctly gloomy.

They obtained permission to stay after an interview with a Home Office official who happened to have a personal interest in the disease my father researched for his Berlin doctorate. But would my father have made the effort to uproot himself and retake all his qualifications in a strange country and in a new language if he had not felt some danger of persecution in the air? On today's criteria he would have been rejected as an asylum seeker because Hitler was not yet in power.

There is now an Immigration and Nationality Directorate at the Home Office to assess asylum applications. But its rulings have proved controversial. Recent cases include attempts to send applicants back to countries such as Iraq, Egypt and Zimbabwe. Yet anti-immigration lobbyists complain that few people are ever sent back and the new Queen's Speech foreshadows proposals to make deportation easier.

Official statistics, which are widely believed to be underestimates, suggest a net annual immigrant inflow into the UK of about 250,000, of whom about 25,000 or less may be asylum seekers. Yet hostile comment concentrates on the asylum element. Both the government and the Conservative opposition try to make lists of types of immigrants that will benefit the British economy. These are mostly spurious exercises in “economics without price”. There would be no difficulty, for instance, in attracting enough nurses, technicians and kitchen attendants if they were paid the market wage for their work.

The economic effects of an increase in immigration are, at a first approximation, neutral. More workers serve a larger population. Gross domestic product per head hardly changes. Taking 2004 and 2005 together, the British economy grew by 5.3 per cent. According to the October National Institute Economic Review, of this, 0.9 percentage points can be attributed to immigration. But this only shows how absurd it is to regard total GDP as an index of welfare. GDP per capita is a less bad measure.

There are, of course, distributional effects. The inflow of foreigners from the new Europe Union accession states makes life cheaper for middle- class taxpayers, but depresses the wages of some workers already here.

Contrary to popular belief, adults arriving in the UK have less spent on them by the government than would have been the case if they had spent their whole lives here. On the other hand, immigration affects in the short-term the relative return on capital and labour. Owners of capital, which is now in shorter supply, tend to gain and native workers in direct competition with immigrants to lose.

A longer-term historical perspective is attempted by two economists in a recent Centre for Economic Policy Research paper*. They found that 19th century capital flows tended to follow the great cross-Atlantic migrations and this mitigated downward pressure on real wages and employment in the recipient countries.

There are, to my mind, only two main economic drawbacks to immigration. The first is that more has to be spent on public infrastructure to maintain a larger population. This will be offset in some European countries where there is a fear that the active population will fall in the next few decades. But this does not apply to the UK where the population is still rising.

The other argument relates to the pressure on land in areas such as the south-east of England, which most of us do not want to see concreted over. It would be better if an experiment in relatively free immigration were to be conducted by the Republic of Ireland, where there is far more space available outside Dublin. But it surely should be possible to entice both immigrants and the indigenous population to move to less congested parts of the UK without forcing them into designated ghettoes.

There is a social limit to the speed at which immigrants can be absorbed. But the concentration of political hostility on asylum seekers and refugees – who will inevitably be a mixture of the genuine and spurious – is little short of scandalous

*What Determines Immigration's Impact?

By T.J.Hatton and J.G.Williamson

几年前，我曾建议进行一项为期5年的试验，在此期间解除一切对移民的管制，消除庇护寻求者与经济移民之间的差异。不用说，试验没有进行。政界和公众的态度已变得更加倾向于实施限制，我们还看到了曾因思想自由而闻名的荷兰等国的反弹。



是时候去寻找次佳方法了。人云亦云者宣称，应将经济移民和庇护寻求者严格区分开来。但要想进行这种严格而快捷的区分是不可能的。我的父母在两次世界大战之间来到英国。他们来到这里是为了——如常言所说——追求更美好的生活。但还有一个原因是，他们感到，在自己生活的中东欧，犹太人的前途十分黯淡。



经过英国内政部(Home Office)一位官员的面试后，他们获得了居留许可。那位官员本人碰巧对我父亲在柏林攻读博士学位时研究的那种疾病有兴趣。但是，如果不是感到有被迫害的危险，我父亲会选择离开家园，在一个陌生的国度，用一种新的语言，再拿一遍所有的资格证书吗？按照今天的标准，作为庇护寻求者，他会遭到拒绝，因为当时希特勒(Hitler)还没有上台。



英国内政部现在有一个移民和国籍局(Immigration and Nationality Directorate)负责评估避难申请，但事实证明，它的裁决是有争议的。例如，它最近就曾试图将申请者遣送回伊拉克、埃及和津巴布韦等国。然而，反移民的游说者抱怨道，几乎没有人被遣返，而女王公布的最新政策预示着简化驱逐程序。



官方统计数据（人们普遍认为存在低估）显示，英国每年净增移民约25万人，其中也许只有大约2.5万或更少的人是为了避难。但怀有敌意的评论就集中在这些避难者身上。英国政府和保守党都试图列出会给英国经济带来好处的移民类型清单。这些大多都是在欺骗性地运用“无价格的经济学”(economics without price)。例如，如果能按市场水平支付工资，就能轻松招到足够多的护士、技师和厨房里的小工。

粗略看来，移民增加产生的经济效果是中性的。更多的工人服务于更多的人口。人均国内生产总值(GDP)几乎没有变化。将2004年和2005年放在一起来看，英国经济增长了5.3%。《英国经济学会评论》(National Institute Economic Review) 十月刊显示，在这5.3%中，0.9个百分点可以归功于移民。但这仅仅表明，将GDP视为一项衡量福利的指数有多么荒谬。人均GDP则要好一些。



当然还存在分配效应。来自欧盟(EU)新成员国的外国人降低了中层纳税人的生活成本，但也压低了已经在英国的部分工人的工资。



与普遍观念相反，移民英国的成人若从小在英国生活，那么政府花在他们身上的钱会更多。另一方面，移民会在短期内影响资本和劳动力的相对回报率。资本如今更加短缺，其拥有者往往会获益，而与移民直接竞争的本国工人则会遭受损失。



在经济政策研究中心(Centre for Economic Policy Research)最近发表的一篇论文中，两位经济学家试图从更长期的历史角度考察移民问题。他们发现，19世纪的资本流动往往追随着大规模的跨大西洋移民潮，这减轻了接收国实际工资和就业水平的下行压力。

在我看来，移民只有两个主要的经济缺陷。首先是，必须通过增加公共基础设施开支来供养更多的人口。在一些欧洲国家，对未来数十年劳动人口下降的担心可以抵消掉这种影响。但这不适用于人口仍在上升的英国。



另外一个观点与土地压力有关。在英格兰东南部等地区，我们大多数人都不喜欢看到土地被混凝土覆盖。如果由爱尔兰共和国试行相对自由的移民政策，那会更好一些，因为在都柏林以外，爱尔兰还更多土地可以利用。但是，引导移民和土生土长的英国人迁往英国不那么拥堵的地区，而不必强迫他们搬进指定的聚居区，这也完全是有可能的。

吸收移民的速度存在一个社会限度。但将政治敌对情绪集中在庇护寻求者和难民（必然会鱼龙混杂）身上，则无异于一宗丑闻。





*《移民影响的决定因素》(What Determines Immigration's Impact?)

作者：T.J. 海顿(T.J.Hatton)、J.G. 威廉逊(J.G.Williamson)