A few countries, such as the Philippines and India, have focused quite deliberately on "producing" skilled labor for foreign markets, but most are passive in the face of international supply and demand. In addition, most are able to exercise little control over the composition of their labor exports-rather, it is determined by the foreign labor markets, and may bear no relation to "surplus" labor at home. Source countries have had great difficulty in converting remittance income into sustainable productive capacity. ( see article by Roberto Suro)ĭespite these numbers, many experts believe that labor migration does not significantly improve the development prospects of the country of origin. Flows from the United States to Mexico and Central America, for example, grew from less than $1 billion in 1980 to more than $14 billion in 2002. Moreover, as ODA has been declining, remittances seem to have been rising strongly, even in the face of weak economic performance in the host countries. Remittance estimates are notoriously imprecise, however, because remittances often move through private, unrecorded channels. Overseas development assistance (ODA) from the 23 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)'s Development Assistance Committee was $54 billion in 2000. Worldwide, remittances are estimated at about $100 billion per year, and approximately 60 percent of this sum goes to developing countries. The most often cited support for the positive side of the argument is the observation that remittances from international migrants play an extraordinary role in the economic accounts of many developing countries, far more important than official development assistance. Much of the research that supports beliefs about the overall costs and benefits of migration is based on "micro" studies and cannot conclusively demonstrate the validity of "macro" conclusions. The evidence is contradictory and fragmentary.
The question is whether the benefits to individuals (and, commonly, their relatives left behind) aggregate to a general benefit to the home country. There is little doubt that voluntary migration from a poor to a rich country almost always benefits the individual migrant, who may easily find himself or herself earning in an hour what he or she earned in a day in the country of origin. The Costs and Benefits from the Perspective of Poor Countries of Origin
Understanding the causal relationship between rich country immigration policy and poor country development is a frustrating pursuit There are, however, many other factors that impose costs and confer benefits, and it is important that they too be taken into account even though the state of knowledge about them is similarly patchy. Developing tools to identify with greater precision the effects of both factors on development, growth, and poverty reduction is necessary in order to come to any confident conclusions about the impact of migration policy on development. The argument usually comes down to one of remittances versus "brain drain," and the evidence on both sides is weak. Understanding the causal relationship between rich country immigration policy and poor country development is a frustrating pursuit, hamstrung by the absence of data, frequently inaccurate data, and a lack of comparable data.įurthermore, the balance of costs and benefits accruing to the source countries from migration is controversial. These and other factors add up to a heightened consciousness about the importance of migration as a force of globalization and economic change. Another element is concern about the consequences of human-capital flight. Why then does international migration suddenly loom so large on the international policy agenda? Much of the answer lies in the domestic politics of migrant-receiving countries part lies in the abrupt demographic transition that the major countries of destination are going through. An overwhelmingly higher number of people stay at home than migrate. Migration remains very much the exception rather than the rule of human behavior.
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