Freakonomics: Is Migration A Basic Human Right

Is migration a basic human right? That’s the question tackled in this Freakonomics podcast.

Don’t have an hour to listen to the whole one-hour podcast? Here are some highlights.

Economist Alex Tabarrok opines: “Money whips around the world at lightning speed. Goods move around the world, very, very quickly. We have container ships transporting goods throughout the entire globe. The only thing which can’t move today is people. And that should be the one thing which ought to have the most rights to move.” And “The right to move has got be one of the most fundamental rights and yet, for strange reasons, it stops at these arbitrary boundaries we call ‘national borders.'”

And Tabarrok argues that free migration is both a moral and an economic issue.

Michael Clemens, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, agrees on the economics: “the overall effect on wages of workers in the countries that migrants go to is very low, and typically measured around zero.” Borders, Clemens argues, are:

barriers that keep you in places where you’re less economically productive keep you from making the contribution you could make. And for every person who’s kept in a poor country, that’s a tiny little drag on the world economy that adds up. So, what that means is that even a modest relaxation of the barriers to migration that we have right now — I’m talking about one in 20 people who now live in poor countries being able to work in a rich country — would add trillions of dollars a year to the world economy. It would add more value to the world economy than dropping all remaining barriers to trade, every tariff, every quota — and dropping all remaining barriers to international investment combined.

Casey Mulligan, a U Chicago economist, wants to revive Gary Becker’s idea of open borders, so long as everyone pays the U.S. government a fee.

FWIW, the contributors also talk about refugees, the Schengen example, and terrorists. An interesting listen.

-KitJ