A good deal

16 January 2014 By Edward Hadas Follow @edwardhadas

Immigrants to rich countries have little long-term effect on wages, unemployment or government finances. At worst, migration exposes defective economic structures. Overall it also helps poor sending lands, which gain habits and capital from destination countries.

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The OECD’s latest “International Migration Outlook” studies the fiscal effect of migration, concluding that it is “around zero on average” and “rarely exceeds 0.5 percent of GDP in a given year.”

Robert Chote, the head of the UK government’s Office for Budget Responsibility, told a parliamentary committee on Jan. 14 that Britain gained from its pattern of immigration. He said many immigrants arrive “after some other country has picked up the expense of educating them, and in some cases (not all cases) they will then leave the country before they get to the point at which they’re most expensive, in terms of pension and healthcare.”

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