The beneficial impact of migrants on the countries they came from

By Brian Micklethwait | 25 August 2005

In Britain, the impact of large scale international migration is mostly discussed in terms of its impact on Britain. The economic benefits that accrue to Britain from incoming people who are on average more likely to be of employable age than the indigenous population, and who are more willing than locals to do things like cleaning offices at unwelcome times or keeping their shops stuffed with exotic goods open late, are balanced against new fears associated with terrorism.

But one of the greatest impacts of mass migration is the effect that migrants have on the countries that they came from, with whom they retain links. Retaining links being something that has become far easier of late, what with email, cheap international phone calls, instant international money transfers, and so on - in short what with globalization.

The impact of such links, between migrants and the countries they migrated from, has become huge.

The value of money is, of course, one measure. By any metric, the numbers are impressive. There are, for example, 7.6 million document and undocumented Philippine migrants working in over 190 countries. Between 1990 and 2003, they returned to the Philippines over $62 billion. In 2003 alone, that flow was $7.6 billion in remittances and $218 million in charitable contributions. That total is nearly 10% of the nation's Gross National Product, and these flows keep an estimated one million people above the local poverty line.

And that's just the Philippines. As international aid, this kind of thing is a massive improvement on government to government cash transfers. Who better to administer such myriad aid programmes than the people who earned the money, and who better to receive it than people and institutions personally known to the aid giver?

Even more important than mere cash, historians may one day decide, is the impact of ideas. Once you have experienced something like an honest national election followed by a smooth transfer of political power, or an efficiently administered stock market or a well-run supermarket warehouse, you know that such a thing is possible, and that it could also therefore be made to happen back home in the old country.

In Britain now, the newspapers are now aflame with stories about bad British Muslims who are threaten our way of life. But what about all the good and less newsworthy British Muslims, doing honest politics and honest business, combining their migrant energy with our more evolved traditions of lawful conduct? And think of the long-run impact on their old countries, when these ideas and experiences make the return journey, alongside all the money.