I’d like to thank the people here who share articles with me, that said they are often very frustrating! Especially this one.
It was written by Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London. His contention, that we’re getting the debate wrong is undeniable. His, rather stale analysis, that countries like the UK need ‘immigrants’ because “The native-born labour force is already shrinking in almost all advanced economies” is simply, profoundly, unethical.
The message, send us your young and educated because we’re getting old and worried about our pensions is pathetic. Once again an economist, on his knees before the god of economic growth, celebrates a sort of new perverted colonialism.
Born, brought up and educated at the expense of their country Jonathan thinks it’s ok to drain them from their country. All to prop up the ecologically and socially catastrophic economies of the former colonial powers. How long does he think that this could continue? It drains the local economies of their educated and active citizens, the financial costs being borne by said economies. So not only is Jonathan saying send these resourceful people over, he is also willing to impose a huge financial cost/loss on their countries of origin.
And here it comes, the counter-argument that ‘immigrants’ send a lot of money home and this boosts their local economies. An argument all about quantity and not about quality. In part these sums of money simply refund these countries for the education and upbringing of the ‘migrants’. Another point is that there is a huge difference between money and local skills. Draining a country of it’s doctors and nurses means that the local health systems are deprived of the very people they need. A handful of cash is small comfort to someone who needs urgently needs some medical treatment.
Jonathan lives in a country with a damaged but more or less functional health system, he’s lucky. He lives in a country where people can waste 50% or more of their food. His parochial, the UK first, analysis is profoundly unethical. He would be better advised to work out how to make the UK economy more efficient, less wasteful and less ecologically and socially damaging. He could spend his time looking at how to guide economies towards ethical and modest consumption and towards a steady-state made up of a constant stock of capital and a constant population size.
Newspaper headlines in countries like the UK are sensationalist. They tend to take a snapshot of disasters in an area of another country and leave people with the impression that the whole country is dysfunctional. A while ago there were some riots in a small area of Paris, the Fox news headline was ‘France burns!’ a proclamation that confused a lot of people here.
This false image tainting a whole country is unjust. In fact most of the countries, where Jonathan wants to encourage out-migration, are buzzing and busy innovating. As a Permaculture designer I find myself increasingly presenting new approaches and techniques developed in these countries to people here in Europe.
It is more than urgent that we drop our Eurocentric/USA myopic view of the world. It is essential that we drop the idea that the citizens of the other countries are there for us to exploit. Even more important is that we come to appreciate that people in these other countries are learning from our mistakes and will hopefully lead us on to doing things better ourselves.
Permaculture designers have understood this for decades. We know that the way to stop the obscene slaughter in the Mediterranean and the English Channel is to help people ethically develop their own countries. We work to eliminate the forces that push people to leave home, often die en route, (just as an aside, drowning is an extremely painful way to die) and instead create the conditions that encourage them to stay home. Despite the forces working against us we’ve been pushing this rock up a hill for a long time. Today we can celebrate that the rock is now running down the other side of the hill.
Personally I spend more of my time learning from people in these countries. When we do work together to develop something my role is often simply to point out where we went wrong in Europe, the USA and the other mis-named ‘developed countries’.