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Is globalisation a trouble

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Jason Furman is professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard Kennedy School. This followed eight years as a top economic adviser to president Barack Obama. During this time Mr Furman played a major role in most of the major economic policies of the Obama administration.

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Barack Obama, deporter-in-chief

Expelling record numbers of immigrants is a costly way to make America less dynamic

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OCTAVIO NAVA CABRERA was pulled over by police in Illinois in April 2013 for going through a stop sign. He had arrived in the state in 1986, aged 13, and most of his family still live there. He did not have a proper driving licence and had an immigration violation dating from 1997, when he was stopped at the border after a trip to Mexico. Mr Nava Cabrera was imprisoned for seven months and then deported, leaving a son behind. He is now sleeping on the floor of a friend's apartment in Mexico City and slightly baffled by the whole experience. "I don't know anything about Mexico," he says.

America is expelling illegal immigrants at nine times the rate of 20 years ago (see article); nearly 2m so far under Barack Obama, easily outpacing any previous president. Border patrol agents no longer just patrol the border; they scour the country for illegals to eject. The deportation machine costs more than all other areas of federal criminal law-enforcement combined. It tears families apart and impoverishes America.
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The strongest economic arguments in favour of a more liberal immigration policy are techies like Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new Indian-born boss. Half of those who earn science and technology PhDs at American universities are foreign-born, as are the authors or co-authors of four-fifths of drug patents. America's reluctance to allow foreign graduates to stay in the country when they finish college will reduce its chances of bagging future Mr Nadellas. Yet the unskilled immigrants who are being shipped back to Mexico enrich America too. They work, pay taxes and fill niches that the native-born shun. Farms, hotels and restaurants depend on them; so do professional couples who need someone to hold the children while Dad writes code and Mum drills teeth.

Why would a supposedly liberal president oversee something so illiberal, cruel and pointless? The Machiavellian explanation is that it motivates Latinos, who associate such barbarism with Republicans, to keep voting for the Democrats. Mr Obama's defenders prefer two other excuses.

First, he is merely following laws written by nativist Republicans. This is a cop-out. As president he sets priorities for the executive branch, which cannot catch and prosecute everyone who breaks any of the gazillions of federal rules. He can find ways to slow the deportation of harmless immigrants and concentrate on those who have committed serious crimes. He has already delayed action against those who arrived as children.

More visas, fewer expulsions

The second excuse is that this is all part of Mr Obama's grand strategy to secure immigration reform this year, including a path to legal status for the 12m illegal immigrants now in the country. There is room for a deal (see article). The House Republicans have long believed that letting in more people like Mr Nadella is a good thing, and they are inching towards some sort of amnesty process for undocumented workers like Mr Cabrera. They still dislike the idea of illegal immigrants becoming citizens (and voting for Democrats), while the Democrats are suspicious of temporary-worker schemes. These differences would be bridgeable, with a little trust. Given its absence, Mr Obama will only win Republican votes by showing that the border is secure.

Immigration reform is indeed a great prize. But die-hard nativists are unlikely to be swayed, no matter how tough the laws, and reform can pass without their votes. There are very few things about America that are as vindictive and self-defeating as its deportation machine. Rather than making excuses for keeping it, Mr Obama should be exposing its awfulness and leading the campaign to de-fang it.

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OCTAVIO NAVA CABRERA was pulled over by police in Illinois in April 2013 for going through a stop sign. He had arrived in the state in 1986, aged 13, and most of his family still live there.

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CARIM East - Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration

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Eastern European countries, i.e. Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, share a common land border with the European Union. This border divides nations, communities, families and while the border has moved, through European history, the people on either side rarely have.

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Popular Articles About Immigration Policy

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News: India News, Latest Bollywood News, Sports News, Business & Political News, National & International News | Times of India

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Times of India brings the Latest News & Top Breaking headlines on Politics and Current Affairs in India & around the World, Sports, Business, Bollywood News and Entertainment, Science, Technology, Health & Fitness news, Cricket & opinions from leading columnists.

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ON SUNDAY this happened:

A narrow majority of voters in Switzerland approved proposals on Sunday that would reintroduce restrictions on the number of foreigners who are allowed to live and work in the country, a move that could have far-reaching implications for Switzerland's relations with the European Union.

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The foreign-born population in Switzerland is 27%, and Tyler Cowen reckons that probably functions as something of an upper limit for politically tolerable stocks of immigrants in a rich country. He adds:

One of my objections to the open borders idea is that I think it would be negative for sustainable, actually realized flows of immigration.

That anxiety seems misplaced to me. For one thing, "open borders" are pushed by a relatively small intellectual elite. While I'm sure most of that elite would like to see truly open borders, their rhetorical efforts are probably better understood as an effort to shift the window of possibilities among influence-able decision-makers toward generally more open immigration regimes. We can wring our hands over unanticipated side-effects of open-border policies when they threaten to become reality.

I'd also argue that we shouldn't take attitudes on the subject as fixed. Views on the desirability of immigration are anything but uniform across the world. Americans seem generally fine with a foreign-born population of around 12% of the total while Japan has a foreign-born population of under 2%. The perceived "otherness" of some kinds of immigration can change dramatically over time. Americans once had fairly retrograde views on migrants from the European periphery: groups that would scarcely be considered immigrants at all today. These things are not immutable.

I'm more interested in, and perhaps worried by, the (possible) interaction of the Swiss immigration vote with a fledgling movement within Switzerland for a universal basic income.

The basic income plan is anything but a sure thing, and residence does not equal citizenship. But at a time at which economic conditions-like stagnant wages, falling employment rates, and declining labour share of income-make extension of the safety net look reasonable, a large foreign-born population may come to look like an obstacle to such extensions: either because making the safety net available to migrants is socially and financially impractical or because the idea of a second class of poor migrants is unappealing.

One might just as well argue that in countries like Britain and America, universal basic incomes look roughly as realistic a possibility as open borders, and so it might not be worth stressing about the interaction between the two policies. But it is something to keep an eye on. It will probably seem much easier to invite in migrants when the invitation means little in the way of obligation for those already in the country.

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ON SUNDAY this happened: A narrow majority of voters in Switzerland approved proposals on Sunday that would reintroduce restrictions on the number of foreigners who are allowed to live and work in the country, a move that could have far-reaching implications for Switzerland's relations with the European Union.

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he Migration Policy Centre based at the European University Institute, Florence, conducts advanced research on global migration to serve migration governance needs at the European level, from developing, implementing and monitoring migration-related policies to assessing their impact on the wider economy and society

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Migration Profiles and Fact Sheets " Migration Policy Centre

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A collection of all the Migration Profiles and Fact Sheets of the Migration Policy Centre (MPC).

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International Year of Small Island Developing States-    MIgration topic linked

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International Year of Small Island Developing States-    MIgration topic linked

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According to the UN Herald, the Pacific region is endangered by environmental influences and that is why Pacific island states need support and assistance. Countries like Australia, France and United States aimed to promote the prevention of forced migration on the basis of environmental impact. Events and activities that promote the year are dedicated to work towards securing small island states and preventing forced emigration from them

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2014 - UN Year of Small Island Developing States

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The International Year of Small Island Developing States aimed to raise recognition of environmental problems that small island states are facing.

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SMART SCHOOL is next generation product in the ICT domain. With High Definition 3D videos coupled with eLearning softwares, the product is the next big thing in the eLearning Segment!

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SMART SCHOOL is next generation product in the ICT domain. With High Definition 3D videos coupled with eLearning softwares, the product is the next big thing in the eLearning Segment!

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Elmer El Elefante Los Viejos Cortos de Disney

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Germs Movie for Kids Virus & Bacteria Introduction

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Walt Disney Studios - Health For The Americas: Cleanliness Brings Health (1945)

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The US Government Agency "Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs" hired Walt Disney Studios to create a series of films for developing countries, "Health For The Americas."

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BBC - GCSE Bitesize - Geography - Urbanisation in MEDCs - Video

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Watch a video on GCSE Geography about urbanisation in MEDCs

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A secondary school revision resource for GCSE Geography on the topic of migration.

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FOR many migrants who do not live in factory dormitories, life in the big city looks like the neighbourhood of Shangsha East Village: a maze of alleys framed by illegally constructed apartment buildings in the boomtown of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. There are at least 200 buildings, many of them ten storeys tall (see picture). They are separated by only a metre or so, hence the name "handshake buildings"-residents of neighbouring blocks can reach out from their windows and high-five.

The buildings are China's favelas: built illegally on collectively owned rural land. Rents are cheap. An eight-square-metre (86-square-foot) flat costs less than $100 a month. They symbolise both the success of the government's urbanisation policy and also its chronic failures. China has managed a more orderly system of urbanisation than many developing nations. But it has done so on the cheap. Hundreds of millions of migrants flock to build China's cities and manufacture the country's exports. But the cities have done little to reward or welcome them, investing instead in public services and infrastructure for their native residents only. Rural migrants living in the handshake buildings are still second-class citizens, most of whom have no access to urban health care or to the city's high schools. Their homes could be demolished at any time.
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China's new leaders now say this must change. But it is unclear whether they have the resolve to force through reforms, most of which are costly or opposed by powerful interests, or both. Li Keqiang, the new prime minister, is to host a national conference this year on urbanisation. The agenda may reveal how reformist he really is.

He will have no shortage of suggestions. An unusually public debate has unfolded in think-tanks, on microblogs and in state media about how China should improve the way it handles urbanisation. Some propose that migrants in cities should, as quickly as possible, be given the same rights to services as urban dwellers. Others insist that would-be migrants should first be given the right to sell their rural plot of land to give them a deposit for their new urban life. Still others say the government must allow more private and foreign competition in state-controlled sectors of the economy such as health care, which would expand urban services for all, including migrants. Most agree the central government must bear much more of the cost of public services and give more power to local governments to levy taxes.

Any combination of these options would be likely to raise the income of migrants, help them to integrate into city life and narrow the gap between the wealthy and the poor, which in China is among the widest in the world. Such reforms would also spur on a slowing economy by boosting domestic consumption.

Officials know, too, that the longer reforms are delayed the greater the chances of social unrest. "It is already a little too late," Chen Xiwen, a senior rural policy official, said last year of providing urban services to migrants. "If we don't deal with it now, the conflict will grow so great that we won't be able to proceed."

Yet Mr Li, the prime minister, would do well to dampen expectations. The problems of migrants and of income inequality are deeply entrenched in two pillars of discriminatory social policy that have stood since the 1950s and must be dealt with before real change can come: the household registration system, or hukou, and the collective ownership of rural land.

Who will pay?

The hukou perpetuates a rigid caste system. Children of holders of rural hukou inherit their parents' second-class status, even if they are born in cities. Many urbanites want to keep this system in place, to protect their preferential access to jobs, education and health care.

City governments, meanwhile, cannot afford to extend public services to migrants. Zheng Zhijie, president of state-owned China Development Bank, estimated in May that cities would require 50 trillion yuan ($8.2 trillion) in investment by 2020 to accommodate 100m new migrants and provide increased benefits to those already there. Shanghai's schools give a sense of the scale of the problem: the city had 170,000 students enrolled in high school in 2010, all holders of Shanghai hukou; more than three times that many children-570,000 migrant children aged 15 to 19-were living in the city in 2010 without Shanghai hukou, most of them unable to attend those schools.

The collective control of rural land by local officials also impedes social mobility, by allowing local governments and developers to dispossess farmers of the land they lease-and to pay them far below market value for it. Yu Jianrong, a researcher on rural China, calculated in 2010 that the government had expropriated 6.7m hectares (16.5m acres) of rural land over a 20-year period, paying farmers 2 trillion yuan ($326 billion) less than market value.

At the same time, housing prices in cities are increasingly out of reach for migrants. The central government has encouraged the construction of low-cost housing in cities with limited success, since only local hukou holders are eligible.

The discriminatory policies continue to take their toll on migrants. China has 163m migrant workers who have left their home township (another 99m people are classified as migrants even though they have only given up farming without moving away). A higher proportion of those were co-renting apartments with others in 2012 than four years earlier (19.7%, up from 16.7%), according to data released this week by the National Bureau of Statistics. And fewer migrants are becoming homeowners-0.6% in 2012, down from 0.9% in 2008.

Some scholars say a solution lies in the handshake buildings of Shenzhen. Tao Ran of Renmin University in Beijing says the government should legalise such buildings around the country-allowing rural dwellers near cities to develop them and rent out flats to migrants-and then levy taxes and fees to pay for expanding services. It sounds like a reasonable proposal that would increase the supply of affordable housing and help more migrants become proper urban residents.

But local governments will have none of it, Mr Tao says, as they will fight to retain control over land, their chief source of revenue. Other vested interests, he says, will fight, too. The road to equality for China's migrants will continue to be a hard one.

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FOR many migrants who do not live in factory dormitories, life in the big city looks like the neighbourhood of Shangsha East Village: a maze of alleys framed by illegally constructed apartment buildings in the boomtown of Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. There are at least 200 buildings, many of them ten storeys tall (see picture).

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Urbanization in China has increased rapidly as a result of the Reform and Opening up Policy of the late 1970s. By the end of 2011, the country had a total urban population of close to 700 million. This means over 50 percent of China's total population are now living in cities.

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New Guidelines for Sustainable Urban Development Cooperation

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Methodology of Sustainable Urban Development

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Sustainable urban development in Zaragoza Spain (Eco Ciudad Valdespartera)

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The urban area of Zaragoza, the eight in Spain in terms of population (almost 700,000 inhabitants) has in recent years demonstrated its will to make the most of its strategic position in the peninsular - on the one hand the Madrid-Barcelona axis and on the other, the Valencia-Bilbao axis, through strong investment in infrastructures, renewing its productive structure through sustainable urban development in the shape of a series of projects which have are giving excellent results.

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Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class

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The speed and scale of urban growth today is astounding. MGI explores the urbanization phenomenon and the impact of the one billion people in rapidly growing emerging-market cities who will become consumers by 2025.