INTRODUCTION
Migration is embedded in the human activity as a means of survival. This movement transcended the epochs of slavery, colonialism and right through imperialism to the present day globalisation. Throughout the history of mankind, humanity moved from one locality to the other as all the needed resources and safety were always not available in one place.At any point in history the movement has been either voluntary or involuntary. Up to the current period , the major cause of the movement is involuntary migration as a result of conflicts, unfavorable environment and economic factors.The archeological evidence suggests that people moved from Africa to the other parts of the world outside Africa which constitutes the diaspora. The conquered nations from wars and victims of slave trade are examples of involuntary migration whereas movement from unattractive places to better places with opportunities constitutes voluntary migration. Religious persecutions drove others away whereas same religious beliefs brought them closer. In essence , the push and pull factors of migration remains the same throughout the history of human existence.
Immigration remains the defining political issue in the elections of most countries. Immigration policies have earned themselves a mantle of being the most polarising issue in most countries even more than economic policies. The focuses are on the movement of goods and services that are facilitated by various trade agreements established through global and regional forums overlooking labour that produces these goods and services. Peter Dicken in the book, ‘mapping the changing contours of the world economy’ indicated, ” Cross border transactions of bonds and equities increased fifty-five times between 1970 to 1996.” However there is no attempt to coordinate the free movement of labour at regional and international levels. Despite the absence of all these necessary arrangements, labour continues to be mobile . It is not easy to separate the movement of goods and services from that of labour. The results of an attempt to separate the two has always lead to the unfortunate underground operations – movement of illicit goods and illegal migration. Manuel Castells observed: “There is migration, but for the moment, labour is not the most globalised segment of the economy.”
The Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa(SIHMA) estimated that in 2019, international migrants stood at approximately two hundred seventy-two million (272 million) making three point five percent (3.5 %) of the world’s population. The Institute further indicated that the United States of America(US) is leading the world with fifty-one million ( 51 million) followed by Germany and Saudi Arabia each with thirteen point one (13.1) million. The US Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) enacted 1952 and amended many times, allows the US every year to grant up to a total of six hundred seventy-five thousand (675 000) permanent immigrants visas across various categories. The number did not include the spouses, parents and children of US citizens. South Africa(SA) census 2020 showed two point nine( 2.9)million migrants which equates to slightly above three percent (3%). SA is leading in Africa followed by Cote d’voire with two point five (2.5) million, Uganda, Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya etc. This is confirmation that migration is, the integral part of human history and survival.
The economists, Abhijit and Duflo in the book ‘ good economics for hard times’ indicated that the fraction of international migrants in the world population in 2017 was roughly what it was in 1960 or in 1990: three percent (3%). They continued to say that the European Union ( EU ) on average gets between one point five (1.5) million and two point five (2.5)million non-EU migrants every year from the rest of the world. Most of these are documented migrants with job offers and others to join their families. The numbers represented about one for every two thousand five hundred (2500) EU residents.
Many people choose to stay in their countries irrespective of their difficulties, hence the number of migrants is still at three percent (3% ). Barnajee and Duflo intimate: “Greeks are estimated to have emigrated between 2010 and 2015, at the height of the economic crisis that shook their country. This represents at most three percent (3%) of Greece’s population, despite the fact that the unemployment rate was twenty seven percent (27%) in 2013 and 2014, and Greeks, as members of the EU, are able to work and move freely within Europe.” This confirms that most of the people choose to stay in their countries despite their difficulties. This three percent (3%) of the world migration is largely driven by wars and economic distress, collapse of every day normality such as violence, unpredictability and persecutions.
Deportations were not so successful and at times proved to be costly.Those who ran away from wars, persecutions and hunger in particular, will be difficult to stop or return home to stay because in their minds, there is no home to return to. Barnajee and Duflo state: “They were running from the mouth of the shark.” The women and children of the Democratic Republic of Congo for a long period were flighted on television screens running to the nearest borders. It is estimated that almost a million people emigrated to Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Africa. Many nations have experienced brutality of unparalleled proportion for example the Palestinian nation who live under the Israeli hammer, the Rohingya Muslims under the Buddhist Myanmar government who are currently at the border trying to gain entry into Bangladesh, and not forgetting the then South Africans who lived under Apartheid racist regime. Returning them back to their native countries was not, still not and even in future will not be an option. The shark that already tasted blood can be more vicious. For as long as there will be persecutions of people , brutal regimes and economic collapse , there will always be migration to better and safer places.
Brian Kantor in the book ‘getting South Africa growing’ reflects: “According to employment agency Adcorp, some 370 000 skilled migrants – many of them professionals and managers – have returned to South Africa since 2009.” This was the impact of 2008 and 2009 global financial crisis where the skilled South Africans migrated away from the United Kingdom and the United States for opportunities at home. Many immigrants after they have earned enough to start businesses, they usually return to their native countries.
SIHMA reckons, “Currently there are more African scientists and engineers working in the US than there are in all of Africa according to the International Organisation for Migration( IOM ).”
The Silicon Valley in St Francisco at Santa Clara Valley is the place where the world’s best scientist’s minds migrated to and work in the powerful technological corporations like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc. India has managed to build “India Silicon Valley” in the city of Bangalore because the Indian software Professionals who worked in the US migrated back home to India. They earned six times than their peers who stayed home and have since returned back home to establish the booming IT industry in their country of origin.
Most of the genocides and other human tragedies were fuelled by blaming others for lack of economic growth, unemployment or low wages. Economic hardship or scarcity breeds essential identities such as racism or ethnicity. In Rwanda people were likened to cockroaches which precipitated in genocidal killings of the Tutsi people. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimated five hundred fifty thousand(550 000) Tutsi refugees to Uganda and Burundi. Their report stated that the refugee crisis was compounded by a lack of reliable intelligence and a shortage of military personnel and international monitors. Kenya is currently the host of many refugees from Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia. Immigration is global.
The current borders of Europe are as the result of movements from the classical ancient empires during the Verwanderung to the current territories. However,immigration remains the defining political issue in most of the countries in Europe , the United Kingdom after Brexit and United States. Divisive as the issue is, however, the economists , Barnajee and Duflo in the book, ‘ good economics for hard times’ found massive misperceptions about the number and composition of immigrants. This is happening in the erstwhile colonialists imperialist countries that benefitted from the resources of the colonised world whose descendants of their citizens became the citizens of the erstwhile colonised countries.
Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and North Africa , flooded Germany and were warmly welcomed which made Germany the moral center of the world, especially after the history of Holocaust. Banerjee and Duflo wrote: “As an avid student of history, Merkel was surely familiar with the events of another sparkling summer, 1938, when 32 nations, including the United States of America, had gathered in the glorious French Spa town of Evian on Lake Geneva to discuss what to do about German and Austrian Jews desperate to escape Hitler’s tightening noose. Ultimately, they decided to do nothing , allowing millions of Jews to perish in the hands of the Nazis. Merkel was determined not to allow history to repeat itself.” However, there was no way, Merkel would imagine that some years later , the descendants of the Jews will kill forty-two thousand (42 000) Palestinians in the year 2024 claiming to defend themselves.
The increased numbers of refugees during Angela Merkel in Germany impacted on her support and electoral outcomes, especially after the ‘Cologne Attack’: the attack of German women by 9 Algerian, 8 Moroccans, 5 Iranians, 4 Syrians, 3 Germans, 1 Iraqi, I Serb and 1 American. Criminal behaviour of some refugees drove some Germans to call for the persecutions of the immigrants. However, some blame Merkel for not having made the issue of immigration, an issue for the European Union and not German problem. It is because she failed to enforce the regional response contained in the EU Dublin Regulation. The Dublin Regulation says immigrants are supposed to register and be processed in the country where they first landed. The increased overwhelming numbers of immigrants influenced the member states to defy the agreement.
After the Brexit, Germany emerged as the financial power house of European Union. The young refugees brought the new energy that assisted the German economy to grow as the German society was aging. Angela Merkel should have used this new reality to enforce Dublin Regulation, instead she failed to let EU members to collectively deal with the human flooding from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.It would have been difficult for EU members to defy their own agreement. In 2015 Merkel without consultation announced the change of policy without the warning when she declared, “Germany will not turn away refugees. If Europe fails on the question of refugees , then it won’t be the Europe we wished for.” She encouraged the other EU member countries to allow greater numbers of refugees , each according to its capacity. She acted unilaterally and at times ignored the advice that the human flooding of that magnitude needed a “single emergency policy response” and not ordinary response. Surprisingly Kati Marton wrote in the book, ‘the Chancellor’: “While Merkel understood that the US president’s hands were tied by congress, she wondered why Obama, still the leader of the West, did not vigorously urge other European nations to accept more refugees and thus ease Germany’s burden.”
United States being the country of immigrants after largely benefitted from immigration, President Donald Trump disregarded the true nature of the US history when he announced that the country is full. Many successful people in the US were immigrants like George Soros and Elon Musk who were born in Hungary and South Africa respectively. Despite this, President Trump promised to build a wall between the US and Mexico, coast to coast from Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. He expected the Mexicans to pay for the costs of the Wall. It is interesting to note that even now when he is supposed to start with the work of new administration, he is still ranting about the immigrants. A populist can indeed make unrealistic demands. Most of the Mexican people are running away from the drug violence in the Northern part of the country. It is estimated that ninety five percent(95%) of the US farm workers are from Mexico. Trump reduced the resetlement cap into almost half .
The SA economist Brian Kantor says: “The extra supply of migrant skills or energy has an influence not only on total output ( GDP ) and incomes but also on real or relative employment benefits , that is, on the relative or comparative incomes of the better-off, who benefit from human capital , and the less well-off , who command very little of it.” Kantor continues to say: “The more capital, including the more human capital , available to an economy , the higher will tend to be the demand for, and so the real value of, lower-paid , less-skilled labour”. He continued: “The case for encouraging the immigration of skilled labour is for the host society to benefit from these externalities , that is , to gain benefits beyond those realised by the migrants themselves, when given the opportunity to apply their skills or enterprise in the economy to which they have migrated.”
Barnajee and Duflo conclude: ” The knock on effect demand for labour goes up and if the monies are spent in the host country, then the economy grows. The demand curve shift to the right. The newcomers spend money : they go to the restaurants, they get hair-cuts, they go shopping . This creates jobs, and mostly jobs for low-skilled people. This tends to increase their wages and perhaps thus compensate for the shift in the labour supply , leaving wages and unemployment unchanged. In fact , there is evidence that if the demand channel is shut down, migration may indeed have the “expected negative effect on the natives.” They further alluded to the effects that if employers enjoy more low skilled labour , mechanisation goes down . The qualitative shift was observed with the four hundred thirty thousand (430 000) people who had to be evacuated and resettled after Finland was forced to cede territory to Soviet Union. It is said that twenty-five years on, the evacuated people was richer than the rest of their fellow fishing community. Barnajee and Duflo express, ” Being forced to move seemed to have loosened their moorings and made them adventurous.” This confirms that those who migrate have get-up-go attitude, unusual stamina to engage in hard-backbreaking work that the locals are not willing to do and sometimes possess high risk tolerance. It is reported that most of the farm workers in Europe are from the Eastern Europe and North Africa.
Barnajee and Duflo assert, ” There is no credible evidence that even relatively large inflows of low-skilled migrants hurt the local population, including members of the local population most like the migrants in terms of skills. Indeed, migration seems to make most people , migrants and locals , better off. This has a lot to do with the peculiar nature of the labour market.” The two economists say that this has very little to do with the supply and demand that says more labour will drive down wages. They say that the logic is simple, does not apply to immigrants and therefore seductive, and wrong.
The two economists looked at the studies conducted by David Card’s and other scholars. The most striking was the David Card’s study of the Mariel boatlift . This study focused on the one hundred twenty five thousand (125 000) Cubans, mostly with little or no education who arrived in Miami after Fidel Castro unexpectedly authorised for those who wanted to leave to do so. People responded immediately and in no time the labour force of Miami was increased by seven percent(7%). The results of David Card study found that the wages were not affected by the arrival of the Marielitos. It is reported that the study was the first to show that the supply-demand model might not directly apply to immigration. This ground-breaking study inspired other economic scholars to research on other similar mass migration. More or similar outcome was observed with the study examining the repatriation of Algerians of European origin to France after the independence of Algeria in 1962. Another study of interest involved the impact of massive immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union to Israel after the Soviet Union lifted the emigration restriction in 1990, which increased Israel’s population by twelve percent(12%) in a short space of four years. As it is to be expected in any economic debate, even on this case of the impact of migration on the economy, only outlier was the study conducted by George Borjas , a vocal supporter of policies to shutdown borders.
South Africa became attractive long before the current inflows of immigrants. Historically, South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope attracted immigrants from the European Dutch East Indian Company workers in 1652 under the leadership of Jan Van Riebeeck. The shining diamonds of Kimberly and the glittering gold of Witwatersrand attracted immigrants workers internationally and locally. Immigrants from the countries of Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC) such as Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland etc came here to work in the mining industry. Most of the immigrants ended up staying in South Africa.This is the country in Africa with the population of the large descendants of Indians who came to work in the sugarcane fields in Natal, some from the Islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and Madagascar as the Cape slaves. SA economy became what it is because of the contributions made by the people of South Africa and the immigrants from the whole of Southern Africa. The principle should be that the immigrants must adapt to the ways of the host nations.
The man who formed the first largest Trade Union Movement for Africans in 1919 was Clement Kadalie who was an immigrant from Malawi . The Union was called the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union(ICU). The then authorities attempted to deport Clement Kadalie in 1924 after he was declared a prohibited immigrant . He defied an order declaring him a prohibited immigrant and defiantly stayed on in South Africa . The founder leader of Communist Party of South Africa Andrew H Williams was born in England, the late Joe Slovo was from Lithuania and Prof ZK Matthews family was from Botswana , the grandfather of former minister Naledi Pandor. Patson “Kamuzu” Banda was born in Malawi, the goalkeeper of Orlando Pirates football club in the 1970s and was regarded as the best goalkeeper in the southern Africa.The most revered and popular musician Ray Phiri’s father was also from Malawi.
Political and economic challenges in Zimbabwe caused human flooding into South Africa. This influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa has caused resentment among South Africans , particularly in the townships. The locals accuse the foreigners of taking over their jobs. This attitude is influenced by the rising tide of unemployment and persistent low economic growth. Communities blame the foreigners for the rising levels of crime and infrastructure vandalism in the country because they are undocumented people hence the call for effective border management, (however, it should be remembered that Mongolian soldiers had used bribery to undermine the Chinese Wall). The Zimbabweans on the other hand, unfairly blame South Africa for their economic woes, particularly what is termed “quiet diplomacy”, which they claim was advocated by former President Mbeki. This was in relation to the resolution of political crisis in Zimbabwe. What has been overlooked in the accusation is that President Mbeki was bound by the international law that enforces respect for sovereignty in the efforts to facilitate and restore peace in another country. What people do not appreciate is that the rules governing state affairs are the same as those governing individual families that are neighbouring each other, the other family cannot shout at neighbours to dictate how they can manage their domestic affairs. The sporadic flare ups of the locals wanting to evict foreigners from the townships have never been sustained over long time because the locals equally derive benefits from the immigrants. The immigrants rent backrooms and spaza shops in the townships from the locals. Immigrants also increase the commuter volume of the taxi industry. They equally provide available cheap labour for the odd jobs which the locals have not been prepared to do. This is the reason why when they are chased out of the townships , within a week or so they will be back and live harmoniously with the communities again.
The former SA High Commissioner to Lesotho, His Excellency Sello Moloto in the article , ‘reflection on Lesotho-South Africa bilateral relations and cooperation’ contends: “Most political party leaders have adopted a lacklustre approach to this growing social and political menace which has the potential to break the social fibre of the nation as well as give South Africa a negative image on the continent.”
The historical fact is that all the nation-states of Southern Africa are the product of either political or economic migration. South Africa for that matter became the melting pot of various cultures after the discovery of diamond and gold in the 19th century . He further invoked the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 1991 Congress resolution which acknowledged the interdependence of the two countries and the critical contribution made by Basotho mineworkers to the economic development of South Africa. The resolution further noted the defects of the Lesotho economy and its viability.”
CONCLUSION
Migration existed throughout the history of human economic survival and the economists through various research studies concluded that there are positive economic benefits the immigrants bring to the host countries. Studies have shown that immigration increases the GDP in most countries of the developed world and serve as an important source of income in the developing countries. However, the global trends show that in any country , there will be people more insular than others who are opposed to immigrants and those who are welcoming. The populists will continue to yearn for blood purity despite the integrated globalised world in the 2Ist century. These populists will always exploit the suffering of the people for political expediency and power (to win elections). Thus a need to strike the balance of regional integration and the protection of the locals. SADC and other regional bodies should be visible and be seized with the matter of immigration than leave such matters to the affected countries. Thre is a need for cooperation and engagement among the affected countries. Progressive and proactive measures can go a long way in making the immigration crises to be less problematic and less costly. At the end of the day , prevention and attention to the causes of emigration are the most appropriate deflators which should be pursued. Political leaders should always act in the best interests of humanity.
References
- The Nuremberg Trials by Terry Burrows.
Journal of Policy Modeling by J.E Stiglitz. - The Chancellor, the remarkable odyssey of Angela Merkel by Kati Marton.
- Good Economics for Hard Times by Abhijit V.Banerjee and Esther Duflo.
- Get South Africa Growing by Brian Kantor.
- Reflection On South Africa-Lesotho Bilateral Relations by the former SA High Commissioner to Lesotho , His Excellency Sello Moloto.
- Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa: The intern research paper on immigration.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum : Country case study, Rwanda.
- Mapping the changing contours of the world economy by Peter Dicken.