People are scared: not only of this pandemic but also of the next. Many associate foreigners with disease. Suspicion of foreigners is why people who look Chinese have been harassed in many countries.
It is why President Donald Trump has boasted about banning Chinese travellers (even as he downplayed masks), and why one of the South African government’s first actions to curb COVID-19 was to build a fence on the border with Zimbabwe (though the virus was already spreading in South Africa).
In addition, COVID-19 has caused mass unemployment. Many voters believe that migrants take jobs from the native-born, and so would keep curbs on immigration even after other travel restrictions are loosened.
Mr Trump is one of many politicians who make this argument explicitly. His executive order in June suspending most kinds of work visa was aimed at “Aliens Who Present a Risk to the US Labour Market”.
Both these fears are electorally potent, but neither is well-founded. The idea that more migrants means fewer jobs for locals in the long run is an example of the fallacy that the economy has a fixed “lump of labour”.
As well as spending their wages, which supports new jobs, migrants bring a greater diversity of skills to the workforce, allowing the labour market as a whole to operate more efficiently.
Alas, America is not the only place where the pandemic has spurred nativists to clamp down. Italy is alarmed at Africans crossing the Mediterranean. Malaysia has pushed boatloads of Rohingya refugees back into international waters.
South Africa temporarily closed migrant-owned shops in townships, forcing customers to walk miles to distant grocery stores, thereby spreading the virus.
Half the big American tech firms were founded by a first- or second-generation immigrant. If the founder of Zoom had never left China, locked-down professionals might not even know what their colleagues’ bookshelves look like.
When the coronavirus is vanquished, migration will still be what it was before: a powerful tool that can lift up the poor, rejuvenate rich countries and spread new ideas around the world. A pandemic is no reason to abandon it.
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