Supply and demand of migration

The US President promised a tougher border controls during his election campaign while the UK is restricting its number of migrants and it is more difficult to get a Tier 2 working visa or a Tier 1 investor visa (even the owner of Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich‘a visa is still in process).

There are so many reasons for the domestic population to dislike migrants. They could believe migrants take their jobs or “steal” their social resources. Furthermore, some politicians believe more migrants could potentially create more hostile within the society between different racial groups, leading to possible social chaos. This is why countries tend to control the quantity and quality of migrants into their countries.

There are pros of encouraging migrants into countries as well. Migrants could be highly intelligent and bring the countries with better quality labour force and increase the countries’ innovation and invention rates. Furthermore, it could increase the supply of labour in general and solve the issue of labour shortage which some countries have the problem of.

Some countries supply migrants, and these countries are normally developing countries. Losing manpower seems bad for countries; however, it does have many benefits. It can increase the supply of social resources as migrants can bring overseas resources back home and feed the locals, and reduce the demand for domestic resources as migrants seek resources from other countries. In addition, some migrants can bring back intelligence that they gain from their overseas experience and accelerate their home countries’ development. However, some intelligent people may leave their home countries and never come back and this is a negative effect of supplying migrants.

Overall, if we see the global as a whole, allowing completely free border may be seen as a complete free market and people find the best positions (prices) to fit themselves.