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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. With us now, the Dutch Sociologist and Geographer, Hein de Haas, who has studied immigration for three decades and tries to bust myths that he sees as coming from both the political left and political right.

He is a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam and a founding member of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford. He has a new book called How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics.

With Republicans through Donald Trump channeling Hitler and calling immigrants vermin and saying they're poisoning the blood of Americans, and with Democrats like Mayor Adams and President Biden conflicted on how to manage the recent asylum seeker surge into New York and the US, and de Haas's own country of the Netherlands having just given an election victory to anti-immigration, anti-ISIS asylum, and anti-Islam populace here at Wilders, let's see what Hein de Haas has to say about, as his book title puts it, how migration really works.

This is in 22 chapters, and each chapter busts one myth as he sees it. Professor de Haas, welcome to WNYC. Hello from New York.

Hein de Haas: Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot.

Brian Lehrer: You are right, first of all, that the world is not experiencing an unusual surge in migration right now, even though it may feel like that. We'll take this as myth number one, that the pace has been pretty constant since the end of World War II. If I've got that right, could you start with the big picture in those terms?

Hein de Haas: Yes, and let's start with the big picture. If you look at a global level, about 3% of the total world population is a migrant, an international migrant. That's a person who is currently living in another country than his or her country of birth.

That percentage has remained remarkably stable over the last 50 years, and it was probably higher a century ago. Of course, on the local level, things may seem very different. We see surges of migration on local level, but if you zoom out, there's actually no reason for the panic we're often feeling right now.

Of course, there's reason for concern, but this idea that global migration is totally running out of hand is actually not backed up by fact.

Brian Lehrer: The same percentage of people move from country to country now as on average since the end of World War II. Is that a stat?

Hein de Haas: Yes. If you look at the United States, for instance, roughly 15% of US population is an immigrant, so they've been born abroad. The percentage was actually similar a century ago. Of course, we talk about more people, more migrants, but we also talk about a bigger population.

Relatively speaking, there's not a big change. Although, of course, you cannot deny that, over the last 10 to 20 years, we've seen an increase in migration to many Western countries including the United States. It is not so much caused by misery, poverty, inequality, or climate change in poor countries.

It's rather caused by increasing labor shortages and a lack of immigration policies that can channel those labor migrants, particularly when we talk about lower-skilled migrants. That is a big explanation why we see a surge in illegal border crossings, for instance.

These are real problems, but it doesn't so much reflect a wave of people coming driven by poverty and desperation. It rather has to do with our economy and the failure of immigration systems to align themselves, in a way, with labor demand.

I think that's the biggest elephant in the room of the debate because there's a lot of willingness to accept the fact that higher-skilled migrants will come, people with university degrees, but we all know that migrants do all sorts of useful jobs that are more manual jobs in the service sector, in agriculture.

There we see, for instance, in the United States, a huge, huge number of vacancies topping an unprecedented 10 million this year, record low unemployment, and it's part of the story.

Brian Lehrer: There's so much to follow up on in that answer you gave, including various assertions that people might find surprising. Let me pick one or two.

You do acknowledge a change in modern times of who is moving where, from relatively poor countries in the global south and east, to relatively wealthy countries in the north and in the west, and yet you just said this is not so much about people moving to escape poverty. Talk about that one.

Hein de Haas: Well, the surprising fact is that migration is highest in middle-income countries, as we call it. Well, Mexico is a typical example. If we move to Europe, you look at a country like Turkey, for instance, or in Asia, the Philippines. These are not the poorest countries of the world.

That's not a coincidence because, first of all, migration is expensive. All countries have actually much lower immigration. If you look within countries, it's typically, let's say, the lower middle classes, the middle classes that migrate because migration requires resources, money, and also degrees often allow you to migrate and gives you the mindset and ambition to move.

When poor countries get richer, we found in research that more people start moving instead of less. That is totally counterintuitive, but that's what we find when we look at the data, actually. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You can finish the thought. Go ahead.

Hein de Haas: The other thing to say is, even if people want to migrate, most people wouldn't migrate if there were no opportunities. We see a clear correlation between, I just mentioned the fact that we right now see all across the West, particularly after COVID, a huge shortage of all sorts of manual jobs.

That is definitely attracting migrants. Most migrants wouldn't do all those investments because migration is an investment, particularly over large distances, if there were no opportunities. I'm here, of course, not talking about refugees, but about the bulk of migrants and these are people who come to work.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think about the thought that many people have about the history of the United States as a country so much of immigrants, that it's the risk takers, it's the people with a lot of ambition from the countries that are sending the migrants who have tended to come to the United States.

That's one of the reasons for the United States' economic success over the many decades, over centuries, that the people who are coming and building the population here tend to be ambitious, tend to be risk takers.

Hein de Haas: Yes. That's still the case. What has really changed in the United States is the background of most migrants because, let's say, up to the Second World War, mainly Europeans who moved to United States.

After the Second World War, Europe ended up being a source of migrants to the US because Europe became wealthy itself, started to attract migrants in their own rights from former colonies, from other countries. It's more the source of migration that has changed from Europe to Latin America, to Asia, Caribbean region. Again, with what we see from research, it's still the ambitious, the talented people that are overrepresented in immigrant populations.

That fact is still there. In that sense, not much has changed. If you look at the profile of migrants, what has changed is the geographical origin away from Europe in a way. That has been a big change.

Brian Lehrer: Well, how do you see, in this respect, the localized surge that's taking place right now in New York City? How does that look to you from the Netherlands? You know New York has 150,000 or so asylum seekers since last year. That doesn't happen every year to be sure.

They're largely from Latin America. The Syrian Civil War sent a surge of migrants to elsewhere in the Middle East and also to Europe. These things are real, right, in terms of the short term, but let's talk about the New York City. Asylum seekers, tend to call them. Are they in a different category because they're fleeing some danger than most of the migrants you've been talking about so far?

Hein de Haas: Yes, of course. Asylum seekers are people who look for protection. I think what we see in the United States, it's not necessarily different from what we see in Europe where different European countries, in a way, can't get their act together to show solidarity across Europeans and Asians. I think partly that's also what you see in the United States.

We see a constant fighting between states. We see a constant disagreement between European countries who has to bear the burden. People shift that burden. If we would do it together, if there was some national coordination in the case of the United States federal coordination, in that case, it would be something we could easily handle.

The problem is that, basically, we cannot get our act together as nations, as a European Union. If you look at numbers, for instance, refugees over the longer term, there are, of course, spikes in refugee migration. That's always been the case.

On the longer term, again, there is not a massive increase, as you would think. I think it is mainly a problem of the federal government not being able to organize this in Europe, the European Union not able to organize this, and this is how we see that countries tend to shift that burden to the next state, basically.

If there was some level of national coordination, these things could be solved and could be handled. I think it's very important that countries functioning refugee systems in the sense that anybody who is applying for asylum will get clarity soon enough about whether or not that person can stay or not. I think that's important.

I think the second element, and this I think we have to acknowledge as well, is that there's this huge mismatch in a way between the realities of the US economy, where I was just mentioning an unprecedented number of vacancies also in many lower-skilled jobs.

Particularly after COVID and the economic growth we're seeing in the United States, and the lack of legal channels for labor migrants doing lower-skilled jobs. Of course, that causes, partly, also reorientation towards the asylum channel.

I'm not saying that all people asking for asylum are not real refugees. Obviously, many of them are, but I think we cannot deny the fact that this is part of the problem. I think acknowledging that basic economic fact, which is right now something that politicians have no courage to acknowledge, is perpetuating this problem as well.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions or comments on how migration really works. Welcome for a Dutch sociologist and scholar of immigration, Hein de Haas from the University of Amsterdam, whose new book is called How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue and Politics. 212-433, WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692.

Again, his new book is organized into 22 chapters, each of which is designed to bust something that he sees as a myth. Let me touch on a few of these from left and right, as you frame some of them, and get you to elaborate.

One is that you see no major political divides between left and right, between political parties. You say the divisions are within the parties.

Now, that's hard for me to believe in terms of the United States right now, as Congress remains stuck on specific migration restrictions that the Republicans are insisting on, and President Biden, the Democrat, opposes, and Trump saying he would be a dictator on day one to build that wall, but how do you see it?

Hein De Haas: We've measured it, actually. We measured 6,500 migration policy measures that have been taken off the last decades all across the West, including the United States.

Then we compared whether left-leaning governments or right-leaning governments are more restrictive or more liberal in terms of immigration policy. We don't seem to find a significant difference. What we see is a huge gap between a politician say and do, or actually rather not do, and I can give one example.

Most of the political showmanship is about border controls. That's where you really see that politicians talk very tough, announce things like building walls. We should also not forget that, for instance, President Obama was nicknamed the deporter in chief by many of his critics on that so.

It is not true that democratic politicians have necessarily been softer in terms of border enforcement. Where the real gap exists, and the more you move in a way to the right, you see that the rhetoric gets tougher. In terms of what's actually happening in reality, I can give two examples.

Legal admissions, temporary migrant admissions in the US reach an all-time high under President Trump. That's not what you would think if you listen to the rhetorics.

Second thing is the huge gap between politicians vowing to crack down on illegal migration, but the extraordinarily low rates of labor enforcement. In the US, for instance, on a yearly basis, only 10-15 without any zeroes added, employers get prosecuted for employing undocumented migrants.

That's roughly the same chance as getting hit by lightning. That shows, to me, it's almost like a smoking gun piece of evidence that behind all the tough talk, politicians are not really willing to crack down on this because it is convenient. It's economically convenient.

What it means is that both within, let's say, Republican circles or Democratic circles, you see the same in Europe between left and right, that the left has traditionally been divided on immigration as well, because traditionally, trade unions, labor unions were actually opposed.

They saw immigration as something that could divide the workforce and provide cheap labor for employers. What we see within right-leaning governments is that the business lobbies are extraordinarily strong. That partly explains why they, behind the tough rhetoric, right-leaning politicians, in practice, are much less tough than you would think when you listen to their rhetorics.

This is why we actually didn't find any significant difference between left and right in terms of immigration policies. Also to our surprise, but this is actually explanation.

Brian Lehrer: More difference in rhetoric than actual policies, though. I'm sure a lot of people in the United States will say when you have one party running on, for example, a Muslim ban and calling immigrants vermin, and that they're poisoning our blood, and that they're going to build a wall.

You're saying that maybe they get into office, and then they can't actually do those things, but boy, does it sound like there are different positions in the two parties here. Here's one from your book that you say is a myth that will go against what people on the left perceive. You say climate change will not lead to mass migration. Really?

Hein De Haas: Yes, I've done research on this. There's actually more and more evidence on this. There's as many reasons to believe that climate change leads to more than to less migration. The basic reasoning is to following--

First of all, there's a lot of research on the effect of natural disasters like droughts and floods on movement of people. What we generally see is these things happen. First of all, most people try to stay as much as they can.

If people move away, they tend to go onto very short distances and try to go back, but if they have to relocate, the vast majority of people try to stay within their regions, within their towns, and certainly within their countries.

The most important reason is that people who are most vulnerable to climate change, think, for instance, about peasants in poor countries, are those who will be most severely hit, for instance, by the increasing incidence of droughts.

Are those people who will be impoverished by those events? It actually means they wouldn't have the means to go away, which means that the biggest victims of climate change, because I just want to emphasize that climate change is one of the most serious issues facing humanity over the common decades. Our real concern should go out to those people who cannot move away in the first place, who will get stuck.

Brian Lehrer: Who cannot move away, yes. Although if--

Hein De Haas: Yes. They will get stuck in those places.

Brian Lehrer: If desertification is expanding in parts of the world, leading to famine or wars over resources based on global heating, why wouldn't mass migration be a result?

Hein De Haas: First of all, because migration requires a lot of resources, but also the causal links are not as simple. I've done three years of research in Morocco in dry areas. What is happening partly is that, for instance, governments-- If you think about big business, big agriculture, hotels, towns, they're pumping a lot of water away, which means that it's not just the climate.

If you see environmental crisis in such areas, it's a whole set of other factors that may affect whether people move or don't move. The bitter irony, almost, is that the biggest victims of those things are not people who will end up at the border of wealthy nations.

It doesn't diminish the problem, but simply to link, and there's a lot of evidence on this, to link climate change to the spectra of mass migration is simply not backed up by any evidence. I've worked together with climate scientists.

There's a lot of research on this right now that basically says our real concern should go out to people who are not able to move and to protect those people and to make sure that they will be resilient to those changes. To link that to the spectra of mass migration is simply not making any sense if we look at the evidence. There's general consensus in the research community.

Brian Lehrer: Nerve in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with Professor Hein De Haas from the University of Amsterdam. Hello, Nerve.?

Nerve: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. Professor De Haas, thank you so much for your research, I really appreciate it. I've been really curious, just listening to conversation, I'm wondering in terms-- I'm an immigrant myself. I moved from the Philippines here in the US.

I was wondering, migration and immigration are so uneven in terms of places in the world where people go and move. I'm wondering, in your research, what are the recent trends or patterns that you've observed in the last few years in terms of where do people move from their destination?

Also, where are the strong anti-immigrant, anti-migrant policies are really taking a stronghold? Have there been changes over time that you've noticed in terms of climate change, for instance, or wars and other forms of political violence?

Are those changes geographically changing or shifting over time? Are you seeing a really almost permanent geographies of migration flows, and also strong anti-immigrant policies in different particular parts of the regions of the world? I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this in relation to capital flows and labor necessities and migration.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much for your call. Wow, those are big questions. You could write whole books on those questions, so give us brief an answer as you can while still doing those question justice.

Hein de Haas: It's a great question. I think it's pointing to something really important what's happening right in the world. What is actually happening is that we see the rise of new immigration countries in the world.

Mexico is starting to become a destination for Central-American migrants. Turkey is becoming a destination for migrants in the Middle East. We see the rise of new economic powers that attract more and more migrants.

The Gulf region has been already, for a long time, a new destination. It's no longer just Europe and North America. We see a growing number of countries attracting migrants.

Unfortunately, what we also see in those countries is growing xenophobia. You were just talking about rhetorics there. You're definitely right, that rhetorics are getting tougher and tougher. We see that in more and more non-European, non-North-American countries, those same rhetorics start to take hold like in Turkey, like in Mexico.

That, I think, is reason for concern. What I was just pointing out that the policy, there's a huge gap. There's a political hypocrisy about what politicians say and what they do, but the rhetoric is becoming so inflammatory that it may really be very harmful for society and the peaceful living together of groups.

This narrative is indeed spreading to more and more countries also outside of the West. I think that is a real reason for concern. It's not really driven by massive increase of refugees because that's not really what we see.

It is much more driven by politics and politicians using those narratives to scapegoat migrants and to make people afraid of mass immigrations. I think that is the real danger. It's rhetoric. It's not innocent. The only thing I was stressing, it's not really backed up by any tougher measures necessarily.

I was just mentioning the law labor enforcement, the fact that more and more legal migrants are being let in, but it could reach a point that it really gets dangerous. That's also why I wrote a book, because I'm really concerned about this polarization in the migration debate and the total detachment of the debate from any reality. I think people need to know that what politicians tell you is not really what's going on.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another myth that you cite that separates rhetoric from reality. This will go against what people on the right perceive. Ill-conceived immigration restrictions, you say, often backfire by paradoxically producing more immigration. Do you have an example of that?

Hein de Haas: Yes. I think the best example is Mexican immigration to the United States. Princeton Sociologist, Douglas Massey, has run I think 20 to 30 years of survey research, backed up massive amounts of data showing that what used to be a circular flow of Mexicans going back and forth between Mexico and a few US states, Texas, California, up to the 1980s.

After 1986, successive US governments started to indeed toughen our border controls. It's myth that Trump built that wall or that fence. That already started way earlier.

The effect has been surprisingly more and more permanent settlement, because the more difficult you make to get in, the more people tend to stay.

What actually happened is increasing border enforcement turned this back-and-forth circular flow of Mexicans into a permanent settlement because people did no longer go back after they had done their work because they were afraid of being to reenter again. It also partly drove migration in the ground.

In a way, the policy made it more difficult to control. It accelerated permanent settlement. It accelerated the growth of permanently settled migrant communities, and it also encouraged people to overstay their visas.

That is something that border walls cannot prevent at all.

Again, because there were still these jobs in the United States. Doug Massey has really shown that accelerated the permanent growth of migrant communities in the US, which was not really the objective of the policy, and obviously created a huge market for smuggling across borders. You really have to look at the whole process.

Normally, we only focus on people coming in, but if you really want to understand how a migration policy may backfire, you have to look at the whole going back and forth. That is often interrupted by ill-conceived immigration restrictions.

We really ought to be looking much more critically about what policies are actually successful and what panic moves with politicians or politicians that see more driven by electorial gain can have long-term effects, are the complete opposite of what politicians set those policies will do.

The other example is Brexit. The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union was meant to decrease migration. In fact, it increased from 200,000 a year to 740,000 a year, pretty much for the same reasons.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. We've got two minutes left in the segment. Frank in Morristown, you're on WNYC with Hein de Haas, author now of How Migration Really Works. Frank, hello.

Frank: Hello. I'm just trying to find out if the researcher looked into the phenomenon that is coming on where these new immigrants, and I'm not picking on any one particular group, trying to change the laws of their are new country.

For instance, the Islamics will want to establish Sharia law. The Jews like to live in enclaves with their own laws. I don't know if you had research touched on any of those.

Brian Lehrer: I think those are, forgive me, anti-Jewish and anti-Islam tropes, but do you have anything on that that's relevant, professor?

Hein de Haas: There's not evidence of that having happened at any point in time. What we often see is that new groups are often seen as fundamentally different and not being able to fit in. It's really interesting if you look at the history of US immigration that now if you go back a century ago, Italians were seen as not being able to fit into the American mainstream.

Catholic migrants, more in general, they were seeing as more loyal to the pope in Rome than to the American nation. Germans, even a bit longer ago, were also seen as a group that couldn't fit into the American nation, and Jewish immigrants.

We see a whole history where we see those, in a way, tropes being repeated by politicians. If you look one or two generations further down the underline, those fears have completely disappeared and it shows also that a lot of this is again about inflammatory rhetoric than rather about--

In reality, what we know from research is that migrants want to fit in as soon as they can, the large majority, and they may concentrate and enclave for a while. I also describe it in my book.

It's often to make it together in a way to help each other, but as soon as people are successful, they tend to move out of such places. It is part of the, let's call it the American dream that most migrants want to have. That is a general pattern also when we look in Europe.

These fears of migrants changing the nation have been very common, but always have evaporated one or two generation down the line when migrants have become part of the nation.

Brian Lehrer: Hein de Haas, professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam and founding member of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford, is now the author of How Migration Really Works: The Facts About the Most Divisive Issue in Politics. Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Hein de Haas: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

 

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