Europe s population is set to decline over the next 50 years. In order to maintain its working age population, Italy would need to start importing more than 350,000 immigrants per year or, alternatively, keep its citizens working until they are 75. But it has a more liberal immigration regime. The in-flows of migrants during the 1980s and 1990s the second great migration of the 20th century has literally changed the face of America. Immigration in the US is embraced more enthusiastically by the free market right than the trade union left, but it has brought real benefits.
Immigrants contribute to innovation witness the number of foreigners in Silicon Valley.
And they do jobs that native workers refuse, such as sustaining Californian agriculture. But in his new book, Heaven s Door, Harvard economist George Borjas claims that the economic benefits brought by the latest 20-year wave of immigrants are more disputable. He points to the fall-off in skills relative to those who emigrated to the US in the 1950s and 1960s. He argues that America should admit only 500,000 immigrants per year, and select the most highly skilled. These are criteria which, he acknowledges, would have prevented him, a refugee from Cuba, from immigrating in the early 1960s.