In the rich countries, living standards stagnate. By 2025, trade wars envelope the regional economic blocs. Protectionism spreads in many forms, including nontariff barriers and restrictive immigration policies. The once-booming economies of East and Southeast Asia recover and grow, challenging the U.S., the European Union and Japan. The North-South economic gap disappears, a quaint notion from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Regions equalize in wealth.
It is worth asking amid all this uncertainty whether some trends appear so durable that they're likely to persist as far as the years 2500 or 3000. Whatever the future levels of immigration, it's pretty much clear that immigration works for the immigrants themselves, and often for both receiving and sending countries. That's why it has persisted and is likely to continue. Prof. Meier speaks anecdotally of a Guatemalan emigrant who exemplifies a global phenomenon. She arrived in the San Francisco Bay area at age 19 to escape civil strife.