Emigration Tipping Point
For the third successive year, America’s Border Patrol reports a sharp drop in arrests on and near the frontier. In 2006 the figure dropped 8% to around 1m. Last year it dropped by a full fifth. The six months to March showed a year-on-year drop of 17%. By the (imperfect) measure of border arrests, the migrant flow today is roughly half that of 2000, when 1.6m arrests were made.
Mexico’s central bank reports that, after years of rapid growth, the amount of cash sent home by migrants inside America is falling. Last year such flows were worth $24 billion (more valuable than tourism). But in the first quarter of this year the year-on-year figure was down 2.9%.
A poll of migrants across America published by in April confirmed that fewer are sending money back regularly: in 2006 three-quarters of migrants did, this year only half report doing so. Brazil, the second-largest recipient of remittances in the region, saw them slide by 4% last year, to $7.1 billion.
A study by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) this year noted that of the 1m or so East Europeans who came to Britain since 2004, around half have already left. The inflow of migrants to Britain from this region has also dropped sharply, by 17% last year.
In Britain the economy is slowing, and the sharp drop in the value of the pound has cut the attraction of the country to foreign workers. Every pound a Pole sent home in May 2004 earned him seven zloties; today he gets little more than four.
East European economies have grown relatively fast in recent years, their labour forces are shrinking fast (partly because of emigration, partly because of ageing populations) and unemployment has dropped quickly in the past half-decade.
Kathleen Newland suggests that based on the experience of countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece and South Korea, emigration usually slows when income per person approaches a threshold level in relation to income in the richer countries where the migrants are heading. The tipping point is when the ratio of incomes reaches about 1:4 or 1:5, especially if the upward trend seems stable. For migrants looking to go to western Europe and North America, this would imply a threshold level of $6,000-7,000.
“A turning tide?,” The Economist