Does Europe (or Anywhere Else) Need Immigrants? by Peter Brimelow

Peter Brimelow writes:                            Forbes Magazine has just published my charticle demonstrating                           the European Union's strikingly low labor force                           participation rates compared to the U.S. (Click                           here – don't forget to continue through to the                           actual chart, which in the web version is shown                           separately. Forbes still allows free access to its web page, but now you                           have to register, like The New                           York Times. It seems a fairly harmless process.                           And you get a grateful email from Tim Forbes.)

The Europeans are constantly                           being told, e.g. recently by Nick                           Eberstadt in The Washington Post, that their                           population is aging and they have to import a lot of                           Arabs to compensate.  This                           is, of course, a screamingly simplistic analysis. You                           can't argue from people to production, because labor                           is only a minor part of the factors of production –                           far outweighed by e.g. technology.

But what this charticle shows is                           that, even so, Europe's problem is not decrepit                           people, but a decrepit labor market. Government policy                           just plain encourages people not to work.

Ironically, U.S. government                           policy has been discouraging Americans from working                           too. We examined declining American labor force                           participation in a 1998 charticle.                            Things                           just haven't gotten as bad as Europe, yet.

The underlying point remains the                           same: the demand for immigrants (especially for                           illegal immigrants working off the books) is often                           just the shadow of regulation. Government policy is                           creating a problem for which another government policy                           – importing labor – is the proposed solution.                           Immigration is favored by government, and by the                           political class generally, because while labor market                           policies may be wrong, they create client                           constituencies. And immigration is creating the                           biggest client constituency of all.

March 19, 2001