Introduction
Migration is a global issue and it has elicited heightened debates amongst scholars across the world. The migration topic is diverse and given that it has a ‘human face’, it has drawn interests from different quarters with human rights activists being the latest addition to the interested parties. In some places like the United States and other developed countries, the issue of migration intertwines with other contentious issues like racism and inequality in the distribution of resources and access to opportunities (Adler and Gielen 13).
Therefore, given the complex nature of this issue, people are likely to misunderstand it. People migrate for different reasons, whether voluntary or involuntary. People should have the freedom of movement across the world without restrictions. Regrettably, the international law is yet to evolve to this level, but nature is forcing migration on society.
Migration is inevitable in the contemporary society and it comes with more merits than demerits. This paper will underscore why immigration matters by showing its benefits to the contemporary world, which is bedeviled with numerous shortcomings including aging workforce, lack of skilled labor, and the ever escalating conflicts across the globe.
Declining/aging workforce
The majority of the developed countries are facing the challenge of aging workforce. The baby boomers’ generation has attained its retirement age, and different first world nations do not have enough young people to fill the gap left by the retirees.
This scenario presents two-fold challenges to governments and the business world. Governments are figuring out how to pay social welfare benefits for the high number of retirees, because the incoming young employees do not inject enough money into the system for a balanced co-existence (Koser 150).
On the business world, employers cannot fill the vacant positions occasioned by the massive retirement rates. One might not understand the link between all these issues and migration. Well, migration is the savior of the government and corporations across the world from the challenge of insufficient labor force. People can migrate to search for greener pastures; for instance, Mexicans entered the states of California and Texas in huge numbers (“Interstate Migration” 340)
The greatest number of developing countries records impressive rates of literacy, and thus the developed world can use this aspect to its advantage. Employees can migrate from the developing world to its developed counterpart and offer their services for a price. Undeniably, the remuneration for migrant workers in the developed world is over a hundred fold what they can earn in their places of origin.
In this symbiotic association, everyone wins and nobody gets hurt. It is a question of supply and demand, and market forces are working perfectly to ensure such a balance. The bottom line is that the first world needs the third world and the vice versa and migration is the shuttle through which such needs are met. The developing countries get a ready market for their trained workforce and in return, they tax the remittances from the ‘exported’ workforce, which forms a sizeable part of the governments’ earning points.
The World Bank “estimates that each year mi – grants worldwide send home about $300 billion…which is the second-largest source of external funding for developing countries after foreign direct investment” (Koser 150). On the other side, the first world gets the much-needed workforce to supplement its aging population. Arnold posits that if the “present trends continue, between 2010 and 2030 net immigration will probably account for all population increases in the developed world” (4).
Lack of expertise
The third world nations have realized that the only way to enter the developed world’s league is via industrialization. Unfortunately, the education systems in these countries are not competent enough to oversee an industrial revolution. The majority of education systems in the developing countries were designed under the selfish motives of the colonialists. The colonialists sought a short-term goal of creating barely educated and skilled workforce for their industries.
Therefore, the education systems were designed to create employees as opposed to nurturing astute entrepreneurs. In addition, it was easy for the colonialists to subjugate uneducated populations for such cannot seek emancipation. Therefore, the developing world needs expatriates from the developed world in a bid to bridge the skill gap occasioned by poor learning systems, hence the link between these issues and migration is clear.
Migration allows expatriates to move to other countries where their expertise and experiences are required. Therefore, the developing world gets the much-needed expertise for its economic growth, while the expatriates get good remuneration packages and an opportunity to tour the world. Apart from the monetary aspect, purpose-driven individuals believe that they should use their talents and skills to change the world.
Therefore, these expatriates might not get the best remuneration packages, but they decide to work anyway with the hope that they are changing the world in one way or another. Therefore, migration forms the core of the advancement of socio-economic courses in the contemporary world.
For instance, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has weathered the challenges of economic stagnation courtesy of migration. In the UAE, for every 12 individuals, 11 are foreigners. The expatriates have helped the country to become one of the economic successful stories of the 21st century and migration holds the system together.
The symbiosis relationship between nations for economic purposes does not necessarily follow the developed country-developing country model. Some developing countries need other developing countries, while developed nations need their developed counterparts for development.
A case in point is the Rwandan and Southern Sudan cases. After the famous 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the social fabric was torn as the country descended into a civil war. After a decade of ravaging war, the country is trying to rebuild its economy and without educated working population with the requisite skills, it depends on other African countries, which are also developing.
On the other side, Southern Sudan is the youngest country in the world after seceding from Sudan in 2011. Similarly, the region had been entangled in decades of civil war, and thus it largely depends on other African countries for skilled labor and expertise. The famous United States of America was founded under the efforts of migrants after Christopher Columbus’ voyages to the New World.
For safety
The majority of countries across the globe, and especially in the developing world, are unsafe due to incessant crises. The crises emerge from poor leadership, which apparently these nations inherited from the colonialists. Therefore, when crises arise, innocent and vulnerable people are forced to migrate for their safety. Historical civil wars in different parts of the world forced people to flee their countries for safety.
To these innocent and helpless individuals, migration is their savior, as without it, they would die in the conflicts. The UNHCR notes, “The number of refugees, asylum-seekers, and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people” (par. 1). The figures are staggering and with a close look, refugees can form a new country with more citizens as compared to most nations in the world.
The Arab Spring that started in late 2010 underscores the importance of migration in the contemporary world. Innocent citizens in Tunisia woke to chaos as the government tried to repress demonstrators. Within months, the country had been shattered with millions of citizens seeking refuge in the neighboring countries.
In Libya, the Tunisian scenario replayed before the Egyptians joined the bandwagon. Later, the Middle East experienced the spillover effects and today, Syria is still under heavy civil war. These crises have left behind millions of refugees and these individuals have managed to live courtesy of migration, albeit forced. Therefore, migration matters because it has a human face.
Individuals can also be forced to migrate due to natural disasters. Global warming is posing a real threat to the existence of humanity in some areas. Therefore, the threatened individuals have to migrate to other safe places. Koser warns, “200 million people will be forced to move as a result of climate change by 2050, although other projections range from 50 million to a startling 1 billion people moving during this century” (152).
Unfortunately, the world has strict migration rules, and thus the majority of those seeking help end up dying due to the bureaucratic migration systems put in place. The international community needs to make radical decisions, which might not be popular to everyone, in a bid to save humanity from the claws of atrocity being experienced in the contemporary world. Apparently, migration forms the backbone of any decision that can save humanity from extinction.
Solutions
The migration challenges posed by the need for increased workforce in the developed world can be solved via the adoption of sound immigration policies driven by market needs. President Obama’s recent move to fix the system is timely because the world needs such decisions for posterity. On the other side, the developing world should come up with clear-cut policies on handling expatriates for economic development.
Finally, the international community should adopt an inclusive charter on migration or maybe accept a single government to run the world from a central place. This suggestion is radical, but maybe it underscores the only way out of the quagmire that the world has been stuck in for ages. President Obama is making the right move with his laudable efforts to fix the system; however, fixing the system in the US alone solves an infinitesimal portion of the problem, which can only be addressed best from a central point.
Conclusion
The issue of immigration has been around since the civilization of humankind. People have been migrating to different places for various reasons. Countries benefit from each other courtesy of migration with the developed world benefitting from skilled labor from the developing world. Similarly, the developing world benefits from the developed nations by getting the much-needed expertise for economic growth.
People migrate for safety purposes. The world is becoming chaotic with every passing day, and thus migration will be inevitable even in the future. Perhaps, the best solution to deal with migration challenges is to adopt one world government, where everyone becomes a citizen, hence the freedom to migrate to anywhere in the world.
Works Cited
Adler, Leonore, and Uwe Gielen. Migration: immigration and emigration in the international perspective, Westport: Praeger, 2003. Print.
Arnold, Guy. Migration Changing the World, London: Pluto, 2012. Print.
Koser, Khalid. “Why Migration Matters”. Current History (2009): 147-153. Print.
UNHCR: World Refugee Day- Global forced displacement tops 50 million for first time in post-World War II era, 2014. Web.