Despite the many positive effects, globalism is the cause of many ills. The leading global issue is migration, a permanent change of residence by an individual for various social, economic, and legal reasons (De Haas et al., 2020). Some people seek economic opportunities, while others try to escape terrorism, human rights violations, or move due to environmental disasters. Migration can be short or long-term and can occur out of necessity or out of choice. The main types of international migrants are political, economic, environmental, and family reunion migrants. World Migration Report 2020 reveals that more than 272 million people live outside their country of origin (International Organization for Migration, 2020). The terrifying fact is that 26 million of them are refugees, while more than 45 million were internally displaced. Although migration can have a positive effect, it causes a plethora of issues that should be addressed globally.
With the emergence of the institutions of capitalism and imperialism, the process of globalization was launched. The rapid development of communication between countries, peoples, continents, and individual companies has formed an infrastructure to exchange goods, resources, knowledge, and people. This relationship resulted in imperialism, which existed for several centuries, formally disappearing only in the last century. However, modern developed countries still exploit the economically undeveloped countries of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia (De Haas et al., 2020). In turn, migration is a consequence of the centuries-old system of suppressing the economic growth of developing countries by the countries of North America and Europe. Further, the artificially created slowdown in the improvement of the economies of developing countries, the exploitation of their land by state and private companies in North America and Europe leads to a deficient standard of living of their citizens.
Currently, more developed countries have become the destination for citizens of less developed ones. The most common migration has a South-North direction due to income disparities, historical links, or geographical proximity (De Haas et al., 2020). For instance, France has been accepting migrants from North African countries it held as a colony before. Migration also occurs among the middle-income and low-income countries. For example, Argentina is a destination for migrants from Peru, while Malaysia attracts newcomers from Indonesia. The Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 brought new global issues to the forefront. Border closures restricted global mobility and disrupted refugee resettlement and asylum processing (MPI, 2020). What is more, it also revealed that immigrants enjoy less protection and suffer more from its adverse health and economic impact.
Many immigrant families lost their jobs and did not have access to digital tools to continue their children’s education. Worldwide refugee crises received less attention from the West than before, leading to adverse consequences for Yemen (immigrants from Somalia), Venezuela, Burkina Faso, and Nagorno-Karabakh (displacement of region’s population) (MPI, 2020). The most recent global issue is the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan caused by the onset of the Taliban rule. At the moment, thousands of refugees try to leave the nation (U.S. News, 2021). The primary trend among hosts, Northern America and Europe, is to stabilize migration flows and devise well-structured policies to set refugee limits and share them between countries.
Similar trends in recent decades have led to a substantial increase in migrants to North America and Europe. However, migrants face a new problem – economic and social pressure from the locals. As director of the Global Labor University Online Academy, Frank Hoffer asserts, “migrants are not the cause of the problem in our societies, but for many, they become the face or the symptom of the problem” (Hoffer, 2019, para. 5). This statement describes well the reasons for xenophobia on the part of local workers towards migrants. Thus, people looking for a better life in economically prosperous countries face xenophobia due to the current labor market crisis.
The problem of migration is that migrants are often ill-treated and are less protected than natives. Because private enterprises and the state receive a good profit from the constant overcrowding of the unregulated labor market, they can influence wages. Some political forces, in turn, become the owners of political leverage, putting pressure on the xenophobic sentiments of residents. At the same time, only the migrants themselves, who are used as a resource by political and economic elites, suffer from all these actions.
Their wages are lower than those of local workers, and, as a rule, migrants cannot get a high-paid job. As a result, migrants, to stay in a new country, are forced to work much more for the same money that local workers receive for more comfortable work. Immigrants usually positively affect the host country’s economy, use limited welfare benefits, and have a net-zero impact on the government budget (De Haas et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the excessive influx of refugees is associated with additional costs since most of them struggle or do not want to find a job in developed countries. Furthermore, it was found that immigrants are more likely to compete for the job with less-educated natives and receive low-skill positions (Richwine, 2020). In general, immigrants lack education, skills, protection, and cultural integration to avoid disparities.
The solution to the above problems lies relatively close to the surface. It involves limiting competition in wages, increasing housing affordability, universal quality education, public investment, and, empowering illegal migrants. Invulnerable labor markets, especially low-skilled workers, face wage competition from migrant workers. First, it is essential to create a minimum wage level across the subsistence level at a poverty line of more than half of the average wage to guarantee at least a minimum income level for indigenous people and migrant workers. Then a special progressive high-value property tax should be introduced to fund municipal residential properties in prosperous areas to create a more inclusive living environment. Funding for schools with many low-income families should also be gradually increased to provide the necessary resources to enable disadvantaged children to get better educational opportunities. It is also necessary to help illegal migrants penetrate the economic system more fairly by guaranteeing undocumented migrants a work permit if they are registered with the police, forcing the employer to pay the minimum wage. Thus, significant changes towards economic integration should be taken by governments of countries with migration problems.
Summarizing the above, migration is not a problem in itself; its volumes are growing exponentially due to the destabilizing influence of developed countries on developing countries. Such a policy leads to the fact that citizens of developing countries tend to move to those economically advanced, more prosperous countries and become a resource and tool in the hands of local economic and political elites. These illegal, exploitative, and inhuman methods of recruitment and oppression and the uncontrolled labor market result in xenophobia on the part of local workers. The leading solution to this problem is to empower migrants with economic and legal power to resist exploiters-employers and improve their housing, educational, and economic well-being. Refugees and asylum seekers should be evenly distributed among Western countries to avoid overcrowding and negative impact on local economies. A well-designed immigrant policy can benefit both host countries and migrants who seek a better life abroad.
References
De Haas, H., Castles, S., & Miller, M. J (2020). The age of migration: International population movements in the modern world (6th ed.). The Guilford Press.
Hoffer, F. (2019). The real problems of migration and work and how to solve them. Social Europe.
International Organization for Migration. (2020). World migration report 2020.
MPI. (2020). Top 10 migration issues of 2020.
Richwine, J. (2020). An abundance of new academic studies finds negative impacts of immigration. CIS.
U.S. News. (2021). Ten countries that take the most migrants.