Hein de Haas: "It's hypocritical to demand more border controls and have migrants working without contracts."

BarcelonaHein de Haas is one of Europe's leading experts on migration. In his latest book The myths of immigration (Peninsula), a huge international success, compiles the conclusions of more than 30 years of research, challenging existing prejudices on the subject. He is co-director of the International Migration Institute (IMI) at the University of Oxford and professor of migration and development at Maastricht University. He participated in the latest meeting of the Círculo de Economía (Economics Circle).

He argues that we must rethink the way we view migration.

— Migration is seen as a problem to be solved or as a solution to problems, but not as a normal phenomenon. It is a reality that is part of our societies and also of development. It is almost always seen as a problem caused by poverty, war, and misery in poor countries, but the facts tell us otherwise: in reality, migration is development. When poor countries become richer, more people move. Because emigrating is expensive. It is a lie that immigration will stop if development in the countries of origin is promoted.

From a European perspective, it's often said that migration can solve major problems, such as labor shortages or the viability of pension systems. Is this true?

— A wealthy country with labor shortages will always attract migrants, but migration cannot solve society's deeper economic or demographic problems. Migration cannot solve problems such as aging or the sustainability of the pension system.

There is also a very common idea that migration is at an all-time high.

— In fact, almost everyone believes this. From the right, people say, "We need to seal the borders, we must stop the small boats." And from the left, "We must develop poor countries, we must eliminate the root causes." What lies behind both arguments is that we are living in times of record migration, when in fact only approximately 3% of the world's population emigrates. And there are many reasons to believe that in the last century there was a much higher percentage of migrant population, because that was the time when many people emigrated from European countries.

Is the left really promoting immigration, while the right is actually stopping it?

— We really don't see any differences. We analyzed and compared 6,500 laws and policy measures and found no significant differences between left-wing and right-wing parties. This means there's a huge gap between politicians' tough talk and practice. Spain is a great example: everyone knows that undocumented migrants here perform essential jobs. And everyone allows this to happen.

What do you expect from the Trump administration's harsh immigration policies?

— Trump isn't deporting more people than Biden. It's actually a matter of image politics.The main objective is to appear tough. Trump didn't build a wall; his predecessors did. But if people believe he did, he wins the election. And migration to the United States is very likely to decline, but this is more because the economy is slowing down than because of any border policy. The same thing is happening in Morocco and Spain; the pateras phenomenon began in 1991. Why? Because that's when Moroccans were required to have a visa to enter Spain. Why do we think the same policies that haven't stopped the pateras for the past 40 years will work now? Critical questions aren't asked, and politicians reap the benefits.

What are these questions?

— There is a lot of hypocrisy. You can say what you want about the boats and the canoes, and call for more border controls, but undocumented migrants continue to work without contracts in the underground economy. There is a clear way to stop illegal migration: enforce labor laws. This means greater control in the workplace. Immigration policy is labor policy. Immigration policy is linked. de facto in neoliberal economic policy. On the one hand, there is the tendency towards economic neoliberalism, the policy of laissez-faireOn the other hand, there's a call for less immigration. You can't have both one thing and its opposite at the same time.

You continue to work in the field to study the evolution of migration flows, for example in Morocco and Senegal. What's happening?

— Moroccans have emigrated in the last century, and they still emigrate, but the profile is changing. There are still many low-skilled Moroccans moving to Spain, but also to Portugal, which is now attracting more and more low-skilled migrants. At the same time, Moroccan emigration is diversifying, because the population is improving their qualifications and more and more people are moving to Canada or Germany. And Morocco is also attracting migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. Some young people from Senegal told me: "If we don't get a visa to go to Europe, we'll take the shortcut." And the shortcut is the Canary Islands. We forget that in many cases they are fishermen who sail with traditional fishing boats that spend months on the water, for generations. No one will stop these young people from doing the same, as long as they find work when they arrive. There are three options. The first is to continue with the immigration policy of the laissez-faire, and that double standard; the second is to regulate immigration by granting visas so people can move legally. And the third is to change the economic system to truly guarantee labor rights, which would be a severe blow to certain sectors.