Who are you calling a foreigner?

It's a familiar story. I'd heard it so many times before. The article was about ingrate immigrants who steal jobs from more entitled homelanders, how they increase crime, poverty and infect otherwise sane societies with a host of unwanted social problems. One official quoted in this particular article was said to be considering getting rid of the 'immigrant scum' all together. According to the recent Economist article, this official went on to further denounce 'foreign trash', who come only because they can't find work in their own country. He talked about foreigners who would stoop to the ploy of entering romantic relations to legitimize their stay in the country, calling one woman who had allegedly done this a 'foreign bitch'.

Now, that's pretty strong stuff, but you might have heard this kind of language in the pub in your own hometown, or maybe even in certain newspapers. Such words are normally directed at the influx of immigrants, generally from poorer countries into rich Western nations. Yet, the article I refer to was about the 100 day crackdown in China against Westerners staying illegally there, working, doing business and taking advantage of that country's favourable economic conditions. That means that the 'trash' and 'scum' that they are talking about could pretty much be you or me.

So, consider that one more reminder that the world that we live in is changing before our eyes. Take the way that the so-called BRICS countries; Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have come through a relatively long period of high economic growth, while at the same time banks in the West have flopped, public and private debt levels remain unsustainable, the U.S. housing market has collapsed like a deck of cards and, at the time of writing, the European monetary union stands on the verge of disintegration.

The oil-rich African nation of Angola is lending money to Portugal, its former imperial lord. Brazil surpasses the U.K. as the sixth largest economy in the world. China stands at number two, ready to topple the mighty U.S. at the summit of world economic power during the lifetime of the post baby-boom generation. British workers now flock to the United Arab Emirates to do jobs that are not attractive to citizens of those wealthy oil-states.

But what does this could mean for immigration? Economic migration, as it’s called isgenerally the movement of people from poor countries to richer ones, from unstable to stable, for the purpose of increasing their own opportunities while contributing to the economy of their new home. Such movement is neither free nor easy. The destination country sets the rules. Many rich nations are not even accepting applicants. In other cases, like the U.S.A., there are so many more applicants than places that a 'lottery' has been established. Then a lengthy, costly and uncertain process would follow before the applicant can ever step foot in their new country.

But wait. Aren’t we supposed to be in the era of globalisation, the process that dictates that goods, and capital can much easily move around the globe like chess pieces, and that all of this is done for the good of economic growth? In reality globalisation only favours multinational corporations in their search of the cheapest and most desperate workers and the most favourable government and tax policies. Workers generally do not have any such mobility rights to help themselves go to where the jobs are. You could conclude that immigration policy is just protectionism where governments places the needs of corporations over people.

Writer Ha-Joon Chang illustrates the unfairness of immigration control in 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism. A hypothetical taxi driver in Sweden, whom he calls Sven, makes 50 times more money than Raj, an imaginary taxi driver in India, as Chang states, but why?. Is it because Sven is a 50 times better driver? Hardly possible. The more chaotic road conditions in Mumbai would naturally make Raj a better driver. We are left to figure that the only reason that Sven is better paid is because he is protected by his government’s policies.

But the European Union supports such mobility of workers within its zone of 27 countries, you might say. Yes, and so, when 1 million people left former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, most headed for Britain because British employers successfully lobbies government to encourage migration from other EU countries into Britain. Those migrants were able to fill numerous minimum wage vacancies in the expansive British service industry. All that went on while Gordon Brown, the British PM at the time, famously called for ‘British jobs for British workers’. The trouble is, that would have involved raising wages and (heaven forbid) driving down corporate profits. So the corporate community still dictates government policy, but this time in favour of immigration. Profits are kept high and the immigrants get the blame for stealing jobs. What a result!

But what if immigration policies really reflected the mantra of the free market in this way more often, wouldn't locals sometimes lose out to foreigners? Don’t schools, hospitals and other social institutions struggle to meet demand, and wouldn't we need to find solutions to more and more social problems like integration, social cohesion and xenophobia? Is open immigration really the answer?

There are many downsides as well as benefits to immigration so adjustments would be necessary. But national governments will always want to control the numbers of foreigners for many reasons, so it's not likely that we will ever have to deal with these challenges. Still, the world is changing in many ways and now even economic migration is due for change, starting with a shift in migration patters.

We know that economic growth continues to be driven by developing countries. Won't Westerners want to move to the more dynamic developing world? My own time in Hong Kong gave me a great perspective on tremendous growth taking off in mainland China. Finding work was a cinch. Pay was good. Optimism was in the air. Being a young man living in a boom town was a buzz. Nowadays, many young Westerners have lost that confidence in their own economies to provide such good opportunities as they enter the workforce.

These massive changes in world economics might cause a partial reversal in the East to West, South to North poor to rich countries' flow of migration. I’m hoping that change will also affect our ideas and perceptions. Even the word 'immigrant' has a negative connotation. That's why Westerners who migrate call themselves 'expats.' How could it be if we now still consider that the poor should stay in their own countries while westerners wander the earth in search of opportunities (as we have for many centuries). We might be about to feel the resentment of the developing world which is quickly catching up .

All this means that the next time you hear the debate about immigration from only one perspective it might be important to understand another way of seeing things. Choosing to leave your country and live in another place live does not make you a parasite. It makes you a braver and far more interesting person, in my eyes, and much more valuable to the global economy.

Although open immigration is not going to happen anytime soon, more international agreements that offer workers the chance to offer their skills in a place other than where they were born, in a place where those skills are in demand would benefit us all. That's called the free market. The game so many people preach but don't really practice. It's always been 'all good' when the immigrants were always one of ‘them.’ Don’t look now but, all signs point to a future where some of those people may also be ‘us’.