Rich Immigrants

Paul Krugman and Chris Dillow both post interesting blog entries today, and the intersection of the two is even more interesting, I think. Krugman notes that London seems to be becoming a "rentier city", where the global rich from Russia or India or Arabia live off wealth made elsewhere. Dillow, meanwhile, notes that the African soccer players for Arsenal FC are much more likely to encounter racism in Bucharest than they are in London. Economic growth and success, he says, go hand in hand with tolerance.

Global cities like New York and London certainly attract their share of poor immigrants – but they also attract much more than their share of rich immigrants. And in general, people are more likely to have racist attitudes to those below them on the socio-economic ladder, as opposed to those above them.

When I was growing up in south London, I knew few Africans (as opposed to Caribbeans: I lived very close to the vibrant Caribbean community in Brixton). But the Africans I did know generally came from wealthy and well-educated families. Indeed, if you include the Indians thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin – a large number of whom ended up in the UK – one can reasonably say that Africans living in the UK have historically been some of the richest and most sophisticated immigrants that the country has seen, if you exclude Krugman's rentiers. If you include Krugman's rentiers, then it's even clearer that rich immigrants can be instrumental in improving prosperity.

This is one reason why the US should beef up its H visas for skilled immigrants and generally be much more welcoming towards the global rich than it is today. A lot of anti-immigrant feeling in the US is really aimed not at immigrants in general so much as at poor immigrants in particular. (I'm an immigrant here myself, and I certainly haven't encountered anti-immigrant prejudice.) If immigrants get richer, then the anti-immigrant right will naturally become weaker.

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