How are illegal immigration and globalization related?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
Paul A. Harris, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Administration, International Studies and Philosophy at Augusta State University, in an Oct. 2002 Southeastern Conference for Public Administration paper entitled "Immigration, Globalization and National Security: An Emerging Challenge to the Modern Administrative State," explained:
"Globalization has been the defining feature of the late twentieth-century, exemplified by sharply increased trade in goods, inter-connected financial markets and large-scale international migration. Globalization is defined by cross-border connectivity, including porous borders, which serve to expedite flows of goods while at the same time increase the level of immigration – both legal and illegal."
Demetrios G. Papademetriou, PhD, Director of the Migration Policy Institute, in a Sep. 2005 Migration Policy Institute essay entitled "The Global Struggle with Illegal Migration: No End in Sight," offered the following explanation:
"For nearly two decades now, capital and the market for goods, services, and workers of many types have weaved an ever more intricate web of global economic and social interdependence... No aspect of this interdependence seems to be more visible to the publics of advanced industrial societies than the movement of people. And no part of that movement is proving pricklier to manage effectively, or more difficult for publics to come to terms with, than irregular (also known as unauthorized, undocumented, or illegal) migration...
Most international mobility — regardless of legal status, whether permanent, temporary, or circular, and whether for work or to join families — also preoccupies the less developed countries, albeit from different perspectives. For them, movement is an essential lifeline to both their citizens and their economies because of remittances [goods or currency sent back to country of origin], now probably approaching $150 billion per year..."
Victor Davis Hanson, PhD, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, in a May 31, 2007 RealClearPolitics.com article entitled "The Global Immigration Problem," wrote:
"Thousands of aliens crossing our 2,000-mile border from an impoverished Mexico reflect a much larger global one-way traffic problem. In Germany, Turkish workers - both legal and illegal - are desperate to find either permanent residence or citizenship. 'Londonstan' is slang for a new London of thousands of unassimilated Pakistani nationals. In France, there were riots in 2005 because many children of North African immigrants are unemployed - and unhappy. Albanians flock to Greece to do farm work, and then are regularly deported for doing so illegally.
The list could go on. So why do millions of these border-crossers head to Europe, the United States or elsewhere in the West? Easy. Stable democracies and free markets ensure economic growth, rising standards of living and, thus, lots of jobs, while these countries' birth rates and native populations fall. In contrast, immigrants usually flee mostly failed states that cannot offer their people any real hope of prosperity and security."
Nayan Chanda, PhD, Director of Publications and the Editor of Yale Global Online Magazine at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, in a June 10, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article entitled "Globalization Comes Full Circle," wrote:
"Illegal immigration... repeats a cycle that began with early humans following their food supply to other continents... [It] is an immediate and topical issue for politicians from London to Los Angeles... Globalization -- the growing interconnectedness and increasingly tighter interdependence among people of the planet -- is a historical process that began at the dawn of time, when our ancestors stepped out of East Africa...
The adventurers and migrants -- who have since the dawn of history been the principal actors of globalization -- are now seen as major threats to the stability of a globalized world. Immigration laws have been tightening against a rising tide of poor migrants, estimated at 200 million in 2005."
