Michael: Here’s a wild thought experiment. Economists calculated that simply removing global immigration controls could more than double the size of the world economy. Kevin: Hold on, double? As in, create a second Earth's worth of economic output? That sounds like a sci-fi premise, not a serious policy proposal. Michael: It sounds like it, but it’s a real calculation from serious academics. And it gets right to the heart of the book we’re diving into today: Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain. The book was highly acclaimed, even shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award, because it asks that exact question: if the potential gains are so massive, why are we building walls instead of bridges? Kevin: And Legrain is the perfect person to ask. This isn't just an academic in an ivory tower. He was an adviser to the head of the World Trade Organization and the President of the European Commission. He’s seen how the global policy sausage gets made. Michael: Exactly. He has this incredible insider-outsider perspective. And he argues that our entire debate on immigration is fundamentally broken because we start with the wrong questions. He suggests we need to begin not with abstract economics, but with the brutal, human reality of our borders.

Kevin: That’s a powerful place to start. It’s easy to talk about policy and numbers, but it’s the human stories that really land. Michael: And Legrain gives us an unforgettable one. He tells the story of a man named Lasso Kourouma, a car salesman from Côte d’Ivoire. In 2002, civil war tears his country apart, and he flees, dreaming of Europe as the "promised land." Kevin: A story we've heard countless times. The hope for a better, safer life. Michael: But the reality he finds is a nightmare. He tries to get into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa. He faces barbed-wire fences, tear gas, and police brutality. He describes groups of migrants making desperate, coordinated rushes at the fences, knowing some will get through, some will be injured, and some might even die. Kevin: That’s horrifying. It’s like a battlefield. Michael: It is. After failing to get into Ceuta, he travels for months to Western Sahara and pays smugglers to take him to the Canary Islands on a tiny boat. The boat sinks in the Atlantic. He nearly drowns before the Spanish coastguard rescues him. Kevin: Thank goodness. A moment of humanity in all that chaos. Michael: You'd think so. But what happens next is the cruel twist. He’s not taken to a refugee center. He’s thrown in prison for forty days. When he’s released, he’s just dumped on the streets of Malaga with nothing. No money, no food, no shelter. He ends up sleeping rough for two years. Kevin: Wait, he was rescued only to be imprisoned and then made homeless? That's just… perverse. Michael: It’s why Kourouma’s quote is so devastating. He says, ‘I thought Europe was the promised land, but I have been treated like a dog. I had to eat Europeans’ rubbish to stay alive.’ Kevin: Wow. And Legrain's point is that this isn't a rare accident, this is the system working as designed? Michael: Precisely. Legrain calls it a "war on our borders." The goal of these policies is deterrence. The logic is, if we make the journey dangerous enough, difficult enough, and miserable enough, people will stop coming. He says the Iron Curtain built to keep people in has been replaced by an "electronic curtain" to keep people out. Kevin: But does it even work? Are people actually deterred? Michael: The evidence says no. It just makes the journey deadlier. Legrain cites the rising death tolls on the US-Mexico border and in the Mediterranean. People are so desperate for a better life, for a chance to work, that they’re willing to risk everything. The demand doesn't go away; it just gets pushed into the hands of criminal smugglers. Kevin: So the policy creates the very criminality it claims to be fighting against. Michael: Exactly. It’s a cruel and ineffective system. And Legrain argues the whole thing is built on a foundation of fear, particularly economic fear. The fear that these desperate people are coming to take what’s ours.

Kevin: Okay, let's get into that, because it’s the argument you hear constantly. At the pub, on the news: 'They're taking our jobs and driving down wages.' It feels intuitive to a lot of people. How does Legrain dismantle that? Michael: He starts by attacking what economists call the "lump of labor fallacy." It’s the mistaken idea that there's a fixed number of jobs in an economy, like a single pie that has to be divided up. If an immigrant takes a slice, a native-born worker must go without. Kevin: That makes sense. It’s a zero-sum game in that view. Michael: But economies aren't static pies. They are dynamic ecosystems. Legrain argues that immigrants don't just take jobs; they also create them. When they arrive, they need to buy food, find housing, get haircuts. Their spending creates demand, which in turn creates more jobs for everyone. It’s less like taking a slice of the pie and more like bringing ingredients to help bake a much bigger pie. Kevin: I like that analogy. A bigger pie. But what about the specific jobs they take? Michael: This is the second key point. Immigrants often don't compete for the same jobs as native workers. They complement them. They often fill jobs that locals are increasingly unwilling to do—the difficult, dirty, or dangerous ones. He tells the story of a general manager at a large Marriott hotel in London. The manager, Richard Lyon, says flatly, "If I had to rely purely on a British workforce I’d be in serious trouble." His staff is made up of 52 different nationalities. Kevin: So without those workers, the hotel might have to reduce services or raise prices, which would affect everyone else. Michael: Exactly. And it frees up the native-born workforce to move into higher-skilled, more productive roles. But the most powerful argument is that immigrants are often incredible entrepreneurs. Legrain tells the story of Gulam Noon. Kevin: Oh, the "Curry King" of Britain! The guy who basically invented the supermarket chicken tikka masala. Michael: The very same. He arrived in London from India with very little. He saw that the Indian ready-meals in supermarkets were terrible and saw an opportunity. He founded Noon Products, and it became a massive success. He didn’t take a job; he created an entire industry and employed around nine hundred people. Kevin: That’s a perfect example. He saw a need that the existing culture hadn't even recognized and built an empire on it. Michael: And that's the story of immigration over and over. People who are motivated enough to leave everything behind for a new life tend to be incredibly enterprising. They are a source of dynamism, not a drain. But even with all this economic evidence, there's a deeper fear Legrain has to address.

Kevin: Right. The economic arguments can be compelling, but they don't always soothe the emotional fear. The fear that your country, your culture, your identity is being erased or diluted. Michael: This is the "Alien Nation" fear, and Legrain argues it’s based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what a nation even is. He directly takes on critics like Samuel Huntington, who famously argued that Hispanic immigration was "splitting America in two" because they weren't assimilating. Kevin: A very influential and controversial idea. How does Legrain counter it? Michael: With facts. Huntington claimed Latinos don't value education or hard work. Legrain points to the reality: Californian schools are bulging with Mexican-American kids, and their parents are doing back-breaking work in the fields. Huntington warned of a permanent Spanish-speaking bloc, but the data shows assimilation happens remarkably fast. By the third generation, the vast majority of Latinos speak English as their primary language, they intermarry with non-Latinos at high rates, and they overwhelmingly identify as American. Kevin: So the data shows assimilation is happening, even if the political rhetoric suggests it isn't. But what's the alternative model Legrain proposes? If not total assimilation, then what? Michael: He points to Canada as a fascinating alternative. Canada has a huge immigrant population, mostly from Asia, yet it doesn't have the same level of social friction. Why? Because Canada has redefined its national identity. It’s not based on a shared ethnicity or history, but on shared civic values and a celebration of diversity itself. Kevin: It’s a different philosophy entirely. Michael: Completely. He quotes a Canadian minister who said, "You don’t get bonus points if your ancestors arrived 200 years ago, and you harvest maple syrup, and play hockey on weekends." The idea is that being Canadian is about a commitment to a set of liberal, tolerant, and democratic values, not about where your grandparents came from. Kevin: So a nation can be a project you join, not just a tribe you're born into. Michael: That's the core of it. A nation is a rich tapestry, and immigrants don't tear the fabric; they add new, vibrant threads. Legrain argues that this kind of cosmopolitan identity is not only more inclusive but also more resilient and better suited for a globalized world. It’s a powerful and optimistic vision.

Kevin: It really is. When you put all three pieces together, the picture becomes incredibly clear. We have a border system that is actively inhumane, propped up by economic myths, which are themselves fueled by a deep-seated, emotional fear of cultural change. Michael: And that fear of cultural change is based on a rigid, outdated idea of what a nation is. Legrain systematically dismantles the entire anti-immigration argument, piece by piece, from the human to the economic to the philosophical. Kevin: It feels like he's calling for a complete paradigm shift. Not just tweaking the rules or adjusting quotas, but fundamentally rethinking our relationship with borders and with the people who cross them. Michael: Precisely. He ends the book with a simple, powerful argument for freer migration. He says it’s not a threat to be managed, but the single biggest opportunity we have. He quotes the economist Dani Rodrik, who said that relaxing migration restrictions would produce the "largest possible gains for the world economy, and for poor countries in particular. Nothing else comes close." Kevin: Wow. So the final takeaway isn't just 'be nicer to immigrants.' It's that our own prosperity and a more just world literally depend on letting them in. Michael: It’s a radical idea, but one he supports with so much evidence. It really makes you stop and think. Kevin: It absolutely does. It makes you wonder, what are we so afraid of? Michael: A question worth asking. And on that note, we encourage you to discuss this with someone. What's one assumption about immigration you've held? Share your thoughts with us online. We'd love to hear them. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.