If everyone who wanted to migrate were able to do so, global GDP would double, estimates one expert
sunshade by a half-dry riverbed on the Indonesian island of Java, Eddie Sebastian is taking a lunch-break. It is hot and he is tired. He makes $2 a day collecting stones, breaking them with a hammer and selling them as building material. Asked if he has any better tools, he says: “Our most advanced equipment is that ‘forklift’.” He is pointing at a rusty wheelbarrow.
Small wonder so many of Mr Sebastian’s neighbours have migrated. A short walk up a hill from the quarry where he works is a village, Bumiayu, where the migrants’ homes are easy to spot. They are the fancy ones with multiple floors, big windows and satellite dishes. “This house belongs to a sailor,” says Idrus Dewi, a local fish farmer. “The owner of this house went to [South] Korea.” Mr Dewi is one of the lucky ones. His older sister is a nanny in Singapore.
Few migration-sceptics can cite concrete harm that a foreigner has done to them. But nationalists around the world constantly swap anecdotes, some of them true, that reinforce their fears. In the dozen countries your correspondent visited for this special report, he kept hearing the same handful of horror stories. “German women and girls as young as three are being raped by immigrants,” warned Mr Sakurai, who lives 9,000km from Germany.
The anti-immigrant bug has infected non-rich countries, too. In South Africa in September, at least 12 people were killed in riots aimed at migrants from the rest of Africa. India is building camps to intern some of the 2m people it recently stripped of citizenship.This special report will ask the big questions about migration.
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