In an article published today in the IEA’s journal Economic Affairs, economist Diane Coyle challenges many widely held assumptions about immigration. Coyle argues that immigration to the UK has brought not only enormous economic benefits – including helping to keep interest rates low and filling skill shortages – but also economic benefits to the migrants’ countries of origin.
According to Coyle, migrants do not take jobs from indigenous workers. Rather, ‘migrants tend to go where labour demand is buoyant’ and most migrants are very highly skilled or less skilled than average, suggesting that they are filling shortages in the labour market rather than