Letter: Why immigration is the rich freeriding off the poor

Immigration is a flawed solution to falling birth rates in rich countries (“Rich countries’ birth rates fall to record low”, Report, June 21).

Importing people without having paid the costs of maternity care, doctors, food or schooling is getting a service or good without paying its true cost.

To the extent that women were in some way compelled to have children because they lacked contraception or their cultural circumstances left them little choice, those who import these children as adults are “freeriding” on such constraints or subjugation.

If the culture a woman lives in makes having children desirable, respectable, even admired — despite the effort and sacrifices involved — then those in the non-fecund country are freeriding on this culture.

The moral hazard of this freeriding is that it allows a country’s people to choose, for rational or other reasons, not to bear and raise children without heeding the consequences of that choice — labour shortages, increased prices and difficulties in paying “the rising costs of an ageing population”. Immigration is only a short-term solution. If growing affluence means more women gain control over reproduction, the decline in birth rates may become global.

Deborah Lewis
Washington, DC, US