The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn from Newcomers to America about Health, Happiness and Hope

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Real GDP per capita could fall. Often supporters of immigration point to how it increases real GDP, and this is true. A rise in the population will ceteris paribus, increase national output. But a more useful measure is GDP per head. If immi Dean JA, Wilson K. “My health has improved because I always have everything I need here…”: a qualitative exploration of health improvement and decline among immigrants. Soc Sci Med. 2010;70:1219–28. Viruell-Fuentes E, Andrade F. Testing immigrant social ties explanations for Latino health paradoxes: the case of social support and depression symptoms. J Latino/Latin Am Stud. 2016;8:77–92. Massey, D. S. (1995). The New Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States. Population and Development Review, 21(3), 631–652. Immigrants come to make a new life for themselves. Many contribute to their local economies without question. There is an initial investment that communities must make, however, to help these families establish themselves. Children must be educated. Healthcare services must be offered. There is no guarantee that immigrating families will stay in those communities, which means the investments being made may never earn dividends.

Hilland TA, Bourke M, Wiesner G, Garcia Bengoechea E, Parker AG, Pascoe M, et al. Correlates of walking among disadvantaged groups: a systematic review. Health Place. 2020;63:102337. When immigrants come from the developing world to the developed world, they may be willing to take employment opportunities for a much lower wage than a local non-immigrant. If there are enough people to work for lower wages, it can create a wage disparity in the local population that can affect job growth. Less income means fewer supportive employment opportunities because less cash is being spent.

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M. Immigrant disadvantage or the healthy immigrant effect? Evidence about low birth weight differences in the Czech Republic. Eur J Pub Health. 2016;26:662–6. For the skilled workers themselves, pay is obviously part of the motivation for uprooting themselves. Bousmah M-Q, Combes J-BS, Abu-Zaineh M. Health differentials between citizens and immigrants in Europe: a heterogeneous convergence. Health Policy. 2019;123:235–43. Grosfoguel, R. (2003). Race and Ethnicity or Racialized Ethnicities? Ethnicities, 4(3), 315–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796804045237.

Evaluation– The impact of migration does depend on the type of immigrants. In the UK experience, non-EEA migrants have a bigger fiscal cost, because this includes more old-aged dependents who can migrate due to family reasons (therefore negative tax impact). There is a list of different studies on the fiscal impact of immigration here. Australia's strategy gives a clue as to why countries are so keen to attract migrants with the skills that are needed. The numbers are large. Some 214 million people are international migrants, living in a different country from the one in which they were born. Deal with an ageing population. Many economies in the west are facing a demographic crunch with a low birth rate and ageing population causing a rise in the dependency ratio (ratio of old to young workers). This puts pressure on social care, tax revenues and government spending. Immigration is the most effective policy to deal with an ageing population, as it allows shortages in health care and social care to be filled with young workers who make a net contribution to government finances and boost the workforce.Perreira K, Marchante A, Schwartz S, Isasi C, Carnethon M, Corliss H, et al. Stress and resilience: key correlates of mental health and substance use in the Hispanic community health study of Latino youth. J Immigr Minor Health. 2018;21:4. Henares-Montiel J, Ruiz-Perez I, Mendoza-Garcia O. Health inequalities between male and female immigrants in Spain after the beginning of the economic crisis. Health Soc Care Community. 2018;26:891–7. Boen CE, Hummer RA. Longer—but harder—lives? The Hispanic health paradox and the social determinants of racial, ethnic, and immigrant–Native health disparities from midlife through late life. J Health Soc Behav. 2019;60:434–52. The health advantage observed among immigrants has often been linked to “the immigrant selection hypothesis” that suggests a positive selection of healthy immigrants into the receiving country at individual and national levels [ 12]. Regarding the individual level, immigrants are suggested to be a self-selected segment of the population of the country of origin, with better health and social outcomes relative to non-immigrants in the sending country [ 12, 22]. At the national level, the positive selection process occurs through strict migration policies, such as points-based systems in the immigrant-seeking countries (e.g. Canada and Australia), that favor/screen for healthy, well-educated immigrants [ 23]. These perspectives, however, fail to take into consideration refugees and undocumented immigrants’ situations, which often do not involve a positive self-selection at either the individual or national level. Previous HIE research has also attributed the observed health advantage among immigrants to their resilience, suggesting that newcomers, particularly those who are positively selected, have the motivation and determination to succeed, effectively navigating the destination country’s key resources and community assets that help sustain their overall health and well-being [ 24, 25]. Resilience is suggested to be a dynamic process that encompasses continuous positive adaptation against adverse life events [ 26, 27]. A broader definition for resilience includes the structural and wider community protective factors and processes/mechanisms that contribute to favourable outcomes despite continuing stressors that place communities and individuals’ mental health and psychological well-being at risk [ 28, 29]. Years Since Immigration Effect, Acculturation and Cumulative Stress Theories and Social Suffering

Aranda E, Vaquera E. Racism, the immigration enforcement regime, and the implications for racial inequality in the lives of undocumented young adults. Sociol Race Ethn. 2015;1:88–104. Gotsens M, Malmusi D, Villarroel-Williams N, Vive-Cases C, Garcia I, Hernando C, et al. Health inequality between immigrants and natives in Spain: the loss of the healthy immigrant effect in times of economic crisis. Eur J Public Health. 2015;25:923. Karlson, K. B., Holm, A., & Breen, R. (2012). Comparing regression coefficients between same-sample nested models using logit and probit: A new method. Sociological Methodology, 42(1), 286–313. https://doi.org/10.1177/0081175012444861. Mason G. A picture of bias crime in New South Wales. Cosmop Civil Soc Interdiscip J. 2019;11:47–66. Only a handful of countries see a net positive migration rate each year. Australia, Canada, the United States, Russia, and most of Western Europe make that list. Those with net migration losses include most of the countries on the continents of South America and Africa.Sabater A, Graham E. International migration and fertility variation in Spain during the economic recession: a spatial Durbin approach. Appl Spatial Anal Policy. 2019;12:515–46. Islam F. Examining the “healthy immigrant effect” for mental health in Canada. Univ Toronto Med J. 2013;90:169–75. Kearns A, Whitley E, Egan M, Tabbner C, Tannahill C. Healthy migrants in an unhealthy city? The effects of time on the health of migrants living in deprived areas of Glasgow. J Int Migr Integr. 2017;18:675–98. When a developing country sees its best and brightest immigrate to the developed world, they lose an opportunity to advance. The talents which people bring, especially to a nation that is poor, helps it to become stronger. Immigration gives that strength away to other countries which may not need it. Immigrants do get the chance to plan a better life for themselves, though it comes at the expense of their native country.