The Problems with Trying to Close the Door Tighter.

 

I’m now in Margate, England to celebrate my sister’s wedding, which will be in a few days’ time. It took several journeys to get here. First, I had to Kuala Lumpur (There was a significant costs savings to fly from KL instead of Singapore). Then there was the 13-hour flight itself and finally there was the taxi ride from London to Margate, which took around three hours.

As with every cross-border journey, there’s the inevitable dealing with passport control. I noticed that when I left KLIA for London, the queue at the outbound immigration was particularly long. What made it particularly noteworthy was the fact that all of a sudden, the two of the four officers manning the booths decided to go for a break and were never seen, which meant that an already slow process became slower.

 

 Taken at KLIA International Outgoing Immigration

I remember someone behind me asking “they are happy to be so slow and are they going to compensate me if I miss my flight?” My only response to him was to tell him that KLIA wasn’t the worst. KLIA may have been slow on the outgoing immigration but seemed to forget all about outgoing security checks.

My worst experience leaving a country was in Vietnam at Noi Bai international, when I left to return to Singapore in March. My flight was at 9:30am, which meant that I had to check in at 7:30am. I was actually early for the flight but between the check in, immigration and security clearance, I caught the plane with barely five minutes to spare:

 

The Queue to check into the flight to Singapore from Noi Bai International

 

 This is immigration - , let’s not get started on the security checks.

From my experience, I’ve never had much of an issue entering either Malaysia or Vietnam. It’s only the leaving.

However, in my first trip back to the UK, I was reminded of one of the less pleasant parts of traveling to the UK – long queues at immigration. You could hear the officers barking orders at people and if you were Asian or African, there was the inevitable “are you working,” “have you got family here,” and “why are you here,” interrogation sessions. I will admit, that my personal experience with immigration in the UK was very pleasant. Got served by a cute chick, who then told me that I could have skipped the queue and gone through the automated gates like British citizens – I guess, one has to give Singapore’s government credit for doing something right in giving our little red passport accessibility around the world.

 

That’s on the way in at London Heathrow.

The experiences of leaving the UK, US or any of the countries in the European Union have been very pleasant and easy.

While I don’t have scientific proof for this, I suspect the experiences at immigration do reflect what countries around the world want.

Malaysia and less developed countries like Vietnam, need people with money and skills. As a foreigner, entering the country is relatively easy because they take the view that you’re inevitably going to spend the money you made outside the country, which will benefit the national economy.

However, these countries make it difficult for you to leave and in some cases, if you are a “departing” national, they go out of their way to make it unpleasant for you to leave. They think of it as a loss of investment in talent.

By contrast the developed countries of the West have the opposite fear. They are terrified that people who want to come in are going to steal from the national economy. Hence, the interrogation on the way in.

While I agree that there needs to be some control on the flow of people, both versions of the immigration policy are flawed and ironically do the opposite of what they intend to do.

Let’s start with the developing countries that make life difficult when you leave. What is their objective? Since I am not a government official, I can’t give an official answer but it would appear that what all developing countries need is capital and skills. They want people with the potential to contribute to the economy to stay, hence anyone with the potential to contribute finds it difficult to leave.

However, making it difficult for people whenever they leave isn’t going to dissuade them from leaving because it simply does not address the fundamental problem as to why they want to leave in the first place. People will not want to stay where there are no opportunities, safety or basic food regardless of how difficult you make the outgoing immigration process.

Then, if you look at the converse in the “developed countries,” that are trying to keep people out, you’ll find that people become more desperate to get in. In famous “Brexit” in the UK was supposed to be about regaining control of borders, where highly skilled people were encouraged to come in and less skilled were supposed to be kept out. Furthermore, the UK has had two Home Secretaries who have been driven by an obsession to keep people out.

However, the reality has been very different. According to the UK’s Office National Statistics (ONS) found that between June 2021 and June 2022, the UK had a net migration gain of 504,000 people.

https://www.dw.com/en/uk-immigration-nearly-triples-despite-brexit-promises/a-63878757#:~:text=Record%20numbers%20of%20people%20are,331%2C000%20non%2DEU%20citizens%20arrived.

To make matters worse, Amnesty International has accused the UK government’s policies on migrants of causing deaths in the English Channel.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/uk-governments-failure-open-safe-and-legal-routes-critical-factor-tragic-deaths?utm_source=google&utm_medium=grant&utm_campaign=&utm_content=immigration%20statistics%20uk&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1aC5gp-c_wIVh9_tCh24hA0SEAAYAyAAEgJTcfD_BwE

Shutting the doors harder on people trying to get into the country creates an incentive for people to try and get in. Think of the law of economics which states that value is created by scarcity and when people are desperate enough the lure of illegal means of entering a place becomes more tempting.

Slamming the door on people trying to get in, does not address the fundamental issue as to why people are trying to get into the country in the first place; which is usually down to the fact that you happen to be a place that offers a degree of stability and opportunity and ironically the people you want to let in are usually the ones who want freedom of movement whilst the ones you want to keep out become more desperate to get in.

If you take Brexit as an example, you’ll find that it has effectively given the UK the worst of both worlds. The people that they wanted to keep are leaving (EU citizens with skills). The people they wanted to keep out (unskilled people from unstable places) are more desperate to get in. To make matters worse, businesses complain that there are labour shortages.

Rather than closing down legal routes into the country, developing countries need a better way of managing people coming in. Making it easier for businesses to utilize labour would be a better start than letting them sit in asylums funded by the tax payer would be a good start. Coming up with a better system won’t be easy but surely anything beats the current situation.