雅思阅读之The magic of diasporas

　　雅思阅读：The magic of diasporas

　　Immigrant networks are a rare bright spark in the world economy. Richcountries should welcome them

　　THIS is not a good time to be foreign. Anti-immigrant parties are gainingground in Europe. Britain has been fretting this week over lapses in its bordercontrols. In America Barack Obama has failed to deliver the immigration reformhe promised , and Republican presidential candidates would rather electrify theborder fence with Mexico than educate the children of illegal aliens. Americaeducates foreign scientists in its universities and then expels them, a policythe mayor of New York calls "national suicide".

　　This illiberal turn in attitudes to migration is no surprise. It is theresult of cyclical economic gloom combined with a secular rise in pressure onrich countries’ borders. But governments now weighing up whether or not to tryto slam the door should consider another factor: the growing economic importanceof diasporas, and the contribution they can make to a country’s economicgrowth.

　　Old networks, new communications

　　Diaspora networks—of Huguenots, Scots, Jews and many others—have alwaysbeen a potent economic force, but the cheapness and ease of modern travel hasmade them larger and more numerous than ever before. There are now 215mfirst-generation migrants around the world: that’s 3% of the world’s population.If they were a nation, it would be a little larger than Brazil. There are moreChinese people living outside China than there are French people in France. Some22m Indians are scattered all over the globe. Small concentrations of ethnic andlinguistic groups have always been found in surprising places—Lebanese in westAfrica, Japanese in Brazil and Welsh in Patagonia, for instance—but they havebeen joined by newer ones, such as west Africans in southern China.