Philippe Legrain

CNN México, 19 February 2013. Desde un punto de vista económico y moral, lo mejor sería que todos pudiéramos movernos libremente, como sucedía en el siglo XIX, cuando Estados Unidos tenía fronteras más o menos accesibles. Eso puede parecer una fantasía peligrosa; sin embargo, la reciente experiencia en Europa indica lo contrario.

CNN, 12 February 2013. From an economic – and a moral – point of view, it would be best if everybody could move freely, as they could in the 19th century, when the United States had more or less open borders. That may seem like a dangerous fantasy, yet recent experience in Europe suggests otherwise.

Read my latest article for Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN.com Lee el artículo en español

VoxEU, 2 November 2010. While the debate over global imbalances often focuses on China, this column argues that the biggest threat to the world economy comes from the other side of the seesaw – the US.

Check out my new article on VoxEU.org.

Great piece by Edward Luce in the FT on Obama’s efforts to revive immigration reform. On grounds of enlightened self-interest, Mr Obama should therefore be commended. The opposite could be said of an increasingly nativist Republican party. Having applauded their colleagues in Arizona, who in April enacted the most draconian anti-immigrant state law in a [...]

Forbes, 28 June 2010. Opening America’s borders is morally right, economically beneficial–and would even make America safer.

The case for open borders, the cover article in the new Forbes magazine.

Great piece of photo journalism by Dulce Pinzón on ForeignPolicy.com

Fascinating piece in the New York Times

Calls to boycott Arizona over its outrageous new immigration are mounting, the New York Times reports. The Guardian reports that: Among those calling for a sweeping boycott was the San Francisco city attorney, Dennis Herrera, who urged city departments to look at contracts with Arizona that could be terminated. Herrera said: “Arizona has charted an [...]

Paul Krugman claims that liberals are divided on migration because: Democrats are torn individually (a state I share). On one side, they favor helping those in need, which inclines them to look sympathetically on immigrants; plus they’re relatively open to a multicultural, multiracial society. I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, [...]

Goldman’s use of intelligence drawn from its unrivalled pool of market sources to trade on its own and its clients’ behalf – a strategy championed by Mr Blankfein – has been a competitive advantage. Bank executives speak of its ability to manage – even “embrace” – conflicts of interest that arise from its position at [...]

The law, which proponents and critics alike said was the broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations, would make the failure to carry immigration documents a crime and give the police broad power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Opponents have called it an open invitation for harassment and discrimination against [...]

A great article by Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, in today’s Times (and not just because he very kindly quotes Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them). As he rightly says: Immigration is an issue on which all three main British parties are on the defensive and hence illiberal. This is an emerging tragedy for a country [...]

The United States imported $2.7bn worth of the steel pipe used in oil and natural gas production in 2008, making it the highest-value US trade injury case on record. But because of slumping demand and US duties already imposed in the case, imports of the product from China fell last year to about $1.1bn. Now [...]

A truly excellent article. Excerpts On currency manipulation: The US treasury has been charged by Congress to assess whether China is a “currency manipulator”. Although President Barack Obama has now delayed for some months when the treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, must issue his report, the very concept of “currency manipulation” itself is flawed: all governments [...]

Eight years after China’s WTO accession, many US industries complain that they face significant non-tariff barriers to trade… These barriers include, for example, regulations that set high thresholds for entry into service sectors such as banking, insurance and telecommunications . . . and the use of questionable sanitary and phytosanitary measures to control import volumes. Sounds a lot like [...]

on the benefits of immigration: All these kids are American high school students. They were the majority of the 40 finalists in the 2010 Intel Science Talent Search, which, through a national contest, identifies and honors the top math and science high school students in America, based on their solutions to scientific problems. The awards [...]

The US government's much-touted E-Verify programme for detecting whether workers are authorised to work in the US detects fewer than half of illegal workers, while initially rejecting some legal workers.  Technology is not a quick fix for the political problem of what to do with 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US.