Reverse migration

Talking of immigration I mentioned in one class that 1.5 million Irish moved to the United States in the decades following the 19th century Irish Potato famine. The Irish Diaspora is legend.

I was struck therefore when I saw this ad by
"JobsIreland" on a New York City subway car last night. How things have changed that Irish employers are now advertising to recruit labor to Ireland from New York City!

The Economist magazine ran a survey on "The Irish Miracle" a few years aog. Their take is that their success owes to the Irish taking advantage of trade and its (initially) low wages, its proximity to continental Europe, as well as tax policies to attract foreign capital investment. EU subsidies helped along the way. Whatever the secret to their success, it is evident that the marginal-value product of Irish workers (i.e the demand for labor) has been rising fast enough to justify such recruiting efforts.

Meanwhile, Britain is experiencing a large influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, probably the largest influx of workers in its history according to the BBC.

Update: Abdelhafid in the comments below points us to another recent column that informs us that "Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg."

Comments

Anonymous said…
I was surprised to see the ad on the subway. At first, I was not really sure what the advertisement was for. I thought it was strange that you have to recruit workers from another country. But on the other hand, job recruiting lets people (especially students) know which sector of the job market they should go into. It has come to my attention that getting an education in a field does not mean that you are needed in that field. This makes school going a gamble, and at today's tuition, the smaller the risk of one not finding a job after college, the better and more encouraging it is for incoming freshmen or high school graduates considering college. Thus, these advertisements are actually helpful, even if at first they are puzzling.
7:02 PM
Anonymous said…
Excellent point! I am not surprised.
Ireland was ranked FIRST in quality of life in 2004 and as published by the UNDP and has remained to be top 5 until today in that aspect. Thomas Friedman wrote an article on The New York Times a year ago on how Ireland achieved this level of prosperity. The link below will be helpful...
It is clear that Ireland has benefited from joining the EU and from its free-trade agreements with different countries throughout the world. Infact, in addition to Ireland's tremendous comparative advantage in many sectors, hard work has finally given its fruit. The structure and system reforms of the late 1980's and 1990's had their effects as well. Friedman takes Ireland as an example for developing nations and advises them to follow the model Ireland followed. "Educate your people, offer free higher education, speak English, lower tax barriers on foreign investments, open up to free trade and be patient.. the road will be bumpy but you will get there in a decade or two" said Friedman.


Friedman's column in NYT


Abdelhafid
2:00 PM
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