Excerpt
March 2025, Opinion: "Countries that attract the world’s most talented people will be the most successful at overcoming mounting economic pressures from aging populations and declining productivity. Yet immigration isn’t always popular. Will global talent flows—which I characterize as a “gift” in my book—come to an end? Absolutely not, but policymakers will need new frameworks. Why the optimistic take? Despite looming labor crunches in many countries outside of Africa and some other emerging markets, public support for immigration has declined recently in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, much of Europe, and places beyond. Yet these declines have often been from historically high levels of support. Gallup surveys since the 1960s show that overall support in the US for immigration hit its high-water mark in the early 2020s. While the decline in support since then has been sharp, it remains comparable to the level in 2010—and above that of earlier decades."