Another argument driving the “migration is development” narrative is that price gaps between countries
on goods and capital are generally not more than 50 to 100 percent, while price gaps between countries on
labor often lie in the range of 500 to 1000 percent.3
In other words, workers in poor countries are highly “underpriced,” and policies that enable the flow of people from poor to rich countries can even out this distortion in the global labor market. Several experts in this camp do acknowledge, however, that “although remittances can be an important source of income for poor families, they rarely spark or sustain
long-term economic development.”4 In the literature, this issue is tackled by suggesting that labor migrants be restricted to temporary contracts and compelled – or incentivized – to return home after their contracts end.