Some natives think that migrants are taking away their jobs. The confusion is common to nations with a high unemployment rate that usually has low immigration inflow. Often aspiring workers choose places that can provide them with jobs and countries with high unemployment rate will be out of their list.
According to data from OECD, human mobility contributes positively to the welfare systems of their country of destination, which means they devote to public finances more than they take out in public benefits and services.
Productivity in the recipient country is also positively affected by highly skilled migrants and diversity in the workplace. In the long run, countries become more productive and prosperous because of the diversity of their high and low skilled movers. Various studies concluded that there are gains in productivity stemming from ethnic diversity in firms. A study also found that human mobility increases labor productivity in the United States as they adopt technologies and search for experts.
It was also found out that mobility enhances the innovation capacity of the country of destination. High skilled movers and international students in higher education raise the knowledge levels as well as the patenting activity of natives. Human mobility also helps the economy since some of the foreign settlers are entrepreneurs that provide a job for both natives and foreigners. For example, companies like Google, Intel, Paypal, eBay, and Yahoo were all co-founded by non-native individuals. According to reports, non-natives have started 25% of US venture-capital-backed public companies and 40% of venture-capital-backed technology firms. It was also reported that 2 out of 4 of all engineering and technology companies established in the US between 1995 and 2005, there was at least one crucial foreign founder. The companies contribute at least 52 billion dollars’ worth of sales and created almost half a million jobs as of 2005, and it continued to increase to the present. Most of the foreign founders have advanced education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and high rates of entrepreneurship and innovation.