The man who made it OK to talk about immigration

It takes a lot to make the subject of immigration respectable for liberals, at least if you’re pointing out its problematic aspects. But Paul Collier, an Oxford economist specialising in the world’s bottom billion, has, in the 270-odd pages of his new book Exodus, opened up the issue for the left — well, for all comers, actually. Which, for a book suggesting among other things that, left to itself, there is no natural limit to immigration, is quite something.

‘The overwhelming reaction I’ve had,’ he told me, from his Oxford berth at the Centre for the Study of African Economies, ‘is that people thank me for making the subject discussable. I had an email from one man who had been a senior economist at two government departments… and he said that, to his shame, he had been unable to analyse this issue even when he was chairing two committees about it.