External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has warned United States and European political leaders that their growing push against immigration will eventually hurt their economies. Addressing India’s World Annual Conclave 2025 in New Delhi on Wednesday, he said countries that restrict the flow of skilled workers risk losing out in an era in which global competitiveness heavily depends upon talent.
Jaishankar highlighted a few issues attributed to foreign workers as an excuse for anti-immigrant measures. However, he attributed decades of domestic policy decisions-mainly large-scale relocation of industries-as the real cause for the stress on the economy.
“If there are concerns in the US or in Europe, it’s because they consciously allowed their businesses to relocate. It was their choice and strategy. They’ve to find ways of fixing it,” he said according to CNN-News18.
He underlined the fact that cross-border mobility is beneficial for both parties and threatened that closing the doors to skilled migrants would hurt Western countries more than help them.
What really is important to us is convincing them that mobility, the use of talent across boundaries, serves our mutual benefit. If they put up too many road blocks to the flow of talent, they would be net losers.
Anti-Immigrant sentiment grows in the West
His comments also come amidst growing political pressure from a number of Western countries to put a cap on immigration.
The H-1B visa program in the United States has long been assailed by allies of President Donald Trump on grounds that foreign workers are “stealing” American jobs. The same anti-immigrant tropes have taken root in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.
The far-right AfD, for instance, had been growing in Germany by pointing to migrants as the cause of unemployment and wage pressure. Jaishankar warned that such rhetoric will ignore real demographic realities and actually undermine growth in the future.
‘You Will Need More Talent, Not Less’ Emphasizing the needs of advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies, Jaishankar said that Western economies cannot meet the future demand of the workforce through domestic supply alone. “Talent cannot be developed organically at a high rate,” he said, noting that structural shortages already are appearing in several societies. Limiting skilled immigration, he warned, only will worsen these pressures.
As debates over immigration intensify across the West, Jaishankar’s message was clear: in a world driven by innovation and high-skill industries, closing borders may score political points — but it would come at an economic cost.
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