When Do Economic Interests Support Political Freedom?

Those who benefit from migration may help open borders. But will they support the freedom of migrants to become equal political members?

A company that has invested in training migrant workers might welcome a rule that lets them stay for years. Another company might prefer permits that keep employees tied to a single workplace. Both companies benefit from migration, but the rules they would support may be very different.

Even within the same industry, one employer may see worker independence as a cost while another sees it as an advantage. Economic interests are not a single political force.

That distinction leads to a question for the World Citizen Revolution: under what conditions might economic interests support political freedom rather than merely easier access to labor?

In Can Economic Freedom Lead to Political Equality?, I argued that economic gains do not automatically give migrants an equal political voice. In Who Defines Victory in a Political Revolution?, I examined the different standards by which allies may judge a reform. Here I want to ask a more specific question: what changes the incentives of those who benefit economically from migration? I will distinguish three interests, identify four possible conditions for change, and ask what actual policy disputes reveal about them.

The difference matters because a political movement needs to know where economic interests overlap with its aims—and where they end.

Three Interests That Should Not Be Confused

For a firm seeking workers, fewer restrictions on entry can make recruitment easier. Moving abroad can also give a worker access to higher wages or a safer life. Both may gain when crossing a border becomes easier. The OECD identifies labor shortages and population aging among the factors contributing to labor migration in its member countries.[1]

Consider three questions:

1. Who benefits from movement? An employer may gain access to labor, a worker may gain employment, and consumers may gain from additional production or services.
2. Who benefits when workers can choose independently? The freedom to leave an abusive employer, retain secure residence, or seek another job can strengthen a worker’s bargaining position. It may impose adjustment costs on employers who previously relied on restrictive rules.
3. Who supports equal political membership? A settled resident’s right to participate in governing the community may have little immediate connection to the firm’s demand for additional workers.

The first interest can exist without the second or third. This is why support for migration should not automatically be counted as support for Foot Democracy—the freedom to leave, enter, and choose a political community.

Someone may be free to change jobs and still be unable to vote in the community where that person has made a life.

When Dependence Becomes an Economic Advantage

Imagine two employers competing for the same workers. Under one arrangement, a migrant’s permission to remain is tied closely to a particular employer. Leaving the job may put residence at risk. Under another arrangement, the worker can move to a different firm without losing lawful residence.

An employer benefiting from the first arrangement might regard the second as a threat. The worker’s dependence makes departure more difficult. It may reduce the employer’s need to offer better conditions to retain staff.

Such an incentive does not prove that every employer seeks dependence. Some businesses bear costs when recruitment is exploitative or when workers cannot move efficiently to jobs that better suit their skills. Others may prefer stable rules, better retention through fair treatment, or a reputation for responsible employment. Their interests may point in different directions.

The International Labour Organization’s non-binding fair-recruitment guidance states that workers and jobseekers should not bear recruitment fees or related costs, and that recruitment should not be used to undermine wages and working conditions. It also says employers should respect migrant workers’ freedom to leave or change employment without requiring the employer’s permission.[2] These principles concern labor protection, not voting rights. They illustrate, however, that a market for migrant labor can operate under different distributions of power.

If the worker’s right to stay depends on satisfying a single employer, permission to enter may expand economic activity while leaving the worker politically and economically vulnerable. A coalition formed around entry can therefore achieve its immediate objective without advancing the deeper freedom the worker seeks.

Four Conditions That Can Change Incentives

Economic interests do not have fixed political consequences. Institutions and the balance of power matter.

First, secure and predictable rules can become valuable to more than workers.

When an employer plans long-term investment, uncertainty about residence permits, recruitment, and future policy can be costly. A reliable system may be preferable to discretionary favors granted by officials. This can create support for transparent procedures and protection against arbitrary decisions.

But predictability is not the same as equality. An employer could favor clear rules that still keep workers dependent. Support for the rule of law must be evaluated by the content of the rules, not merely by their stability.

Second, competition can alter the value of worker independence.

A firm that offers attractive conditions may gain when workers are free to choose among employers. A firm depending on restrictions that prevent departure may lose. We should therefore avoid speaking of business as though it were one political actor with one interest.

Third, cooperation may become necessary when no group can secure reform alone.

Employers seeking easier recruitment may need support from workers, migrant associations, local governments, or voters concerned with fairness. Those partners can ask for stronger safeguards in exchange. A reform that begins as a narrow labor-market measure may become broader through negotiation.

Yet a coalition need not accept every demand of its partners. If one group becomes sufficiently powerful to obtain easier entry on its own, it may have little incentive to support equal membership. Coalition-building creates an opportunity, not a guarantee.

Fourth, people excluded from decisions must be able to organize and speak.

Workers subject to restrictive permits may know most clearly where the system denies independence. But knowledge alone brings no political influence. Associations, trade unions, legal protections for collective action, and allies among existing voters can help transform private experience into a public demand.

These four conditions are an analytical proposal, not a formula established by historical research. They help identify when economic self-interest might be drawn toward a wider defense of freedom—and when it might stop well short.

What Actual Reforms Reveal

Japan’s planned Employment for Skill Development system offers a direct illustration of the tension between training workers and allowing them to leave an employer. The rules for transfers initiated by workers provide for a waiting period of one to two years, depending on the sector, alongside other conditions. The government has also explicitly considered the risk that workers will concentrate in major metropolitan areas at the expense of regional employers.[3] The system is scheduled to begin in 2027, so its effects cannot yet be assessed from actual operation.

This does not mean every regional firm opposes worker independence. It shows a conflict between the opportunity to choose another job and an employer’s interest in retaining workers after investing in their recruitment or training.

Qatar presents a different kind of change. Legislation adopted in 2020 removed the requirement for migrant workers to obtain their employer’s No Objection Certificate before changing jobs. Qatar also adopted a non-discriminatory minimum wage in 2020, which entered into force in March 2021. The reforms were developed amid international scrutiny and cooperation with the International Labour Organization.[4]

The change did not eliminate dependence. The ILO subsequently reported that some employers retaliated against workers seeking to move to another job, even after the legal requirement for employer permission had been removed.[4] Law and political pressure changed the rules, but implementation remained contested. Nor did the reform establish equal political membership.

The United States offers a narrower example of how worker mobility can be incorporated into an immigration system serving employers’ demand for skills. The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000 raised the annual H-1B visa cap to 195,000 for fiscal years 2001–2003. The same law included a portability provision: under applicable conditions, an eligible worker could start work for a new employer after that employer filed a qualifying petition.[5] A law expanding recruitment also made changing employers easier. That combination is consistent with the possibility of broader reform, but it does not prove that the technology industry demanded portability for the sake of worker independence or political equality.

None of these reforms confirms all four proposed conditions. Japan exposes a tension over retention, Qatar shows the limits of implementation, and the American provision shows that job mobility can coexist with an employer-sponsored visa system. Each gives us an institutional choice to examine.

Why Political Equality May Be the Hardest Demand

There is a difference between allowing a person to contribute to an economy and allowing that person to help decide its rules.

An employer can support residence because a worker is needed. A government may permit entry because particular sectors face shortages. But the case for equal political membership cannot rest solely on continued economic usefulness.

What happens when the worker retires, becomes disabled, cares for a family member, or loses a job? If membership depends on economic contribution, political standing may disappear precisely when its protection becomes most important.

Resident Equality proposes a different principle: people who have become members of a political community should not be permanently assigned inferior standing merely because they were born elsewhere. The detailed institutional design involves difficult questions, including admission, residence security, the time and conditions of membership, and democratic self-government. It cannot be reduced to a demand that every visitor immediately receive every political right.

Economic usefulness can provide a reason for admitting a person. It should not determine that person’s entire political worth.

This is where an alliance organized around economic gain faces its greatest test. Will its members support rules that protect the newcomer even after the newcomer ceases to serve their immediate interests?

Political equality cannot depend on assuming that enlightened self-interest will eventually settle the question.

How Could We Tell Which Interest Is Stronger?

We should not infer an employer’s political position from the fact that the employer hires migrants. A better approach would be to examine the specific rules that firms and business associations seek to preserve or change.

Do they support portability of residence when a worker changes jobs, or merely faster recruitment into existing arrangements? Do they favor independent appeals against permit cancellation? Are they prepared to support settled residents’ political participation even when it offers no obvious benefit to their own operations?

The answers may differ among industries, firms, and political circumstances. The three examples show changes in law, not a complete record of what each employer group advocated. To establish motives, we would need employer-association statements, legislative testimony, and evidence of whose proposals shaped the final rules. Such evidence could challenge the hypothesis developed here. If organizations that benefit from worker dependence nevertheless become leading supporters of independent residence and equal political membership, their reasons would deserve close examination.

The Question That Remains

Return to the two employers. Their disagreement is not only about how many workers may enter. It concerns whether those workers can choose their next job, remain without the favor of a particular firm, and eventually participate as equals in the community they have joined.

Economic interests can help open a door. They can also demand that the door remain under their control.

The World Citizen Revolution cannot assume that expanding markets will produce political freedom on their own. It must find allies where interests overlap, defend the independence of those who move, and recognize the point at which economic advantage and political equality diverge.

That is the question worth asking of every proposed alliance: does it merely make people more useful across borders, or does it make them freer to choose where—and as whose equals—they will live?

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Further Reading

Books

• The World Citizen Revolution
• The World Citizen Society

Related Essays

• Who Will Fight for the Freedom to Choose a Political Community?
• Who Defines Victory in a Political Revolution?
• Can a World Citizen Revolution Begin Without a World Government?

References

1. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Migration: Policy Issues; International Migration Outlook 2025, sections on labor migration and policies.
2. International Labour Organization, General Principles and Operational Guidelines for Fair Recruitment and Definition of Recruitment Fees and Related Costs.
3. Immigration Services Agency of Japan, Questions and Answers on the Employment for Skill Development System, particularly the sections on worker-initiated transfers and regional concentration.
4. International Labour Organization, “Dismantling the kafala system and introducing a minimum wage mark new era for Qatar labour market”, August 30, 2020; “Four years of labour reforms in Qatar”, November 1, 2022.
5. American Competitiveness in the Twenty-first Century Act of 2000, Pub. L. 106-313, §§ 102 and 105; United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, H-1B Specialty Occupations.