That trust in laissez-faire capitalism may sound naive. But as Legrain points out, since 2004 Great Britain has completely opened its borders to the 75 million people living in Poland and seven other poorer East European countries. Immigrants can now freely fly to London and start businesses or seek work at wages five times higher than they can get at home. Nearly 1 million workers have done just that.
Legrain is brave to push the provocative idea of allowing a free global market in working people. But even he doesn't touch the biggest American immigration dilemma -- what to do about the tens of millions of illegals now here. He's apparently leaving that job up to the next president and his/her allies in Congress.
Bill Steigerwald
Bill Steigerwald, born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a former L.A. Times copy editor and free-lancer who also worked as a docudrama researcher for CBS-TV in Hollywood before becoming a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and a columnist Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Bill Steigerwald recently retired from daily newspaper journalism..
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