How to make immigration palatable in a populist age

Guest-worker schemes are booming. They offer vast benefits to both host countries and the workers themselves.

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Vietnamese workers at a factory in Japan, which has seen a sharp rise in the arrival of seasonal and other temporary workers. Despite the risks for their citizens, developing countries - eager for remittances and a solution to domestic unemployment - are enthusiastic about guest-worker schemes. PHOTO: NORIKO HAYASHI/NYTIMES

(PHOTO: NORIKO HAYASHI/NYTIMES)

Businesses hiring migrants have a surprising new idol. The inspirational figure is neither a liberal nor a devotee of globalisation. It is Ms Giorgia Meloni, Italy's Prime Minister, who in 2022 climbed to power on a hard-right platform. She intends to issue 165,000 low-skilled work visas in 2026, up from 30,000 five years ago. Italy has also signed a labour-mobility deal with India that a recruiter praises as "one of the (world's) most progressive".

Ms Meloni is not the only hard-right leader learning to love immigration - or, at least, a certain sort of immigration. Although Mr Viktor Orban, Hungary's Prime Minister, once said that his country did not require a single migrant for its economy to function, he has quietly embraced guest-worker schemes. In 2024, around 78,000 non-EU migrants worked in Hungary, some 92 per cent more than in 2019.

Even as the Trump administration cracks down on illegal migration and squeezes routes for high-skilled immigrants, it is promising to speed up visas for farmers who are hiring short-term workers. Across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of mostly rich countries, some 2.5 million trainees, seasonal and other temporary workers arrived in 2023, up from 1.5 million in 2014. France, Japan and Spain have seen especially sharp rises.

A model of immigration once associated with oil-rich Gulf states and the city-state of Singapore is taking over the world.