External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said that Western nations would be ’net losers’ if they would keep erecting too many roadblocks to the flow of talent. As anti-immigrant sentiment is rising in the West, he said that movement of talent across borders benefits both countries.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday warned anti-immigrant leaders in the West that their nations would be ’net losers’ if they would keep erecting too many roadblocks to the flow of talent.
Speaking at the ‘India’s World’ Annual Conclave 2025, Jaishankar said that the situation in the West that these leaders use as a pretext for their anti-immigrant agenda have nothing to do with the cross-border movement of talent. Instead, he said it has to do with policies of those countries over the decades.
“If there are concerns, let us say, in the United States or in Europe, it is because they very consciously and deliberately, over the last two decades, allowed their businesses to relocate. It was their choice and strategy. They have to find ways of fixing it, and many of them are,” said Jaishankar, according to CNN-News 18.
Jaishankar further said, “The part which concerns us is to convince them that mobility, the use of talent across boundaries, is to our mutual benefit. That they would be net losers if they actually erected too many roadblocks to the flow of talent.”
Jaishankar’s statement has come at a time when several leaders in the West are pursuing anti-immigrant policies. They blame immigrants of ‘stealing’ job of natives and denying them employment. Such a sentiment has become popular in the West, such as in the United States where President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have frequently called for a crackdown or abolition of H1-B visa programme.
Far-right figures in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, such as in Germany where neo-Nazi party AfD has been on the rise, have also championed anti-immigrant policies. But Jaishankar said that such movements are going to be self-goal.
Jaishankar said, “As we move into an era of advanced manufacturing, we will need more talent, not less, and talent cannot be developed organically at a high rate. There is a certain structural impediment out there. In their own societies, you can see the tension.”
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