Net Benefits

To understand the economic stakes in Europe's refugee crisis, start in an unlikely place: the South Pacific island of Tonga. In 2006, the World Bank brokered a deal between this impoverished microstate and nearby New Zealand. Tonga would satisfy New Zealand’s unmet need for fruit pickers by sending some of its citizens to its wealthy neighbor; New Zealand would provide those citizens with employment. The experiment increased the income of participating Tongan workers by a factor of ten, an effect that dwarfed the potential benefit of any imaginable aid program. With this extraordinary leap in income came improvements in everything