And as Western countries continue to struggle with sky-high unemployment, there is significant political pressure building against the idea of further labor migration.

FORBES: Russia's Answer to Groupon and Its Continued Development as a Modern Society

Second, Fogel is right to note that migration of labor to cities has been the engine of Chinese growth, but that process has stalled in the global economic downturn.

FORBES: New Asia

Factor in the migration of skilled labor from mid-wage occupations to lower-paying ones, and many skilled workers are unable to find decent and relevant work.

FORBES: Is Minimum Wage Fair?

Chongqing also hopes to turn a wave of migration into a labor pool for the low-wage manufacturing industries it is trying to lure to move from China's coastal areas.

WSJ: China Pins Hopes on Public Housing

By expanding immigration for low-skill workers, we restrain labor costs and reduce out-migration of manufacturing and other business.

CNN: How to get economy growing fast

But Benjamin Elsner, a migration researcher at the Institute for the Study of Labor, or IZA, in Bonn, said it was "hardly possible" for the vast majority of new arrivals to live off welfare.

WSJ: Southern Europe Job Seekers Head for Germany

If the migrant workers needed by the American economy were allowed to enter legally through an orderly process of increased quotas--for temporary and permanent migration--practically all of the negative aspects associated with the immigration of low-skilled labor would cease.

FORBES: Migranomics Instead of Walls