Many countries in the global north have greatly relaxed immigration standards for espers compared to the general population, typically coupled with expedited immigration visas. In some cases, these are supplemented with other incentives to immigrate, such as start-up grants for esper immigrants, subsidized language tutoring, or relocation assistance. No matter how hostile a country usually is to immigrants from the global south, or how unwilling it is to accept refugees, most countries have noticed the obvious benefits of smoothing the path for espers.

At first glance, this sounds great — it's good for the espers, and in the short term it's good for the countries receiving the esper immigrants.

What it's not good for is the countries losing espers.

Every esper that moves to the United States (or Japan, or Spain, or...) to fight dungeons is one fewer esper fighting dungeons in the country they immigrated from. And, frankly, their country of origin probably needs it more. Sure, for the really big-deal dungeons espers will sometimes be brought in from all over (though even then, those dungeons don't necessarily get the same attention they'd have received if they were hitting a country in the global north — at Infested Wasteland's appearance in Casablanca, foreign espers were brought in for search and rescue, but no one bothered to actually arrange a team to kill it until it struck Toronto). But for your run-of the mill dungeon full of fist-sized leeches or wicker baskets full of victims hanging from the ceiling? Sure, either way it'll usually be cleared, but on basically every metric, from the average time for each victim to be rescued to the fraction of dungeons that outright escape, outcomes in the global north are better. Not all of that is because of esper brain drain — the disparities in the resources available to unempowered responders are surely also a contributing factor — but that doesn't mean espers leaving isn't significant.

The victims in those dungeons don't matter any less just because they happened to be born in Honduras or Cambodia or Benin, and unlike espers, they can't necessarily just pack up and move. I'd love it if countries in the global north were more willing to accept refugees from countries that are struggling with dungeons; if they end up with extra espers that way, I have no complaints. But with a handful of exceptions, countries in the global north are perfectly happy to take espers and their families, and leave everyone else behind.

And in the long term, greasing the wheels for espers to immigrate leaves everyone worse off, even people in the global north. Dungeons that escape from the global south might appear anywhere in the world, so diverting espers to countries that basically have their dungeon problems handled means those countries will likely end up targeted by worse dungeons than if they'd been less aggressive about trying to get their hands on as many espers as possible.

Let's stop prioritizing lives in the global north today over lives of everyone tomorrow, and put an end to special immigration treatment for espers.

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