Lant Pritchett, a Brigham Young University alumnus whose career as a World Bank economist has taken him to some of the poorest nations on earth, believes immigration from poor to rich countries is inevitable.

He also believes it should be encouraged.

"It's going to happen on its own accord," said Pritchett, now at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. "My concern is: How do we structure this migration so it can have the maximum effects for people who are the poorest in the world?"

Pritchett, author of "Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility," is speaking Monday at 7 p.m. at Westminster College in the Vieve Gore Concert Hall.

For the past several decades, rich countries have poured billions of dollars into poor countries through investment or foreign aid. Yet the gap between the rich and poor people of the world is widening.

"(Immigration is) the one thing that so far has been ignored," Pritchett said. "Everyone acts like migration is a failure of development, but it is development. They come here, and they're much better off."

Poor countries suffer from lack of development and ineffective governments. But they have a bounty of labor. Many people want to come to the United States or Europe to make money, and some do it illegally.

"If you're in Pakistan, your wages go up about 10 percent a year with each year of schooling you get," Pritchett said. "Let's say you have six years of schooling, that's 60 percent extra income. But if you move from Pakistan to any rich country, your wages don't go up 60 percent, they go up sixfold."

Pritchett proposes allowing people to work temporarily in rich countries. In three to five years, workers could save enough money to improve their lives at home. They could buy a house and food for their families. They could further their education or their children's education.

Regardless of how they spend the money, home countries would benefit from an infusion of foreign-earned cash, said Pritchett, who earned a doctoral degree in economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It would have to start small," he said. "It depends on the country."

The benefit of immigration over foreign aid is that people earn the wages from their work, he said. Rich countries give $50 billion to $150 billion in foreign aid a year — and it all comes from taxpayers.

That isn't to say that foreign aid should be suspended. Pritchett believes immigration and aid should work in tandem.

Pritchett's idea has drawn criticism from the left and right. Critics question the effects on family, as Pritchett's guest-worker proposal would prohibit workers from bringing children. Nationalists in rich countries are concerned about giving jobs to foreigners and whether those workers would go home once their job is over.