Immigration: Worth Losing For
A single-issue critique of the Teixeira strategy
For years, Ruy Teixeira has been urging Democrats to improve their election prospects by abandoning wokeism. Twenty years ago, he was a triumphalist Democrat, famous for co-authoring The Emerging Democratic Majority. Now he’s an ex-Democrat (but still avowed social democrat) lamenting the radical leftist hijacking of the party he used to support.
Even though he works at the American Enterprise Institute, his main goal is figuring out how to help the Democrats start winning again. As he recently wrote after attending the Abundance Conference:
There is no hint here of moving to the center on the wide variety of culturally-inflected issues—crime, immigration, affirmative action, DEI, trans, etc., etc.—that have come to define the image of the contemporary Democratic Party and are tanking the Democrats’ performance among working-class voters. Some Democratic abundance boosters recognize this problem but they are very much a minority voice.
The obvious reply to Teixeira is that the Democrats could have been as woke as they wanted as long as they’d kept inflation low. But if Democrats’ sole goal were winning elections, the evidence is still on Teixeira’s side.* If swing voters resent left-wing views on “culturally-inflected” issues, why not maximize your chance of electoral victory by unequivocally abandoning them?
The straightforward response is that winning isn’t everything. Every electoral victor endorses some unpopular views, for reasons of conscience as well as coalition. If I were woke, my reaction to Teixeira would be, “Yes, staying true to our principles is somewhat electorally risky. But if we totally abandon those principles, what’s the point of winning? We need to strike a balance between winning power and deserving power. What makes you so sure we’re striking the wrong balance?”
In recent years, however, Teixeira has bolstered his position by attacking wokeness on its merits. Once you combine “Woke views are unpopular” with “Woke views are foolish,” the case for Democratic moderation seems practically bulletproof.
Since I’ve written a whole book (though not the best book) on the folly of wokeness, I’m plainly sympathetic to the latter position. Overall, it would be great if Democrats threw wokeness to the wolves. But contra Teixeira, there is one far-left position where, on its merits, the Democrats aren’t nearly extreme enough: immigration.
I fully understand that open borders is extraordinarily unpopular. So unpopular that aggressive support for open borders would make Democratic victory nigh-impossible even if they did everything else right in voters’ eyes. But since every political victor endorses some unpopular views, Democrats can definitely be much more pro-immigration than the rest of the population and still win. Indeed, if Democrats would move to the median position on every social issue except for immigration, they would buy themselves extra breathing room to be radical on immigration. Which, on its merits, they totally should.
I’ve written a whole book on the awesomeness of immigration, but here’s the digest version.
Immigration easily multiplies immigrants’ earnings and productivity by a factor of 5-10x.
Open borders really would ultimately roughly double the wealth of humanity. Even the most sophisticated academic critiques of this result actually support it.
The secret of mass consumption is mass production (a.k.a. “abundance”). All progress hurts someone, so wise policy focuses on maximizing total production, not fretting over adverse distributional effects.
In any case, the distributional effects of mass immigration are great. A lot of the gain goes to immigrants who were born absolutely poor through no fault of their own.
Since modern economies are 80% services, most of the rest of the gain goes to native consumers. Due to specialization and trade, the average worker probably gains, too. (Remember: Everyone who owns a home or saves for retirement has implicit non-wage income). If you think this is wishful thinking, look at Japan.
Immigration restrictions don’t merely allow discrimination against the poor and vulnerable; they require it. This discrimination is not just symbolic or vestigial. Immigration laws deny people born in the Third World the fundamental rights to accept a job from a willing employer and rent from a willing landlord. Immigration laws are far less bad than slavery, but far worse than Jim Crow.
To be fair, Teixeira mostly attacks Democrats for being soft on illegal immigration: “Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it.” But virtually all of his evidence only supports the “voters hate it” clause.
And on its merits, there is nothing “terrible” about illegal immigration. If any laws qualify as “unjust laws that one may violate with a clear conscience,” existing immigration laws so qualify. They massively impoverish humanity — and do immense harm to people whose only “crime” is being born on the wrong side of the border. If you get rid of illegal immigration by legalizing it, great! But in a xenophobic world, laxly enforcing our unjust immigration laws is often the most a president can do to make our unjust status quo a little less awful.
Yes, it’s quixotic for me to advise the American left. But I’m doing it anyway. Dear American leftists: Even if you’re right about everything, the way that the U.S. treats immigrants is vastly worse than the way the U.S. treats “marginalized” citizens. So you have every reason to make immigrant rights your absolute top priority. And since there’s a limit to how extreme you can be and still get elected, you have to triage. Until your country stops treating people like criminals for picking vegetables and cleaning bathrooms, all of your other causes are distractions. Immigration is worth losing for; and until immigration policies radically change, it’s virtually the only policy worth losing for.
* Main doubt: About 16% of American adults can be plausibly classified as woke “true believers.” (I’m summing Pew’s “Progressive Left” and “Outsider Left” categories). If Teixeira’s strategy provokes just 20% of this 16% to abstain, that plausibly exceeds the extra moderate votes Democrats are likely to gain, especially since woke true believers are greatly overrepresented among activists and pundits.
The whole notion that immigration is worth losing for is patently insane. The point of winning is that, on net, you believe your policies will be better than the other party’s. Even if Democrats get tough on immigration, they would still, on net, be better for immigrants than Republicans. Furthermore, the point of a democracy is to reflect the will of the voters. The idea that you can simply reject that for high-minded principles is anti-democratic. More importantly, voters will elect someone who will do the things they want done.
I find it interesting that you do not discuss the trade-offs of immigration, considering you’re an economist. But there absolutely are trade-offs.
The first two points you mentioned are that immigration increases immigrants’ earnings and would double the wealth of humanity. This, however, is not the responsibility of the American taxpayer.
You state that “All progress hurts someone, so wise policy focuses on maximizing total production, not fretting over adverse distributional effects.” But this is exactly what politics is for, to fret over how to manage the various trade-offs in policy. Citizens aren’t just cogs in a machine; they have genuine concerns and are affected by policy outcomes. Thinking seriously about managing these trade-offs is important to sustain political will.
You also write, “In any case, the distributional effects of mass immigration are great. A lot of the gain goes to immigrants who were born absolutely poor through no fault of their own.” Again, this is not the responsibility of the American voter. The sole purpose of the United States government is to fulfill the desires and wishes of its citizens. Arguing that most of the gains go to immigrants who are not citizens is political suicide and contrary to the very purpose of a nation-state.
Yes, immigration laws require discrimination against non-citizens but that is the fundamental point of a nation-state: it draws the boundaries between citizens and non-citizens. The idea that there is a “fundamental right to accept a job from a willing employer and rent from a willing landlord” for non-citizens is preposterous, as no such right exists. Furthermore, the fundamental right of voters to determine who enters their country and a nation’s right to exercise its sovereignty to enforce its borders is well established through both law and history.
Immigration absolutely has downsides. Research from countries across Europe and South America empirically demonstrates this. Of course, immigration to America follows different patterns than in our European counterparts, but the trade-offs still exist.
• Immigration puts downward pressure on the wages of low-skilled workers.
• It strains public services and infrastructure, particularly when it increases rapidly. Ultimately, the taxpayer foots the bill.
• Rapid immigration places significant strain on housing costs, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
• It can also erode social cohesion, increasing vote shares for right-wing and populist parties.
Of course, not all immigration is the same. There are different types: high-skilled versus low-skilled, various industries, and so on. Being open and candid about what kind of immigration the country wants, and what will be most beneficial to Americans, is part of the political process. It is not xenophobic to want to exercise democratic control over who enters a country.
Future London and England? No thanks. The “results are in.”