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.
Erasure of insider/outsider dichotomy is the fundamental point of liberalism. It is either achieved through establishment of the world state (which is the left liberal option) or establishment of anarcho-capitalism (which is right liberal option).
The world state is, at least, vastly more logically coherent and politically likely, than anarcho-capitalism.
People who say this know little of the history or the political philosophy underpinning liberalism. Liberalism doesn’t erase the insider versus outsider dichotomy (though Rawls was an advocate of blank slatism). It is merely a framework by which various stakeholders mediate complicated decisions through politics. Indeed, at the height of liberal power (1945), there was an explicit validation of the nation state (self determination and decolonization that created whole new countries), which inherently recognized the insider versus outsider. I’d argue the recent mass migrations were inherently *illiberal* because it was never a choice decided democratically.
The world state makes no sense. What nation will give up sovereignty unless through threat of force?
Anarcho-Capitalism makes no sense because capitalism does not exist in a vacuum, but only through the backing of the state that explicitly recognizes things like property rights and can universalize agreements/contracts
"a framework by which various stakeholders mediate complicated decisions through politics."
This is pretty opaque and could be validly be said of anything.
I define liberalism as denial of political nature of man whereby man is organized into particular, self-ruling, morally authoritative units or entities or polities one may variously call tribe, state or nation.
Existence of particular entities creates a insider/outsider dichotomy, also expressed variously as citizen/alien, neighbor/stranger, friend/enemy dichotomies.
So, liberalism is what denies these dichotomies.
The denial can take two forms
1) All men to be neighbor to all others- logical climax world state (the left liberalism or progressivism) --associated with denial of particularity.
2) All men to be stranger to all other--logical climax anarchy (the right liberalism or libertarianism)-- associated with denial of moral authority.
In practical politics, many things intervene and liberalism is hardly found undiluted. But in theory, in works of liberal writers, you can explicitly find precisely these denials.
“Pretty opaque and validly said about anything” I think it’s pretty explicit. most ideologies do not say anything of that sort. A core tenant of liberalism is that no one person or group or stakeholder in a society knows everything. There is no perfect good. Therefore it is on the society to devise methods to work through tough problems to reach an equilibrium - politics. And since there can be no perfect, good there should be an emphasis the protection of individual rights and the belief that society functions best when people are free to pursue their own goals.
From that idea, stems incredibly important core tenants: free expression to debate ideas, individual liberty.
Further, the having the consent of the governed (will of the people - democracy) is core to liberalism; that means it is ultimately the governed that should decide who becomes a part of a society
You can define liberalism however you like, but you are wrong. Liberalism does not at all deny the political nature man; in fact it makes the assertion that men are motivated by self interests and can vary wildly, which is why there is emphasis on individual liberty and economic freedom
1. Liberalism does *not* assert all men are neighbors to each other. Progressivism ≠ liberalism. It seems you’re mistaking communism’s belief in the international worker and the call for global revolution to create a communist state for liberalism which makes no such claims. But communism is *not* liberalism and they are viscerally diametrically opposed lol. Commies hate liberals
2. “All men to be strangers to all others” liberalism explicitly reject this by promoting freedom of association and freedom of religion. A part of the body politic must come as one to make decision decisions about a nations future.
In theory, there’s huge debate about what liberalism is, but of core tenant is the consent of the government. Of course, as if anything, people can have different ideas of how to implement it, but the political history of the United States of America makes it very clear and there is in fact, borders in nation states.
The thing that makes liberalism radically different is that it is not a hard nose ideology. It’s just a framework. Reagan, despite being conservative was a liberal. So was bill clinton. In fact, I argued that you’re a liberal. You probably support:
-Freedom of thought, speech, religion, and association.
-Rule of law: All individuals, including leaders, are subject to the same laws.
-Governments derive legitimacy from the will of the people (e.g., democracy).
This is a misreading the creation of the United Nations. The United Nations was never meant to function as a world government, but rather a form for the great powers to try to peacefully negotiate their issues. In fact, in a lot of ways, the United Nations is an explicit rejection of a world government as it totally at the mercy of its member states, and in particular, the security council. It’s often why the United Nations seems incredibly impotent because it was designed to be.
It is true that states often times joined together and pool the resources to create a new state (Italian reunification, German reunification, the creation of the United Kingdom, America). The thing that all these examples have in common though is that they had shared political, economic, cultural and historic links. It’s actually quite rare for states to join together peacefully and often times disparate entities will fracture. (Austrian Hungarian empire, Yugoslavia, the entire Balkans or really any empire for that matter). Indeed, one of the most unspoken thing about the dysfunction that occurs in Africa/Middle east is the fact that many of the nations there are constructed of disparate groups that don’t really get along that well (it’s why people joke about British randomly drawing lines on maps being the root cause of so many of our geopolitical problems lol)
The idea that there could be a singular world government that combined 8.2 billion people together and have any form of legitimacy is just patently insane and incredibly infeasible. And more importantly, who would want that? The elites would hate it because it would dilute their power. Citizens would hate it. I suppose the Marxist would love it because of a fulfill, their communist, revolution ideals, but then, they aren’t liberals
Liberalism co-existed with imperialism. Whig prime ministers ruled empire.
So, it co-exists with nations. But in theory, there is no concept of political boundaries in liberalism. You won't find political boundaries in Locke, Buchanan, Hayek, Rothbard etc.
And why? because liberal theory starts with individuals and then builds state out of them arising from a social contract. All individuals are regarded as basically fungible. A poem such as Kipling's Stranger, which perfectly presents pre-liberal mindset is anathema to a good liberal.
Liberalism did coexist with empire, but it was always in tension. The British tried to square the circle by having a “liberal empire” but it didn’t really work out
I think you fundamentally misunderstand liberalism. Liberalism isn’t an ideology in the way that Marxism is. It is instead a framework by which to think about the world. It’s why you can have radically different types of government institutions, and they still be liberal (France vs Brazil vs the US). Liberalism doesn’t say anything about who should be a part of the nation state or not because it’s core assertion is that no ideology can have that certainty, and thus it must be mediated through the peaceful exchange of ideas - politics. It is up to the body politic to reach some sort of agreement. It’s why the United States were still a little democracy even when it implemented various sort of immigration restrictions in the 1880s and 1920s and why it is still a little democracy despite the current effort for mass deportations.
I think you’re lumping liberalism together of communism. And they are not the same and are radically different.
Even if you're right about open borders, it won't happen if you can't make it popular first. So wouldn't it make sense to dial back on immigration, build trust with voters that it can be properly regulated and managed, and then gradually increase it in a way that voters are on board with?
What is your answer to the observation that open immigration creates financial and ideological costs that imperil public education? Youth from non-English speaking families add a huge cost to public schools and their lower educational performance contributes to widening academic inequality which gives angst to idealistic public educators.
There is no serious response. As long as immigrants have access to the welfare state, low skilled immigration is a massive burden to the native population. Any person who cares about the interest of themselves and their people would oppose it.
This, a thousand times this. Bryan keeps on ignoring the literal upfront costs of immigration when they get room and board, cash, healthcare, and all the rest of the welfare State's goodies. They also get absolved of pat and future crimes. And that's not including the "refugees" who are flown in without regard to what they want, or the target communities want.
Until Bryan and the rest of the "open boarders" crowd can address those basic issues, they just harden my soul even more.
I have no doubt my view of all the bennies they get is simplistic and wrong in many ways. But it can't be too far off the mark or I would have been shot down many times.
The response is don't give them access to welfare state. You don't need to do it to let them in. Yes it's discrimination, but the outcome is better for everyone involved than not letting them to the developed countries.
Can a two-tiered resident system really work? It's basically what we have now, and it doesn't seem to be working because people rightly perceive it drives down wages for native workers.
Most localities empower communities to use zoning and real estate costs to control access to the "public schools". This approach often works as a successful compromise where a community supports public education while also maintaining the preferences of the community where the school is located.
"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"
Huh what. You might want to look into sex offender laws, the most marginalized people in America. Most sex offenders wished they could only be treated as badly by the government as immigrants lol, it would be a vast step up. Likewise the homeless, mentally ill, and drug users are all treated worse that immigrants. I've always respected you Bryan but you always strawman immigration issues and it's getting worse with the passing years while undermining the legitimate case for what you and I both agree on actually, that immigration needs to get fixed and in a big way. But you can make that argument without pretending their treatment is anywhere as near as bad as large chunks of Americans because THAT really is a problem here that gets people, i.e. "how about we worry about our own problems first rather than foreigners".
That counterpoint applies to immigrants as well though, especially illegal ones.
Also given conservatively 10% of incarcerated people are actually factually innocent and that number swells to around a quarter if you include just convictions (i.e. fee only, probation, time served, etc), and that's conservatively, then no an unacceptable chuck of them didn't deserve it. Likewise nearly all Americans have committed sex offenses and drug crimes so it's not like they even have the moral high ground here of "they deserved; because the figurative you did the same crime, i.e. one beer is rape, high school sex on prom night, smoked a cigarette under twenty-one, spent resources to gain access to sex, etc". Besides can you imagine if the FDA approved a vaccine that had a 1 in 4 death or serious permanent lifetime disability chance? Deserved it a bit strong here though yes I get the quotes and you could be just playing devil's advocate.
My gripe here isn't immigration isn't broken, it's that they are nowhere near as marginalized as many Americans so let's quit pretending they are. There are better arguments for fixing immigration than marginalization.
I am playing devil's advocate. Being here illegally yes is thier fault, but in Bryan's view we're not to hold that against them because it's not thier fault they were born in the wrong country. But yes I agree, it's also not people's fault to be born with drug or sex offender parents that increase thier risk to do the same either.
On that last sentence, you missed my point as I don't want to blame parents here. Drugs are an American way of life, well everywhere really. The supermajority of Americans have committed felony drug use. The supermajority of Americans have committed felony sex offenses, most with mandatory twenty year minimums. We can't say "that girl deserves it because some promotion chasing government employee got bored and decided to prosecute her for normative behavior" when all she did was the same identical behavior we did. Nobody deserves to get punished for normative behavior simply because some government official was having a bad hair day and wanted to take it out on someone.
But I agree with you on your take what Bryan's take probably is on immigration. Of course it's also a very elitist view, the "wrong country" and that is something that has been bothering me more and more lately; I started chewing on that specifically after a recent post by David Friedman. Immigrants aren't trannies, they can't get born into the wrong country.
In every county, even the most corrupt shithole you still have "winners" (for lack of a better word) and those immigrants failed to succeed there for whatever reason but regardless they weren't born with a urge to "move to America". They voluntarily chose that (ignoring cases like "dreamers" or exiles) and hence they "deserve" whatever the receiving nation foisters on them (sans ex post facto changes after arrival) because they had dozens of nations to choose from which were better than wherever they were coming from. Filipino's dirt farmers from some southern village don't have to immigrate to America for example, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, etc are all right there too and have better quality of life and economic opportunities than "home". North American Filipinos (i.e. Mexicans) have plenty of places they can go other than America and still be successful, we don't owe them anything or, if we do, then I'd suggest we have a moral imperative to just invade them and incorporate them into America but for some reason I imagine all those pro-immigration people are against that one lol. That way we are bring the joys of America to even more people without forcing immigration, i.e. they get the best of both words, they America plus they don't have to move / leave their families.
See what I've come to realize with folk like Bryan, David, etc is they feel everybody should come to America and America should welcome everyone because fundamentally I think they are American apologists bordering they just outright dislike American culture; something David hinted at (not saying Bryan has but I feel there is some truth there regardless).
Google it. The majority of Americans have used illegal drugs including misuse of prescription drugs; even minor amounts of most illegal drugs are felonies. Hell my mother had a bad headache last week and took one of my father's leftover T3's which she kept after he died, multiple felonies right there. My friend offered me one of his Ambian last month when I had a bad bit of insomnia from traveling to allow me a good night sleep before a presentation, double felons right there too. Buying marijuana is still a felony in most states, and of course you generally can't get it without buying it (even if possession might be a misdemeanor; still a crime though), and definitely was back when the majority of Americans were teens. Shall we talk about felony cigarettes and alcohol use; I believe BLM was started over the police executing someone for selling loose cigarettes loo.
America illicit drug use is well documented, take two seconds and search any search engine. And if you read prostitution and sexual assault laws, we have all did it by the black letter to the point Wisconsin for example literally had to write an exception in the law exempting married couples because prosecutors were charging wives with prostitution telling their husband they were do that special thing for them they always like if they would take them somewhere nice for dinner for their anniversary. Nearly all dating and most sex is illegal in America if you get a bored enough prosecutor and the average jury especially in the #MeToo era though really that has been going since the 80's; just snowballed. Sex is the new war on Drugs now that decriminalization is threatening police, court, and prison budgets.
Yep, I tried captured them with drug users. Oddly it's getting worse for them lately too,. There is a recent nationwide movement, California the latest for example, to pass laws making mandatory drug treatment programs, regardless of the specific facts, for 100% of drug crimes; like they did with sex offenders so in the same way child rapists and an eighteen year old that buys his seventeen year old girlfriend a prom ticket are the same according to the treatment system (not shitting you), so is a twenty year meth addict who robs people and a teetotaling teacher who had two beers to celebrate a promotion and drove home. And it's structured the same too so it's mandatory and tied to both probation and parole requiring things like polygraphs, random testing, admitting you have a problem even if don't or are factually innocent, years long treatment to funnel money to court friendly providers with the only escape being the discretion of the treatment provider (because it's mandatory now), etc. You also see it with a creeping of sex offender registries to include non-sex offense now too and the public shouldn't be wondering about that as well, i.e. if crimes are all way down, including actual sex crimes, why is it the registries and sex offense convicts exploding?
Basically nationwide, probation is being sold hard now as rehabilitative rather than supervisory hence you have to get rehabilitated or else why are you on probation? (i.e. you should either be in prison in a threat to the public OR just have gotten a high fine) So in the same way 100% of sex offenses are "a mental illness that needs to get treated", drug use is too now because otherwise you can't justify given them decades of probation because obviously nobody needs to be supervised that long. The public should be asking "if these girls aren't a threat and don't need rehabilitation, why don't we just give them a year of probation and max fine as a penalty" but that is an anathema to the modern criminal fabrication system after all, it saves money and helps protect the public, i.e. costs them budgets, hero prestige, and union jobs.
I'm a generally pro-immigration liberal, and even I agree this is a valid concern about open borders. We're clearly doing something right (less so now, but i digress), we should be careful not to mess it up. We don't have a common ethnicity, but we need to have some common ideals.
Setting aside the specifics of immigration to tackle the more general issue in politics, the lesson of "popularism" (as Matthew Yglesias defines it) is that you can't accomplish anything if you don't win. It's worth winning if you produce better results than the alternative.
Regarding whether Democrats should support open borders on the merits, Josh Barro recently tackled that:
Indeed, there's a very real sense in which the goal of political parties is to form a coalition of (what they see as) the best 51% against the worst 49%, because that's what you need to actually set policy. In other words, I'd prefer that Joe Manchin be the median Senate vote than rather than Susan Collins...
Wokeness demanded the inflation. Biden was trying to implement the green new deal/lift up the oppressed. That’s requires spending money. There were no shortage of woke economists touting modern monetary theory and other excuses as to why the spending would be free, and who insisted it was temporary until it became embarrassing to do so.
Mass migration brought us hell. Some people want more of it. I just don't get it.
Maybe we could do immigration if we could also have honest public dialogue about thing like crime stats and IQ gaps. Until we can actually tell the truth, no.
How did it bring us hell? Immigrants have lower rates of crime. I would agree that we shouldn’t give any of them access to to welfare/medicaid, but that isn’t enough to call it “hell”, at least in the US.
Demographic change radically alters a community. With third world immigration, almost always for the worse. Either way, it destroys common bonds and make you a stranger in your own land. There is a reason that millions of people like me felt obliged to move out of California. Nearly all my friends have left as well.
I think it's just a genetic mismatch. Humans need common bonds (culture, ethnicity) to flourish. But, we live in a strange time with strange beliefs, and so there is a reluctance for people to admit their true feelings on the issue.
Maybe we just define “Hell” differently. I define it as a horrible situation that is unimaginably bad.
I still live in California, in a mostly Hispanic community. Honestly I have never been happier, and I have lived all over the US. Life is awesome, I truly feel blessed and would not choose any other place and definitely would not want to live in any prior time.
Those are my true feelings.
And for the record I totally disagree with open borders. But have some perspective.
I'm glad that you feel blessed to live in this time (a rare admission). But, think about all the majority Hispanic neighborhoods (which is most of California now) and ask yourself what happened to people that used to live there? What happened to working class Whites in Riverside. The Blacks in Compton? Did they just vanish into the wind, or were they forced to move on?
What was your neighborhood like before the change? How are the test scores? What excuses are you going to make for why things suck now?
My perspective is that I've lived in three different places that I saw drastically change because of immigration, for the worse. I don't have a problem with immigration as a concept, but mass immigration is a huge unforced error.
They certainly weren’t forced out by immigrants. People left this state because of crime, NIMBY-driven increases in housing prices, high energy costs, woke schools, high taxes and an anti-business climate. Immigrants didn’t cause or even contribute much to most of these problems (giving them free medical care did though).
I do agree though that mass immigration, especially if illegal, is a long term mistake. California could and should be a lot better. But immigrants haven’t made it hell.
Many (most?) places in Western nations that saw mass migration also saw rapid demographics change via outflow of natives. There is no shortage of explanations for why this happened, and some people make a living coming up with new and novel excuses for failures of integration, just like they come up endless excuses for failures to reduce racial gaps. At the end, it's all the same issue. Either we are all really super racist and intolerant, or people are not all the same. It's a bitter pill to swallow.
What do you think the relevant median position for the Democrats to move to on housing supply restrictions looks like? Is it the median position voters have for their own locality, or the one they have for the nation as a whole?
Great discussion. As a former immigrant, I am very pro-immigration and I also agree with Bryan that our legal immigration laws which mainly originate in early cold war are fairly draconian and inefficient (it takes forever now to get a green card). But... They are still laws on the books. For years we had practiced "benign neglect" by policing the border but doing virtually no interior enforcement. Then, the situation south of the border deteriorated, we got more crossing and more asylum claims. Then Trump picked up the issue and a lot of people were like, wait a second, why are we allowing our laws to be violated with impunity? There is NOTHING human beings hate more than unfairness and privilege. This, if course, further radicalizes Democrats and when Biden wins, he is too weak and enfeebled to resist the radicals and the migrants sense this and stream for the border. Finally, the public cries "Just enforce the damn laws already!"...and now, we have masked ICE agents grabbing on people on the streets and at Home Depot. Eventually, problems that are benignly neglected catch up with you.
Caplan, if I am not mistaken, had stated that he finds the Qatar model of open borders acceptable. Companies sponsor workers but the workers have no path to permanent residency, and are freely deported at the slightest infraction of worker discipline and local laws. There are no political rights, no welfare whatsoever.
I find it unlikely that the USA is anywhere near that capacity. Americans are really, really good at assimilating immigrants. Compare immigrant communities in the USA to similar ones in Europe.
Main thing to watch is whether human services such as policing, health, and education are able to maintain standards. If those standards are dropping, then the society is passed capacity.
Trump has stirred up so much hysteria about evil immigrants bringing drug trafficking, disease, murder, and rape to the US that a rational argument about immigration like this one, based on logic and numbers, is going to fall flat every time.
Because it's not rational, it's only rational to a utilitarian or someone who cares purely about money. People tend to care about more than that in the aggregate. Also it's mostly pushed by people who will benefit by it, Bryan isn't going to lose his job here nor is he going to move to Dearbornstan or Somalisota. His kids aren't going to public schools where nobody speaks English and his neighborhood as squat camps of immigrants and refugees. What Bryan gets is cheap cleaners and "exotic" food.
That said we are all on the wrong side of history here, just like with white flight. The future utopian world Bryan and his ilk envision is a working class brown world wide caliphate that eats tacos and fried rice with SD-1 IQ renormalized as SD0. You know, the Western elite dream. Basically cultural nostalgie de la boue.
"Rational" does not mean correct or moral. Rational simply means arguing logically from premises to conclusions. If you do not like the conclusions, you can certainly challenge the premises, which you do when you say that some things are more important than money. But I don't quite follow your attack on utilitarianism, which is concerned with consequences, because you then write at some length about unsalutary consequences of open immigration for both immigrants and the people who live near them. Writing about the suffering of immigrants and those around them and the way that elites benefit from cheap labor and exotic food is an emotional argument that differs from the emotional argument about immigrants bringing drug trafficking, disease, rape, and murder. But it is an emotional argument, nonetheless. For the record, I am open to your argument. I just want to point out that there is a disconnect between rational and emotional arguments that makes them incommensurable.
It's not just rational to a utilitarian, it's rational to anyone who thinks promoting the general good is extremely morally important, which is everyone who isn't a psychopath.
I'm not sure what these other, non-economic values that would cause people to oppose immigration are, I don't see how immigration threatens any common human values. People talk about community and cohesion, but there have been plenty of native-born Americans I've felt alienated among and plenty of foreigners I've felt an instant connection to. If someone can't connect or form communities doesn't it make more sense for them to engage in self improvement to fix that, rather than try to restrict immigration?
Generally pro-immigrant views are pushed by the city-dwellers who are most likely to encounter immigrants and experience the full costs and benefits of immigration. Anti-immigrant views tend to be popular in rural areas whose inhabitants will rarely see any immigrants and can easily be bamboozled by fearmongers. If you live near Dearborn (I do) it's easier to notice that its inhabitants are normal Americans. Instead of being strange and dangerous foreigners, they are the guy who fixed your car, the woman who helped your child overcome their speech impediment, or the guy who started the great new burger joint near you. People who live near immigrants are less likely to fall for any retarded fearmongering about "caliphates."
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.
Erasure of insider/outsider dichotomy is the fundamental point of liberalism. It is either achieved through establishment of the world state (which is the left liberal option) or establishment of anarcho-capitalism (which is right liberal option).
The world state is, at least, vastly more logically coherent and politically likely, than anarcho-capitalism.
People who say this know little of the history or the political philosophy underpinning liberalism. Liberalism doesn’t erase the insider versus outsider dichotomy (though Rawls was an advocate of blank slatism). It is merely a framework by which various stakeholders mediate complicated decisions through politics. Indeed, at the height of liberal power (1945), there was an explicit validation of the nation state (self determination and decolonization that created whole new countries), which inherently recognized the insider versus outsider. I’d argue the recent mass migrations were inherently *illiberal* because it was never a choice decided democratically.
The world state makes no sense. What nation will give up sovereignty unless through threat of force?
Anarcho-Capitalism makes no sense because capitalism does not exist in a vacuum, but only through the backing of the state that explicitly recognizes things like property rights and can universalize agreements/contracts
"a framework by which various stakeholders mediate complicated decisions through politics."
This is pretty opaque and could be validly be said of anything.
I define liberalism as denial of political nature of man whereby man is organized into particular, self-ruling, morally authoritative units or entities or polities one may variously call tribe, state or nation.
Existence of particular entities creates a insider/outsider dichotomy, also expressed variously as citizen/alien, neighbor/stranger, friend/enemy dichotomies.
So, liberalism is what denies these dichotomies.
The denial can take two forms
1) All men to be neighbor to all others- logical climax world state (the left liberalism or progressivism) --associated with denial of particularity.
2) All men to be stranger to all other--logical climax anarchy (the right liberalism or libertarianism)-- associated with denial of moral authority.
In practical politics, many things intervene and liberalism is hardly found undiluted. But in theory, in works of liberal writers, you can explicitly find precisely these denials.
“Pretty opaque and validly said about anything” I think it’s pretty explicit. most ideologies do not say anything of that sort. A core tenant of liberalism is that no one person or group or stakeholder in a society knows everything. There is no perfect good. Therefore it is on the society to devise methods to work through tough problems to reach an equilibrium - politics. And since there can be no perfect, good there should be an emphasis the protection of individual rights and the belief that society functions best when people are free to pursue their own goals.
From that idea, stems incredibly important core tenants: free expression to debate ideas, individual liberty.
Further, the having the consent of the governed (will of the people - democracy) is core to liberalism; that means it is ultimately the governed that should decide who becomes a part of a society
You can define liberalism however you like, but you are wrong. Liberalism does not at all deny the political nature man; in fact it makes the assertion that men are motivated by self interests and can vary wildly, which is why there is emphasis on individual liberty and economic freedom
1. Liberalism does *not* assert all men are neighbors to each other. Progressivism ≠ liberalism. It seems you’re mistaking communism’s belief in the international worker and the call for global revolution to create a communist state for liberalism which makes no such claims. But communism is *not* liberalism and they are viscerally diametrically opposed lol. Commies hate liberals
2. “All men to be strangers to all others” liberalism explicitly reject this by promoting freedom of association and freedom of religion. A part of the body politic must come as one to make decision decisions about a nations future.
In theory, there’s huge debate about what liberalism is, but of core tenant is the consent of the government. Of course, as if anything, people can have different ideas of how to implement it, but the political history of the United States of America makes it very clear and there is in fact, borders in nation states.
The thing that makes liberalism radically different is that it is not a hard nose ideology. It’s just a framework. Reagan, despite being conservative was a liberal. So was bill clinton. In fact, I argued that you’re a liberal. You probably support:
-Freedom of thought, speech, religion, and association.
-Rule of law: All individuals, including leaders, are subject to the same laws.
-Governments derive legitimacy from the will of the people (e.g., democracy).
- Private property and markets
-Limited government
What is UN and other super-national bodies but steps towards a world state?
It is not unheard of for entities to pool together and federalize. Formation of USA is one example. European Union is another.
This is a misreading the creation of the United Nations. The United Nations was never meant to function as a world government, but rather a form for the great powers to try to peacefully negotiate their issues. In fact, in a lot of ways, the United Nations is an explicit rejection of a world government as it totally at the mercy of its member states, and in particular, the security council. It’s often why the United Nations seems incredibly impotent because it was designed to be.
It is true that states often times joined together and pool the resources to create a new state (Italian reunification, German reunification, the creation of the United Kingdom, America). The thing that all these examples have in common though is that they had shared political, economic, cultural and historic links. It’s actually quite rare for states to join together peacefully and often times disparate entities will fracture. (Austrian Hungarian empire, Yugoslavia, the entire Balkans or really any empire for that matter). Indeed, one of the most unspoken thing about the dysfunction that occurs in Africa/Middle east is the fact that many of the nations there are constructed of disparate groups that don’t really get along that well (it’s why people joke about British randomly drawing lines on maps being the root cause of so many of our geopolitical problems lol)
The idea that there could be a singular world government that combined 8.2 billion people together and have any form of legitimacy is just patently insane and incredibly infeasible. And more importantly, who would want that? The elites would hate it because it would dilute their power. Citizens would hate it. I suppose the Marxist would love it because of a fulfill, their communist, revolution ideals, but then, they aren’t liberals
Liberalism co-existed with imperialism. Whig prime ministers ruled empire.
So, it co-exists with nations. But in theory, there is no concept of political boundaries in liberalism. You won't find political boundaries in Locke, Buchanan, Hayek, Rothbard etc.
And why? because liberal theory starts with individuals and then builds state out of them arising from a social contract. All individuals are regarded as basically fungible. A poem such as Kipling's Stranger, which perfectly presents pre-liberal mindset is anathema to a good liberal.
Liberalism did coexist with empire, but it was always in tension. The British tried to square the circle by having a “liberal empire” but it didn’t really work out
I think you fundamentally misunderstand liberalism. Liberalism isn’t an ideology in the way that Marxism is. It is instead a framework by which to think about the world. It’s why you can have radically different types of government institutions, and they still be liberal (France vs Brazil vs the US). Liberalism doesn’t say anything about who should be a part of the nation state or not because it’s core assertion is that no ideology can have that certainty, and thus it must be mediated through the peaceful exchange of ideas - politics. It is up to the body politic to reach some sort of agreement. It’s why the United States were still a little democracy even when it implemented various sort of immigration restrictions in the 1880s and 1920s and why it is still a little democracy despite the current effort for mass deportations.
I think you’re lumping liberalism together of communism. And they are not the same and are radically different.
Future London and England? No thanks. The “results are in.”
Even if you're right about open borders, it won't happen if you can't make it popular first. So wouldn't it make sense to dial back on immigration, build trust with voters that it can be properly regulated and managed, and then gradually increase it in a way that voters are on board with?
Bryan,
What is your answer to the observation that open immigration creates financial and ideological costs that imperil public education? Youth from non-English speaking families add a huge cost to public schools and their lower educational performance contributes to widening academic inequality which gives angst to idealistic public educators.
There is no serious response. As long as immigrants have access to the welfare state, low skilled immigration is a massive burden to the native population. Any person who cares about the interest of themselves and their people would oppose it.
This, a thousand times this. Bryan keeps on ignoring the literal upfront costs of immigration when they get room and board, cash, healthcare, and all the rest of the welfare State's goodies. They also get absolved of pat and future crimes. And that's not including the "refugees" who are flown in without regard to what they want, or the target communities want.
Until Bryan and the rest of the "open boarders" crowd can address those basic issues, they just harden my soul even more.
I have no doubt my view of all the bennies they get is simplistic and wrong in many ways. But it can't be too far off the mark or I would have been shot down many times.
Oppose what? Welfare? I'm in!
The response is don't give them access to welfare state. You don't need to do it to let them in. Yes it's discrimination, but the outcome is better for everyone involved than not letting them to the developed countries.
Prop 184 failed and California became a woke hellhole.
Can a two-tiered resident system really work? It's basically what we have now, and it doesn't seem to be working because people rightly perceive it drives down wages for native workers.
Bryan wants to abolish public education. He's an anarcho-capitalist who wrote the book "The Case Against Education".
I'm against public education.
Most localities empower communities to use zoning and real estate costs to control access to the "public schools". This approach often works as a successful compromise where a community supports public education while also maintaining the preferences of the community where the school is located.
It stops being a problem after separation of school and state.
"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"
Huh what. You might want to look into sex offender laws, the most marginalized people in America. Most sex offenders wished they could only be treated as badly by the government as immigrants lol, it would be a vast step up. Likewise the homeless, mentally ill, and drug users are all treated worse that immigrants. I've always respected you Bryan but you always strawman immigration issues and it's getting worse with the passing years while undermining the legitimate case for what you and I both agree on actually, that immigration needs to get fixed and in a big way. But you can make that argument without pretending their treatment is anywhere as near as bad as large chunks of Americans because THAT really is a problem here that gets people, i.e. "how about we worry about our own problems first rather than foreigners".
A potential counterargument is that those other marginalized people "deserve" it by putting themselves in those positions.
That counterpoint applies to immigrants as well though, especially illegal ones.
Also given conservatively 10% of incarcerated people are actually factually innocent and that number swells to around a quarter if you include just convictions (i.e. fee only, probation, time served, etc), and that's conservatively, then no an unacceptable chuck of them didn't deserve it. Likewise nearly all Americans have committed sex offenses and drug crimes so it's not like they even have the moral high ground here of "they deserved; because the figurative you did the same crime, i.e. one beer is rape, high school sex on prom night, smoked a cigarette under twenty-one, spent resources to gain access to sex, etc". Besides can you imagine if the FDA approved a vaccine that had a 1 in 4 death or serious permanent lifetime disability chance? Deserved it a bit strong here though yes I get the quotes and you could be just playing devil's advocate.
My gripe here isn't immigration isn't broken, it's that they are nowhere near as marginalized as many Americans so let's quit pretending they are. There are better arguments for fixing immigration than marginalization.
I am playing devil's advocate. Being here illegally yes is thier fault, but in Bryan's view we're not to hold that against them because it's not thier fault they were born in the wrong country. But yes I agree, it's also not people's fault to be born with drug or sex offender parents that increase thier risk to do the same either.
On that last sentence, you missed my point as I don't want to blame parents here. Drugs are an American way of life, well everywhere really. The supermajority of Americans have committed felony drug use. The supermajority of Americans have committed felony sex offenses, most with mandatory twenty year minimums. We can't say "that girl deserves it because some promotion chasing government employee got bored and decided to prosecute her for normative behavior" when all she did was the same identical behavior we did. Nobody deserves to get punished for normative behavior simply because some government official was having a bad hair day and wanted to take it out on someone.
But I agree with you on your take what Bryan's take probably is on immigration. Of course it's also a very elitist view, the "wrong country" and that is something that has been bothering me more and more lately; I started chewing on that specifically after a recent post by David Friedman. Immigrants aren't trannies, they can't get born into the wrong country.
In every county, even the most corrupt shithole you still have "winners" (for lack of a better word) and those immigrants failed to succeed there for whatever reason but regardless they weren't born with a urge to "move to America". They voluntarily chose that (ignoring cases like "dreamers" or exiles) and hence they "deserve" whatever the receiving nation foisters on them (sans ex post facto changes after arrival) because they had dozens of nations to choose from which were better than wherever they were coming from. Filipino's dirt farmers from some southern village don't have to immigrate to America for example, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, etc are all right there too and have better quality of life and economic opportunities than "home". North American Filipinos (i.e. Mexicans) have plenty of places they can go other than America and still be successful, we don't owe them anything or, if we do, then I'd suggest we have a moral imperative to just invade them and incorporate them into America but for some reason I imagine all those pro-immigration people are against that one lol. That way we are bring the joys of America to even more people without forcing immigration, i.e. they get the best of both words, they America plus they don't have to move / leave their families.
See what I've come to realize with folk like Bryan, David, etc is they feel everybody should come to America and America should welcome everyone because fundamentally I think they are American apologists bordering they just outright dislike American culture; something David hinted at (not saying Bryan has but I feel there is some truth there regardless).
> The supermajority of Americans have committed felony drug use.
[citation needed]
Google it. The majority of Americans have used illegal drugs including misuse of prescription drugs; even minor amounts of most illegal drugs are felonies. Hell my mother had a bad headache last week and took one of my father's leftover T3's which she kept after he died, multiple felonies right there. My friend offered me one of his Ambian last month when I had a bad bit of insomnia from traveling to allow me a good night sleep before a presentation, double felons right there too. Buying marijuana is still a felony in most states, and of course you generally can't get it without buying it (even if possession might be a misdemeanor; still a crime though), and definitely was back when the majority of Americans were teens. Shall we talk about felony cigarettes and alcohol use; I believe BLM was started over the police executing someone for selling loose cigarettes loo.
America illicit drug use is well documented, take two seconds and search any search engine. And if you read prostitution and sexual assault laws, we have all did it by the black letter to the point Wisconsin for example literally had to write an exception in the law exempting married couples because prosecutors were charging wives with prostitution telling their husband they were do that special thing for them they always like if they would take them somewhere nice for dinner for their anniversary. Nearly all dating and most sex is illegal in America if you get a bored enough prosecutor and the average jury especially in the #MeToo era though really that has been going since the 80's; just snowballed. Sex is the new war on Drugs now that decriminalization is threatening police, court, and prison budgets.
Targets of the War on Drugs (not counting Venezuelan boaters).
Yep, I tried captured them with drug users. Oddly it's getting worse for them lately too,. There is a recent nationwide movement, California the latest for example, to pass laws making mandatory drug treatment programs, regardless of the specific facts, for 100% of drug crimes; like they did with sex offenders so in the same way child rapists and an eighteen year old that buys his seventeen year old girlfriend a prom ticket are the same according to the treatment system (not shitting you), so is a twenty year meth addict who robs people and a teetotaling teacher who had two beers to celebrate a promotion and drove home. And it's structured the same too so it's mandatory and tied to both probation and parole requiring things like polygraphs, random testing, admitting you have a problem even if don't or are factually innocent, years long treatment to funnel money to court friendly providers with the only escape being the discretion of the treatment provider (because it's mandatory now), etc. You also see it with a creeping of sex offender registries to include non-sex offense now too and the public shouldn't be wondering about that as well, i.e. if crimes are all way down, including actual sex crimes, why is it the registries and sex offense convicts exploding?
Basically nationwide, probation is being sold hard now as rehabilitative rather than supervisory hence you have to get rehabilitated or else why are you on probation? (i.e. you should either be in prison in a threat to the public OR just have gotten a high fine) So in the same way 100% of sex offenses are "a mental illness that needs to get treated", drug use is too now because otherwise you can't justify given them decades of probation because obviously nobody needs to be supervised that long. The public should be asking "if these girls aren't a threat and don't need rehabilitation, why don't we just give them a year of probation and max fine as a penalty" but that is an anathema to the modern criminal fabrication system after all, it saves money and helps protect the public, i.e. costs them budgets, hero prestige, and union jobs.
The author's bullet points made in favor of "open borders" are all economic-based, apparently assuming that all immigrants want to adopt an American lifestyle, with its attendant customs and values. But this appears to be demonstrably untrue, as has become very apparent with events roiling Europe today. The U.S. is not immune. I would ask the author (or anyone proposing "open borders") to watch recent events in NYC -- https://www.memri.org/tv/nyc-protest-hamas-hizbullah-flags-october-7 -- and Dearborn MI -- https://www.memri.org/reports/after-dearborn-michigan-names-street-after-local-pro-hizbullah-figure-osama-siblani-and -- (to pick just two) and answer why any American should support going in this direction.
I'm a generally pro-immigration liberal, and even I agree this is a valid concern about open borders. We're clearly doing something right (less so now, but i digress), we should be careful not to mess it up. We don't have a common ethnicity, but we need to have some common ideals.
Setting aside the specifics of immigration to tackle the more general issue in politics, the lesson of "popularism" (as Matthew Yglesias defines it) is that you can't accomplish anything if you don't win. It's worth winning if you produce better results than the alternative.
Regarding whether Democrats should support open borders on the merits, Josh Barro recently tackled that:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/democrats-need-to-re-learn-the-valid
Indeed, there's a very real sense in which the goal of political parties is to form a coalition of (what they see as) the best 51% against the worst 49%, because that's what you need to actually set policy. In other words, I'd prefer that Joe Manchin be the median Senate vote than rather than Susan Collins...
Wokeness demanded the inflation. Biden was trying to implement the green new deal/lift up the oppressed. That’s requires spending money. There were no shortage of woke economists touting modern monetary theory and other excuses as to why the spending would be free, and who insisted it was temporary until it became embarrassing to do so.
You wrote this piece as though the Democratic Party are libertarians like you.
They are not. They have different priorities, they will rationally make different trade-offs.
Mass migration brought us hell. Some people want more of it. I just don't get it.
Maybe we could do immigration if we could also have honest public dialogue about thing like crime stats and IQ gaps. Until we can actually tell the truth, no.
How did it bring us hell? Immigrants have lower rates of crime. I would agree that we shouldn’t give any of them access to to welfare/medicaid, but that isn’t enough to call it “hell”, at least in the US.
Demographic change radically alters a community. With third world immigration, almost always for the worse. Either way, it destroys common bonds and make you a stranger in your own land. There is a reason that millions of people like me felt obliged to move out of California. Nearly all my friends have left as well.
I think it's just a genetic mismatch. Humans need common bonds (culture, ethnicity) to flourish. But, we live in a strange time with strange beliefs, and so there is a reluctance for people to admit their true feelings on the issue.
Maybe we just define “Hell” differently. I define it as a horrible situation that is unimaginably bad.
I still live in California, in a mostly Hispanic community. Honestly I have never been happier, and I have lived all over the US. Life is awesome, I truly feel blessed and would not choose any other place and definitely would not want to live in any prior time.
Those are my true feelings.
And for the record I totally disagree with open borders. But have some perspective.
I'm glad that you feel blessed to live in this time (a rare admission). But, think about all the majority Hispanic neighborhoods (which is most of California now) and ask yourself what happened to people that used to live there? What happened to working class Whites in Riverside. The Blacks in Compton? Did they just vanish into the wind, or were they forced to move on?
What was your neighborhood like before the change? How are the test scores? What excuses are you going to make for why things suck now?
My perspective is that I've lived in three different places that I saw drastically change because of immigration, for the worse. I don't have a problem with immigration as a concept, but mass immigration is a huge unforced error.
They certainly weren’t forced out by immigrants. People left this state because of crime, NIMBY-driven increases in housing prices, high energy costs, woke schools, high taxes and an anti-business climate. Immigrants didn’t cause or even contribute much to most of these problems (giving them free medical care did though).
I do agree though that mass immigration, especially if illegal, is a long term mistake. California could and should be a lot better. But immigrants haven’t made it hell.
Many (most?) places in Western nations that saw mass migration also saw rapid demographics change via outflow of natives. There is no shortage of explanations for why this happened, and some people make a living coming up with new and novel excuses for failures of integration, just like they come up endless excuses for failures to reduce racial gaps. At the end, it's all the same issue. Either we are all really super racist and intolerant, or people are not all the same. It's a bitter pill to swallow.
What do you think the relevant median position for the Democrats to move to on housing supply restrictions looks like? Is it the median position voters have for their own locality, or the one they have for the nation as a whole?
Bernie Sanders has long been terrible on immigration: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sanders-praises-trump-slams-biden-border-youve-got-have-borders-period
Great discussion. As a former immigrant, I am very pro-immigration and I also agree with Bryan that our legal immigration laws which mainly originate in early cold war are fairly draconian and inefficient (it takes forever now to get a green card). But... They are still laws on the books. For years we had practiced "benign neglect" by policing the border but doing virtually no interior enforcement. Then, the situation south of the border deteriorated, we got more crossing and more asylum claims. Then Trump picked up the issue and a lot of people were like, wait a second, why are we allowing our laws to be violated with impunity? There is NOTHING human beings hate more than unfairness and privilege. This, if course, further radicalizes Democrats and when Biden wins, he is too weak and enfeebled to resist the radicals and the migrants sense this and stream for the border. Finally, the public cries "Just enforce the damn laws already!"...and now, we have masked ICE agents grabbing on people on the streets and at Home Depot. Eventually, problems that are benignly neglected catch up with you.
Caplan, if I am not mistaken, had stated that he finds the Qatar model of open borders acceptable. Companies sponsor workers but the workers have no path to permanent residency, and are freely deported at the slightest infraction of worker discipline and local laws. There are no political rights, no welfare whatsoever.
Id expect immigration to work up to the assimilation capacity of the receiving society.
I find it unlikely that the USA is anywhere near that capacity. Americans are really, really good at assimilating immigrants. Compare immigrant communities in the USA to similar ones in Europe.
Main thing to watch is whether human services such as policing, health, and education are able to maintain standards. If those standards are dropping, then the society is passed capacity.
Trump has stirred up so much hysteria about evil immigrants bringing drug trafficking, disease, murder, and rape to the US that a rational argument about immigration like this one, based on logic and numbers, is going to fall flat every time.
Because it's not rational, it's only rational to a utilitarian or someone who cares purely about money. People tend to care about more than that in the aggregate. Also it's mostly pushed by people who will benefit by it, Bryan isn't going to lose his job here nor is he going to move to Dearbornstan or Somalisota. His kids aren't going to public schools where nobody speaks English and his neighborhood as squat camps of immigrants and refugees. What Bryan gets is cheap cleaners and "exotic" food.
That said we are all on the wrong side of history here, just like with white flight. The future utopian world Bryan and his ilk envision is a working class brown world wide caliphate that eats tacos and fried rice with SD-1 IQ renormalized as SD0. You know, the Western elite dream. Basically cultural nostalgie de la boue.
"Rational" does not mean correct or moral. Rational simply means arguing logically from premises to conclusions. If you do not like the conclusions, you can certainly challenge the premises, which you do when you say that some things are more important than money. But I don't quite follow your attack on utilitarianism, which is concerned with consequences, because you then write at some length about unsalutary consequences of open immigration for both immigrants and the people who live near them. Writing about the suffering of immigrants and those around them and the way that elites benefit from cheap labor and exotic food is an emotional argument that differs from the emotional argument about immigrants bringing drug trafficking, disease, rape, and murder. But it is an emotional argument, nonetheless. For the record, I am open to your argument. I just want to point out that there is a disconnect between rational and emotional arguments that makes them incommensurable.
It's not just rational to a utilitarian, it's rational to anyone who thinks promoting the general good is extremely morally important, which is everyone who isn't a psychopath.
I'm not sure what these other, non-economic values that would cause people to oppose immigration are, I don't see how immigration threatens any common human values. People talk about community and cohesion, but there have been plenty of native-born Americans I've felt alienated among and plenty of foreigners I've felt an instant connection to. If someone can't connect or form communities doesn't it make more sense for them to engage in self improvement to fix that, rather than try to restrict immigration?
Generally pro-immigrant views are pushed by the city-dwellers who are most likely to encounter immigrants and experience the full costs and benefits of immigration. Anti-immigrant views tend to be popular in rural areas whose inhabitants will rarely see any immigrants and can easily be bamboozled by fearmongers. If you live near Dearborn (I do) it's easier to notice that its inhabitants are normal Americans. Instead of being strange and dangerous foreigners, they are the guy who fixed your car, the woman who helped your child overcome their speech impediment, or the guy who started the great new burger joint near you. People who live near immigrants are less likely to fall for any retarded fearmongering about "caliphates."