Immigration is Good, but not Free
There are short-term costs and long-term benefits that are all worth thinking about
As we enter the second Trump administration I want to also start thinking beyond it - I didn’t vote for him and think it’s bad that he’s in power, to put it mildly, and I also think that the American political project will continue after he is gone. For the sake of America and everything that I care about I want Trump to not fail too much or do too much damage. I also see him as erratic, corrupt, and incompetent, and if/when he causes lots of problems I want better ideas to be available as alternatives. To that end I want to start doing more thinking out loud / public reasoning about society and policy, not because I’m especially prominent or important but because I’m a citizen and I see conversations like these as a civic responsibility.
I’m going to start with immigration.
As I see it, immigration comes with short term costs and long term benefits for the host society.
Quickly increasing the number of people living somewhere increases demand for a lot of necessary things. Everyone needs food and a place to stay, which bids up prices for rent and groceries. Adults need an income, and kids need education. Income for adults can come from jobs, which means competing with native residents and bidding down wages for those particular jobs. Income could also come from state welfare, which means the government going into debt or raising taxes. Education for kids means increased class sizes and lower teacher to student ratios.
Then there are the cultural issues. Immigration needs to involve some process of and commitment to assimilation, from both the immigrants and the native residents. Immigrants need to have at least some willingness to learn the local language and customs, and native residents need at least some willingness to welcome their new neighbors with openness towards their way of life and patience as they feel their way through assimilation. Enclaves can form, which are big clumps of immigrants all living together in a slightly-separate sub-society, which can be good and bad - good in that they can help provide resources and support for new immigrants, bad in that if the borders of this enclave are too thick then you create a population who never adapt to the local culture and can’t function beyond the enclave at all.
If the economic resources aren’t available (for whatever reason) then you get a bunch of desperate people living in the streets. Public spaces become worse and some will turn to crime to make ends meet. Gangs can offer a place of belonging and money in the midst of a world that already hates you for being different and will never open its doors to you.
It’s important to note that these short-term risks and costs don’t impact the very-rich, who don’t rely on wages for income nor on public resources in general. They live in big houses far away from chaotic population centers and have all the private security and private schools they need.
Notice that there’s no reference to race or country of origin in any of the above - all I want to assert here is that there’s a *practical* ceiling on the short-term workability of immigration. The ceiling might be different for people from different countries of origin strictly for reasons of cultural *similarity* rather than cultural *superiority*. Someone from Canada would have an easier time immigrating to the US than someone from the Middle East, but someone from the Middle East might have an easier time immigrating to another Middle Eastern country than that same person from Canada. This isn’t to essentialize these cultures, just to say that linguistic and institutional familiarity really does make a morally-neutral difference!
So: there are resource-constraint related issues that put a ceiling on the number of immigrants that a society can absorb at once and which create costs and risks in general. Given all of the above, I am still broadly pro-immigration.
After the variable-but-inevitable friction of integration, immigrants start spending and getting taxed on the money they make. The goods and services they create start circulating too. They also don’t necessarily displace native workers in this process - they *can*, but they can also contribute skills and even just willingness to work that might be hard to find in native populations. Immigrants can themselves start businesses and revitalize declining neighborhoods. Immigrants can bring cultural novelty, which can be good or neutral or bad - the good stuff contributes to and propagates within the native society, the neutral stuff stays with the immigrants, the bad stuff withers and peters out (ideally! More on that later). Immigrants can also bring renewed civic engagement, showing up with a pre-appreciation for the native country as a land of opportunity.
In sum, I see immigration as having short-term costs that are more than worth it for everyone involved, if said costs are held in mind.
To briefly contrast my views with those of Biden and Trump: I think it proved to be practically unworkable to remove the “stay in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, which contributed to (without completely causing) a large amount of people entering the USA in a weird limbo. It led to a lot of people in the early stages of immigration (non-integrated resource-needers) without a clear path to the later stages of immigration (integrated productive citizens). Creating a precedent where you can show up and wander around while figuring out your legal path forward made it harder for any feedback loop to assert itself, any way of saying “we welcome you and also we can’t absorb this many people right now”. I want illegal and quasi-legal immigration to be hard and legal immigration to be easier. If you think of immigration as a morally-necessary method of reparations and support of the global dispossessed, that’s great - just recognize that there are resource-related limitations to that which make it hard to implement and sustain if not done thoughtfully.
I’m also way more friendly to immigrants than the Trump administration. Deportation raids are spectacular atrocities and also wastes of money. My enforcement policy would focus on border security, business regulation, and general criminal law enforcement. Quasi-legal immigrants are in a precarious position and are easier to take advantage of, not because they’re bad people but because of where they exist in the system, so businesses should be scrutinized and punished for trying to take advantage of desperate labor. Deportation efforts should start as an extension of everyday arrests - people who jump the fence and then get a DUIs should be at the top of the list for getting kicked out. I’m not interested in general xenophobia, racial-nationalism, or whatever - I see America as a distinct nation where you can *become* American in a way that you can’t *become*, say, German or Indian. I do think America is special, and being pro-immigrant is a part of what makes us special!
That said, as alluded to earlier, I don’t think it’s good to put immigrants on too-high of a pedestal. I think this is done by people who see themselves as combating white supremacy or capitalism or whatever source of systemic injustice is in their sights. Just like I don’t think it’s good to see all immigrants as parasites and threats, I also don’t think it’s good to see all immigrants as perfect victim angels who have no agency or responsibility. Immigrants can be terrible people too! Not because they’re immigrants per se, but because that’s just where they are in life as an individual. I think the broader aim of social/identity politics is to successfully remove identity-based barriers for people to exist as morally responsible beings.
So: at the dawn of the second Trump administration I find myself with a center-left stance on immigration (and many things). ‘Centrism’ got a bad rap since the 2010s, which is what it is - I think “things can get better but can also get much worse” is a fair thing to think too, as is “radicalism is not automatically the best option”. I’m happy to argue about all of the above! Either way, I appreciate you reading all of this and would really love to hear from you, especially if you see something that I don’t or just generally think I’m wrong.