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Joe Biden began dismantling U.S. border controls just hours after taking the presidential oath of office. He halted the deportation of illegal aliens apprehended in the interior of the country, thus turning the U.S. into one large sanctuary zone. (A federal judge in Texas has temporarily enjoined Biden's no-deportation order, but that injunction will have little practical effect, since a court can hardly compel immigration agents to affirmatively act.)

Biden suspended a Trump administration initiative that required asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico or other Central American countries while their case is adjudicated. Before Donald Trump's now-canceled Migrant Protection Protocols went into effect, asylum seekers would disappear into the heartland while their case was pending, and would stay underground after their asylum claims were denied.

The president has instructed federal prosecutors that they may resume releasing illegal aliens caught at the border, rather than processing them for deportationa pre-Trump practice commonly known as "catch-and-release."

And Biden has announced the most ambitious amnesty proposal in history. The plan would legalize virtually the entire population of illegal aliens, including those who arrived as late as December 2020 and who have thus developed none of the alleged community ties that have justified amnesties in the past. Criminals with all but the most heinous rap sheets would also qualify.

Traditionally, amnesty proposals have come packaged with a quid pro quo: an offer of enforcement regarding future immigration violations. Amnesties have a powerful magnet effect; they induce further illegal border crossings, undertaken with the assumption that the next tranche of illegal aliens will also be granted legalized status and an eventual pathway to citizenship. The promised future enforcement is intended, at least nominally, to counter that magnet effect.

Biden is not even paying lip service to the quid pro quo convention. He proposes more foreign aid to Central American countries and some technological upgrades at the border, but those measures are a far cry from the necessary enforcement. The only thing certain about foreign aid is that it will find its way into the pockets of Third World officials. The chance that it will jump-start corruption-plagued economies is slight. And unless technology is backed up by the likelihood of deportation, it, too, will have an insufficient effect on efforts at illegal entry.

Foreign nationals have been congregating at the southern border for months, in anticipation of a Biden presidency. Absent an unequivocal signal that immigration law-breaking will be met by a return to an alien's host country, the number of illegal entries will only surge. Once deportation is off the table as a response to illegal status, the entire corpus of immigration law becomes a nullity. America's immigration policy becomes determined by people outside its bordersnot by its citizens.

By all means, Republicans should push for robust enforcement before any amnesty goes into effect, however unlikely such a commitment from the Biden administration may be. But they should also demand a different quid pro quo: stop demonizing the country as "systemically racist." Logically, both positions cannot be true: It cannot be the case that America subjects minorities to lethal racism, as Biden maintains, and that compassion requires admitting as many new victims as possible. After all, their lives will be disfigured, if we are to believe the racism narrative, by America's fatal and "systemic" bigotry.

But the racism theme has only increased in volume since the election. A day after being sworn in, Biden said he was in a "battle for the soul of this nation." So enduring was the unwillingness of white Americans to treat minorities equally that Biden was empowering "every branch of the White House and the federal government" to fight "systemic racism." "It's time to act," Biden announced upon signing the first of many executive orders aimed at engineering "racial equity."

Arguably, the U.S. has been "acting" on racial equity for decades. Hundreds of billions of dollars in transfer payments have been made; anti-poverty programs have rolled out of every level of government, supplemented with nonstop philanthropic efforts. There is not a mainstream institution, whether corporation, bank, law firm, Big Tech company, college or public agency, that is not now trying to hire and promote as many minority candidates as possible. Black applicants to selective colleges are often admitted with test scores and GPAs that would be disqualifying if presented by their white and Asian peers. Colleges are creating new academic programs simply in order to hire more black and minority faculty members. Corporate bonuses increasingly depend on the number of minorities a manager has promoted, regardless of the effects on company productivity.

So far is America's majority from embracing a white supremacist ethic that white Americans penitently turn their eyes away from black crime rates. They choose to ignore the fact that interracial violence is predominantly one-way: according to federal government statistics, blacks commit 88 percent of all interracial violence between whites and blacks. It is taboo in polite society to acknowledge the leading behavioral drivers of many socioeconomic disparities. And when Biden calls "racism [and] nativism" America's "harsh, ugly reality," as he did in his Inaugural Address, he will be applauded by many white Americans for his "unifying" message.

The progressive worldview, however, ignores such countervailing evidence and insists upon America's endemic racism as the only allowable explanation for socioeconomic disparities. Given that worldview, administration officials should explain the following dilemma: Why do they want to increase migration from Third World countries, which would only plunge the newcomers into this maelstrom of oppression? Biden has asserted that black children are at risk of getting shot by the police whenever they step outside. If this is the case, wouldn't non-American minority children be safer in their home countries? If the answer is, "well, things are worse elsewhere," that concession would at least constitute a baby step in the direction of some realism about the relative status of human rights across the globe.

The biggest refutation of Biden's systemic racism conceit, however, is the behavior of migrants themselves. The U.S. has been the most sought-after destination for would-be immigrants since global polling first assessed immigration preferences. One hundred and fifty-eight million people hope to immigrate to the U.S.five times the number of foreigners aiming for other top immigration destinations, such as Canada, Germany and Britain. The number of Sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbeans residing in the U.S. grew by more than 1.5 million between 2010 and 2019. They apparently thought that they were better off here than in their non-racist home countries. The number of immigrants from so-called "LatinX" countries, excluding Mexico, increased by 2.1 million from 2010 to 2019. And contrary to received wisdom about racist Republicans and Trump supporters, red states are the most popular immigrant destinations. Florida and Texas had the greatest numerical increases in their foreign-born populations from 2010 to 2019a combined total of 1.67 millionand North Dakota and South Dakota had the greatest increases measured as a percentage of a state's populationup 87 percent and 63 percent, respectively.

Mass low-skilled immigration and our elites' parroted narrative about America's endemic racism each erode social cohesion. Taken together, the effect is disastrous.

Sociologist Robert Putnam has argued that high levels of diversity in a community undermine the trust that its members extend toward one another. Wave upon wave of large-scale unassimilated immigration has turned Los Angeles into a sprawling congeries of balkanized ethnic enclaves. Mass immigration widens the wealth gap between the educated and the less educated by driving down wages for low-skilled jobs. African-Americans and native-born Hispanics lose their favored victim status for progressives in the context of immigration policy.

The Democrats' obsession with white America's alleged racism is equally corrosive. Young people are being taught to see bigotry where it does not exist, to hate America and its history, and to think of themselves as perennially oppressed. Many will enter the workplace with a chip on their shoulder, constantly finding offense.

The Biden administration is poised to amplify the racism narrative to new decibel levels. It is only a matter of time before Ibram X. Kendi, today's leading purveyor of white guilt, is installed in a new government office of "anti-racism."

This is not an auspicious moment, then, to radically increase immigration. Assimilating immigrants from wildly different cultures becomes all the more difficult when America has lost faith in its principles and is rapidly tearing down monuments to its past. Some portion of immigrants and their progeny have already adopted an oppositional mindset, denouncing the "white supremacy" of their chosen country. An entitlement mentality is visible in attitudes toward government support and language skills acquisition: Police officers in Santa Ana, California, for example, report that many residents expect to be addressed in Spanish.

The best course for the country would be to reduce immigration levels and racial victimology. The first measure would allow American workers to recover from the coronavirus lockdowns and would increase the odds of assimilating existing immigrant populations. The second measure would lift the pall cast by a divisive untruth. The Biden administration is unlikely to take even one of those courses of action. But it should at least be confronted with its own illogic in pursuing increased immigration into a country it simultaneously declares to be the nemesis of fair treatment and equal rights.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of The Diversity Delusion.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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If 'Systemic Racism' Is Real, Why Does Biden Want To Bring Immigrants Here? | Opinion - Newsweek

In the movie Field of Dreams, the lead character hears a voice while standing in his cornfield. If you build it, he will come. So, the man builds a baseball field. The ghost of his ballplaying father appears, and so does a whole group of famous dead baseball players.

Its antithetical to former President Donald Trumps plan to build something so people wouldnt come. As youve likely heard, construction of Trumps beautiful big wall was halted by our new president as part of the evolving changes to U.S. immigration policy.

President Joe Biden has made his intentions clear. Among his proposals: Give the millions of immigrants already in the U.S. a faster route to citizenship; restore protections for those brought into the U.S. as children; open the southern border, and stop holding asylum seekers in Mexico while they await legal entry; shutter many migrant detention centers; and somehow fix the enormous immigration-court backlog. Oh, and stop deportations for at least 100 days, except for those illegal immigrants charged with felony crimes.

As with any new administration, promises and good intentions abound. What ultimately gets done is usually something different.

One thing is clear, however. The moratorium on deportations coupled with all the other Biden immigration proposals have given hope to countless outsiders desperate to flee their poverty-stricken countries and find a new life in the U.S. Massive human caravans from Honduras are already headed this way. Some predict throngs of Central American migrants will follow.

The governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico have agreed to try to stop the hordes, but the sheer number of refugees has been overwhelming. Clashes with troops have turned violent, and splinter groups of migrants have pushed through. Bidens order to halt deportations energized them with new hope.

Hes gonna help all of us, one unidentified man in a caravan said on CNN. Hes giving us 100 days to get to the U.S. ... (to) get a better life for our kids and family.

No compassionate human can fail to feel for these desperate people. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see this ragtag group of women, children and men, who left everything behind and set out on foot to find a home devoid of rampant crime, poverty and hunger. They are determined to find a better existence through legal or even illegal means. How many of us faced with those conditions would have the courage to do that?

But at a time when countless refugees have waited months or years for USA entry, while the pandemic rages and vaccines are maddeningly slow to be administered, is it wise to think about opening our borders again? There is no guarantee that, after 100 days, the threat of COVID-19 will be gone. Is it wrong to think about the rule of law? Is it wrong to think about whats best for the United States of America?

The state of Texas, which has the nations longest border with Mexico, filed a lawsuit challenging the 100-day moratorium. The suit claims the action violates an agreement Texas has with Washington that obligates the feds to consult with the state before changing immigration policy. A Trump-appointed federal judge promptly issued a temporary restraining order to block the deportation freeze.

Payback politics are at play here, and Democrats who filed a spree of lawsuits against Trumps immigration policies, specifically his wall, should steel themselves as Republicans now respond in kind.

We have become a people who cannot tolerate neighbors who have differing opinions. How will we ever come to an agreement on how or if to help those struggling to become taxpaying U.S. citizens? We are certainly in for a bumpy immigration ride ahead.

Although a Biden official warned migrants that immigration changes would not be enacted overnight, discouraging them from coming now, it is obvious that news didnt reach Central America. People hear what they want to hear, and desperate refugees believe they heard an implicit invitation to travel north. Say, Stop the deportations and, like the movie, they will come.

Now the question is, President Biden, what will we do with them when they arrive on our southern border?

Diane Dimonds column is syndicated by Creators

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Dimond: There's a bumpy immigration ride ahead - The Winchester Star

Unlimited illegal immigrationthats what a Biden administration wants, and that is what it will be able to get after Jan. 20.

This is perhaps the most important domestic policy issue at stake for America as we face single-party leadership in both chambers of Congressand the White House. And it couldnt come at a worse time for our country as Americans struggle to keep businesses open and regain a public health footing from the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 virus.

President-electJoeBiden has a long record of calling for unlimited immigration.

In 2015, he was recalling a conversation he had with a former president of Singapore about what separates America. He stated that it was an unrelenting stream of immigrationnonstop, nonstop.

He had previously expressed this desire to the National Association of Manufacturers, where he said that the constant, unrelenting stream of immigrants into the U.S. was the basis for our economic strength.

He emphasized that he wanted not dribbling amounts, but significant flows.

With the left in control of the U.S. Senate, the Biden administration has aCongress available to rubber-stamp its most radical immigration agenda items. And make no mistake: The left will not waste this political opportunity. Its leaders understand that mass immigration historically transfers into more leftist voters.

Its no coincidence that the open-borders lobby has found a permanent home with leftists. It means pure political power. Look no further thanCalifornia as Exhibit A.

So, what can the Biden administration do with a House and Senate controlled by the far left? First, it can seek to legalize all illegal aliens within the U.S., with token exceptions for some hardened criminals.

Keep in mind that the U.S.doesnt even know how manyillegal aliens are here, in part because theleft has opposed any effortto try to better understand that number. TheBiden team claims it is around 11 million, but other estimates top 22 million.

Such anamnestyeffort would not make any attempt at assimilating illegal aliens into the U.S. mainstreamadopting our language, culture, and patriotism.

Second, the borders would be open and overrun. Promising amnesty has already resulted in a run on the border, or the Biden Effect. Once the wheels start moving toward the largest amnesty in our history, the Border Patrol would be overwhelmed by illegal aliens seeking to get their claim to the most prized passport in the worldand all the government benefits that come along with it.

Couple this green light with stand-down orders to the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and you have a recipe for absolute disaster without any limiting principle. A recent Gallup poll found that more than 158 million adults would migrate to the United States if they could.

With aBiden presidency and a leftist-controlled Congress, what will be able to stop them?

Third, scarce resources would be directed away from current Americans and toward amnestied immigrants. This means it would be open season on the buffet of federal government welfare programs, as well as the continued strain on Americas job availability, education budgets, health care costs, andpublic safetyresources.

Translation? Americans forced to compete for employment opportunities as wages decrease, crowded schools with burgeoning numbers of students who dont speak English, rising health care costs, increased COVID-19 spread, and more gang-related crime, as Americans have seen from the ruthless MS-13 where it has taken hold.

But asBiden says of illegal immigrants, We owe them.

Americans are directly affected by immigration policy in many important aspects of our livesjobs, the economy, education, health care, crime, and national security.

Americans and lawful immigrants want our immigration laws enforced and our borders secured.

Yet, we are on the verge of having neither. With the White House and Congress under single-party leadership, it will be up to the American people to frequently and loudly voice their opinion that open borders and amnesty are wrong for America.

Read more here:
America May Soon Face Unlimited Illegal Immigration - Heritage.org

I recognize, as a member of the Democratic Party, the incoming administration's desire to eliminate as much as it can of the legacy of the Trump administration. It will stop building walls and will ease some of the enforcement of the immigration law that's inevitable.

But, being the new party in power, it also has the opportunity (and the obligation) to do some fresh thinking in this field and to try new approaches to old problems. With that in mind, this is the first of several occasional posts on the administration's opportunities to reform the immigration system, or at least parts of it.

Today's subject is a narrow one: How can we use the Diversity Visa Lottery program to ease the migration pressures from Central America, such as the caravans from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that are threatening our southern border?

At first glance, the two subjects would seem to have no relationship with each other. The Diversity Lottery is part of the legal immigration system and the people from the Northern Triangle are trying to enter the nation illegally.

In 2018, the lottery gave 50,000 green cards to people from all over the world, such as 4,494 to those from Uzbekistan and 1,020 to those from Tajikistan, compared to none in El Salvador, 144 in Honduras, and 120 in Guatemala. The lottery seemed to deliver much less than 1 percent of its benefits to people from the Northern Triangle. What's the connection?

Let's step back a bit and suggest a new approach to immigration policy: How can we use existing systems to discourage illegal immigration without necessarily expanding the huge number of legal immigrants (more than one million a year, a number most Americans find daunting)? This represents a more sophisticated way of thinking about illegal migration than, say, building a wall (which is not a totally bad idea, but that's a subject for some other day).

We Democrats believe in government, and that government can and should play a positive role in people's lives, even though some of the mechanisms are complex (like our tax system). It is within this broad context that I bring up the matter of the Visa Lottery and the threat from the Northern Triangle that my colleague Todd Bensman writes about from time to time.

The Idea. My notion is not brand new. It is that if the possibility of legal migration can be offered to a specific population it will, to some extent, stay put instead of seeking to move illegally. New Zealand, where I had a Fulbright Scholarship some decades ago, has long run a small-scale lottery for some of the small island nations north of it. All of the nations involved are, as is New Zealand, former British colonies or, in the case of Tonga, a protectorate; they are Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, and Tuvalu.

The Kiwi lottery was created to discourage illegal immigration; our lottery, in contrast, was not the result of that kind of planning (something that New Zealand is good at), but rather a reflection of a globalist desire to expand opportunities to migrate to the U.S. to people who would not otherwise qualify to do so. I am pretty sure that the Visa Lottery is a bad idea, but it is in place, and could be used (as it is not now) to ease the pressures on the southern border.

The Plan. As we noted earlier, the lottery causes the admission of thousands of people from Central Asia, among other places, which have no history of massive illegal migration to the U.S. Why not reduce some of those numbers and use those visas to discourage illegal migration to our country? This would not increase the level of legal migration to the U.S. and would serve a highly useful public service.

I suggest that 10,000 visas be drawn from the current total to be used only in the Northern Triangle countries. It would simplify things if the rather loose current qualifications would continue: One must have a high school degree or two years of specialized training, a passport, and one must make an application on a computer (or hire someone to do that chore). I would lay on one further qualification in the Northern Triangle countries one must not have a record of entering the U.S. illegally.

The details of the plan would be designed to keep applicants in their home countries while they wait for a visa possibility. They would have to re-apply every year, and they would be subject to unscheduled home visits by a junior U.S. diplomat, who would simply make sure that they are in-country, and not in the U.S. In subsequent years, people who had filed the previous year would have some greater chance of getting the visa than new applicants, and that advantage would increase further in the third year, and so on.

Introduction of the program would also be useful in our relations with the home countries, as it would be a carrot rather than a stick.

The Precedent. But would not the countries that used to get large numbers of visas object to the 20 percent reduction (from about 50,000 to about 40,000)? Possibly, but that would mean that they wanted to encourage emigration, a rejection of their own country. Further, reduction of chances for legal migration is not the same as the elimination of them.

And there is a precedent for nibbling at the total numbers of visas granted to provide special benefits for a special set of nations. Back in 1997, as NumbersUSA has written, "5,000 of these visas were reserved for individuals who qualified for legal permanent resident status under the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act. Those 5,000 visas are not granted under a lottery process."

So once there were 55,000 visa provided by Lottery, and now there are 50,000, and the difference was created for an earlier round of Central American asylum seekers. Why not do it again to offer some benefits to the citizens of the U.S., i.e., less illegal migration?

This would need an act of Congress, or a rider on one of those omnibus appropriations bills.

North, now a resident of Arlington, Va., was his party's candidate for Congress in New Jersey's Fifth District more than 60 years ago and was, later, assistant to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and worked on immigration policy in the LBJ White House.

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To the Biden Administration: Let's Get Creative with Our Immigration Policy - Immigration Blog

One of the most common justifications for immigration restrictions is the claim that letting in too many of the wrong type of immigrants would undermine liberal democratic institutions. In the worst-case scenario, their flawed culture, values, or political ideologies could "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" that attracted immigrants in the first place, and turn the receiving nation into a cesspool of despotism. Such concerns should be taken seriously, and I devote a large part of Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom to addressing them. Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell's just-published Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions undertakes the same task in much greater depth, and is likely to become the most authoritative treatment of the subject.

But, as Nowrasteh points out in a recent blog post, the focus on immigrants as a threat to American institutions leads many to overlook the much greater danger posed by nativist nationaliststhe people most hostile to immigration. Recent events highlight the severity of that threat:

Benjamin Powell and Iwrote our book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions to address the argument that liberalized immigration will undermine the very American institutions that created economic prosperity that attracted immigrants here in the first place. Immigrants generally come from countries with political, cultural, and economic institutions that are less conducive to economic growth than those in the developed world. The fear is that they'd bring those antigrowth institutions with them. Thus, as their argument goes, immigrants could actually kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

As we assiduously document, immigrants do not bring those institutions with them and there is even evidence that immigrants improve institutions after they immigrate.

It's ironic that the immigration restrictionists most worried about immigrants degrading Americaninstitutions are attacking those very institutions at every level. After President Trump lost his reelection bid, the most nativistic members of his party have embarked on aquest to reverse theelection. Adozen Republican Senators, mostly those supportive of cutting legal immigration, plan to object to the certification of Biden's win over Trump. Over 100 representatives could join in too. President Trump cut legal immigration more than any other president and he recently threatened Georgia election officials.

Immigration restrictionists have also attacked the institution of private property. The Trump administration has seized or is trying to seize 5,275acres of privately owned land to build aborder wall, most of it in Texas. Trump even diverted Congressionally appropriated funds from the military to build the border wall.

Many in Trump's orbit are also conspiracy theorists or work with them at every opportunity. Making up stories to tarnish your opponents and believing in nutty conspiracy theories bothbreak down trust in institutions, which is exactly what some nativists claim immigration does to the United States.

Alex's post was published on January 5, the day before the attack on the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. But the events of that awful day further demonstrate his point. While we do not have detailed demographic data on them, it is highly likely that the rioters were overwhelmingly native-born whitesand (much more importantly) strong supporters of Trump's nationalist, anti-immigration agenda.

Political scientists and survey researchers find that white ethnic nationalism and hostility to immigration are among the strongest predictors of support for Trump and his agenda. Those who fear that immigrants are a menace to American culture and institutions also tend to be most likely to tolerate and make excuse for Trump's authoritarian tendencies.

Some of the awful events of the last few weeks are the result of Trump's distinctive personality and behavior, and of idiosyncratic characteristics of the American political system. But many are common characteristics of ethno-nationalist anti-immigration movements around the world. Over the last century, it has been extremely common for nationalist movements hostile to immigrants and ethnic minorities to subvert democratic institutions, often eventually installing brutal dictatorships.

The Nazis are, of course, the most notorious example. But the same was true of other early-20th century fascist movements in Italy, Spain, and elsewhere. More recently, nationalist movements have destroyed or severely undermined democracy in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, the Philippines, India, and elsewhere. In each of these cases, authoritarian nationalists claimed to represent the true will of the peopledefined as those of the majority ethnicity, religion, or culture.

Such claims also naturally lead to the idea the election victories by the opposition must be illegitimate, because only the nationalists represent "real" Americans, Hungarians, Russians, Poles, or Indians (defined, again, as members of the majority ethnic or culture group, free of "foreign" influence). Nationalist movements also commonly promote conspiracy theories. If they alone represent the will of the people, any political setbacks must be due to the machinations of shadowy, nefarious forces, such as foreigners, "globalist" elites, international bankers, Jews, and so on.

Trump's conspiracy-mongering about the 2020 election, complete with claims that the vote was falsified by illegal immigrant voters, foreign agents, and others, is of a piece with similar conspiracy-mongering by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, and other nationalist leaders in Europe and elsewhere.

The US is not as far-gone as Russia, Hungary and other nations that have succumbed to authoritarian nationalism, and our democratic institutions are (so far) stronger than theirs. But we would be foolish to ignore the parallels between these movements and Trumpism, and even more foolish to ignore the risks of letting such movements grow. Trump and his allies themselves recognize the similarities, and have embraced Orban, Putin, and other similar leaders and movements (including ethno-nationalists in Western Europe), as ideological soulmates.

By contrast with the long record of nationalists subverting democracy, there are no modern instances of a democracy collapsing or even significantly degenerating because of the political influence of immigrants with illiberal ideologies. In their book, Nowrasteh and Powell document how liberal democracies such as the US and Israel have coped well with large-scale immigration from repressive, undemocratic societies. That is partly because most immigrants from such nations don't actually support the ideologies of the regimes they are fleeing (that is a key reason why many fled in the first place), and partly because liberal societies have strong capacity to absorb and assimilate people.

A more sophisticated variant of the claim that immigrants are a threat to democratic institutions is the idea that the problem is not the immigrants themselves, but rather the political backlash they generate. Excessive immigration, it is said, bolsters the political fortunes of authoritarian nationalists (including Trump!), who in turn undermine democratic institutions when they come to power. Thus, we must restrict immigration to protect ourselves against native nationalists.

One flaw in this argument is that survey data consistently shows that most people in both the US and Europe consistently overestimate the true amount of immigration, and those most opposed to immigration overestimate the most. Given such widespread ignorance, we cannot assume that, say, a 10% reduction in immigration will lead to a parallel reduction in ethno-nationalist sentiment. Indeed, most nationalist voters might not even notice the difference.

It is also worth noting that hostility to immigration among natives often tends to be greatest in parts of the US and other countries that have the fewest immigrants. Indeed, it is striking that anti-immigrant nationalist movements came to power in Hungary and Poland, countries with very few immigrants (no more than 4.6% of the population at any time in the last 30 years, in the case of Hungary; no more than 3% in the case of Poland, and much lower in the last 20 years). This too weakens claims that we can reduce support for illiberal nationalist movements simply by cutting back on immigration at the margin.

Efficacy aside, the idea that we must restrict immigration in order to protect against native-born nationalists is morally perverse. It suggests we severely restrict the liberty and opportunity of innocent people in order to protect against wrongdoing by others. The innocent people in question include natives, as well as potential immigrants, since immigration restrictions also impose severe burdens on many of the former.

The backlash-prevention rationale for immigration restrictions is similar to nineteenth-century claims that we must allow southern whites to impose racial segregation on blacks in order to prevent the former from continuing to engage in violence and otherwise pose an ongoing threat to the Union. And, indeed, immigration restrictions have many similarities to domestic racial segregation, as both impose severe constraints on liberty and opportunity based on arbitrary circumstances of birth, and often based on the desire to maintain the dominance of a given racial or ethnic group.

If we must restrict liberty in order to protect ourselves against illiberal nationalists, the most appropriate people to target should be the nationalists themselves. But I hasten to add that I do not believe the US and other Western nations should actually go down this path, so long as there is any other plausible alternative. There should be a strong presumption against any constraints on civil libertieseven including those of people who have little respect for liberal values, themselves.

We cannot completely rule out the possibility that there are cases where illiberal immigrants pose a threat to democratic institutions. In my book, I describe potential extreme situations where that could be a real threat. But, in the vast majority of cases, the far greater menace to democracy is that posed by nativist nationalism.

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Nationalists, not Immigrants, are the Real Threat to Liberal Democratic Institutions - Reason