Will Immigration Hurt American Society?

Neoliberals would like to let in a lot more immigrants. At the very least, we should double the current cap.

80% of the arguments against immigration are about the economic impact of immigration. This article is trying to chip away at the remaining 20% of the arguments, which is much harder to tackle. Specifically, we’re addressing the worry that immigration (particularly low-skilled) will hurt the social fabric of America.

But first, let’s quickly touch on the economics, not the social aspects.

For the most part, immigration is economically good for the average American citizen. If you take exception, most of your arguments can be addressed by this clip of Alex Norwasteh debating with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Alternatively, this goes a bit more into the specifics if you’d prefer text. Both take about ten minutes to get through.

So the US had open borders for its first 150 years. It didn’t cause social crises that we couldn’t work through. And throughout history, previous groups of immigrants have integrated well into America like the Irish and Germans.

This article was inspired from a debate with a very productive discussion with @uberfeminist who brought up, “But people are different now. America won’t be able to handle immigration.”

But in spite of the changes of the last 40 years, today’s pull to integrate culturally is still pretty strong.

It’s so strong, most immigrants speak only English by the third generation.

It’s so strong that Hispanic self-identification drops surprisingly fast.

It’s so strong that even Muslim immigrants quickly learn to support same-sex marriage.

Pretty sure selection bias (the government choosing progressive over conservative Muslims) isn’t a concern here. After all, it’s only been in the last 10 years that the majority of the US supported gay marriage.

It’s so strong that by the time immigrants get to vote, their opinions on welfare are pretty much the same as the rest of America’s.

I can see that they don’t line up. But at this point we’re looking at differences of only 1–3%.

So we don’t have to worry about cultural integration. We also shouldn’t worry too much about inequality.

Immigration generally doesn’t hurt native workers’ wages:

How is this possible? The answer lies in the way that the economy evolves to incorporate immigrants. For instance, less-skilled immigrants working in, say, agriculture, construction, or household services, appear to improve the wages and earnings of Americans by expanding the capacity of American businesses and farms, increasing the responsibility and pay of American foremen and supervisors, and providing expanded opportunities for higher-skilled Americans, particularly women, to pursue higher-paying careers.

So then the next response will be, “Okay, but it still increases income inequality. That would lead to backlash against immigrants right?”

Economic inequality isn’t concerning to most Americans. It would be hard for social friction to be sparked by something that people don’t care about in the first place.

In early 2011 Gallup polling that asked for an open-ended response to the question of what is America’s most important problem, just one percent said inequality, well below pressing issues like “lack of respect for each other” and “foreign aid,” to name just two that outranked inequality. Viewed against this evidence, it is unsurprising that the Gallup poll they cite from later in the year indicated only a minority of Americans thought it was important for the federal government to reduce inequality.

And besides, immigration only increases inequality by a bit.

If you’re not libertarian leaning you might not like the Koch-funded CATO as a source, but they discuss all relevant papers on inequality, not just the ones that help their case.

George Borjas, for example, is the most famous skeptic of immigration.

Borjas et. al. found that immigration (along with trade) only modestly affects earnings inequality — a role not substantial enough to account for more than a small percentage of the change.

Below is the New York Federal Reserve’s survey of the top labor economists in the country. According to them, immigration has the smallest contribution to income inequality.

Which brings us to another point — automation is the biggest driver of inequality. If you’re willing to restrict immigration to prevent it, then why wouldn’t you also restrict technological advancement?

You could argue that a person in the bottom 20% can’t come here and seek a better life because it’ll increase inequality, and that the government has the right to enforce that policy.

But to be consistent you also have to agree that Microsoft, Boeing, Google, Apple, Tesla, IBM, should eliminate funding for R&D, and that the government has the right to enforce that as well.

The same opinion should be with international trade as well — because it increases inequality, we should stop letting corporations order parts from China, India and Bangladesh!

Yes, your standard of living won’t go up anymore. Our iPhones, Androids, pants, and shirts will cost ten times as much, and the economy overall might stagnate. But it seems like a small price to pay to fight inequality, especially compared to a person who wants to leave Myanmar or Haiti but can’t.

So the inequality argument isn’t a good argument, and immigrants are still good at assimilation. That just leaves xenophobia.

To come back to the beginning, we’ve had open borders for 150 years. During that time, there was a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment and racism. Fights broke out, there were riots and a lot of friction. But America survived those issues and came out more prosperous.

It’s reasonable to argue that the climate is even more toxic now, that this time it’ll lead to a lot of misery. But Trump, the alt-right movement, and all the backlash that we’ve seen aren’t representative of America. That is, Americans aren’t any more opposed to immigration than before.

If anything, people are slightly more accepting of immigration now. A notable example is the public opinions on Vietnamese and Syrian refugees:

In 1979 US president Jimmy Carter announced he would double the number of refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. A poll from CBS and The New York Times showed that 62% of Americans disapproved. He did it anyway. Today, despite the xenophobic and anti-Muslim rhetoric from Republicans in the US presidential primaries, Americans are still less hostile to Syrian refugees than they were in 1979 to Southeast Asians. A slew of polls late last year found that opposition to letting Syrians in ranged between 50% and 60%.

So again, let’s push for more immigrants, regardless of their skills.

They raise the standard of living for the average American citizen. They don’t really increase inequality, and inequality isn’t something that Americans are concerned about anyway. Immigrants will continue to integrate, quickly absorbing and promoting values that make America great. Yes, there will always be xenophobia and hatred of outsiders. It’s nothing we can’t handle.