What’s Really Wrong With Anti-Immigrants

Racism<Xenophobia<Misanthropy

Several informed critics of my Open Borders complimented me for refraining from calling the opponents of immigration “racist.” But to be honest, this choice was primarily strategic. The point of my book is to change people’s minds about immigration, and insulting people — even truthfully — is a poor way to change minds.

But all strategy aside, what is the truth of the matter? Using the One True Definition of racism as “failure to be colorblind,” are anti-immigrants racist?

While I can’t read minds, my best guess is: only slightly. My reasoning: In the West, the only sizable group of people who explicitly oppose colorblindness are the woke. And for all their flaws, the woke are much less opposed to immigration than the non-woke. Sure, racism against non-whites is easy to find on social media, and almost all people who embrace racism against non-whites also fiercely oppose immigration. But since racism against non-whites is vanishingly rare in the real world, and hostility to immigrants is widespread, racism really can’t be an important motivator for anti-immigration.

Couldn’t the opponents of immigration just be quietly racist? Logically, that’s possible. Supporters of immigration often taunt that the other side “just wants to deport brown people.” But I’ve personally known many opponents of immigration well for decades, and I’ve never heard any of them make race-based exceptions. If they see a group of Mexicans getting deported on t.v., they never declare, “Gee, we really shouldn’t be deporting white Mexicans.” Indeed, I’ve never heard them express an ounce of race-based ambivalence. Key point: Depending on how you count them, visibly white Mexicans are 10-30% of the Mexican population, far too numerous of a group for any observant racist to miss through inattention.

If the racist motives of anti-immigrants are much overblown, what does motivate them? For many years, my go-to answer was simply xenophobia, an unreasonable pessimism about foreigners.* This story fits some of the most blatant facts of political psychology. Most obviously: Hostility to immigration and pessimism about foreigners are both widespread. Social media aside, people are much more willing to angrily denounce foreigners than fellow citizens of other races.

Critically, these angry denunciations have the tell-tale signs of unreasonable antipathy. When an immigrant commits an ultra-rare heinous action, people (in real life, not just social media) routinely rush to “We’ve got to do something about immigrants.” Yet if a native commits the same action, the same people would laugh at the idea that, “We’ve got to do something about natives.” When natives are bad, the standard reaction is “Punish the bad individuals.” When immigrants are bad, the standard reaction is “Punish the bad group.” Even the most colorblind observers are rarely, to coin a word, nativityblind.

You could demure, “Immigrants are, on average, objectively bad.” But only the most elite anti-immigrants bother to look at overall statistical comparisons of natives and foreigners, and — with rare exceptions — they too gladly and one-sidedly publicize salacious anti-immigrant anecdotes.

Furthermore, even the most elite anti-immigrants gloss over the massive, demonstrable effect of immigration on Gross World Product. United Arab Emirates proves that “trillion dollar bills on the sidewalk” is not Ivory Tower wishful thinking, but hard fact. Anti-immigrants’ only on-point reply is a casual “Well, almost all of the gains go to the immigrants.” Yet throughout economic history, large rises in productivity have always been broadly distributed. Mechanization of agriculture didn’t just enrich farmers, but everyone who eats. The industrial revolution didn’t just enrich factory owners, but everyone who shops. Vaccines didn’t just enrich pharmaceutical companies, but everyone vulnerable to disease. No matter; elite anti-immigrants remain strangely sure that “This case is different” — and shrug in the face of keyhole solutions.

For most of my career, I found “Xenophobia is the foundation of anti-immigration” satisfactory. Over the last decade, however, I have come around to a somewhat different story.

The fact that got me thinking: Even staunch opponents of immigration rarely say anything good about natives. Sure, elite anti-immigrants appeal to research on international IQ, cultural ancestry, and Putnamian trust. But only a handful have ever triumphally gushed, “We natives are so smart, our heritage so refined, our trust so deep.” When you point out, for example, that native high school dropouts are measurably worse than immigrant high school dropouts, anti-immigrants barely respond. Indeed, they treat you as obtuse for raising the issue.

Furthermore, even anti-immigrants who favor an exception for high-skilled immigrants want to set the skill cutoff sky-high. Indeed, almost all American anti-immigrants oppose open borders with Canada. Canada! Near-zero anti-immigrants advocate 10xing high-skilled immigration. Which, given global demographics, would be easy to do.

What’s going on? To repeat, I can’t read minds. But the best way to explain all of the preceding facts is that opposition to immigration is not fundamentally rooted in dislike of other races, or even other nationalities, but in dislike for the vast majority of humanity — fellow citizens included.

And we have a word for that: misanthropy. When opponents of immigration weigh the admission of a potential immigrant, their default is: “Most humans suck. Why would this applicant be any different?”

Why then do so few anti-immigrants voice support policies that discourage fertility for the average citizen? Why do so few support policies encouraging the emigration of subpar natives? For the same reason so few people voice policies to discourage their irritating in-laws from visiting. Not because they secretly like their in-laws, but because they feel stuck. If they tried purging their in-laws, their spouses would angrily push back. The purge wouldn’t just fail; it would likely backfire. The purger becomes the purgee.

If I’m correct, a cogent defense of immigration requires a response to misanthropy. What is the best such response?

The most common is to flatly deny the obvious facts of human inequality. That, dear readers, I shall never do. Instead, we should calmly ask: “All things considered, averaging over their entire lifespans, what fraction of people are net negatives for society?” In slogan form: “What fraction of humans are worse than nothing?”

Remember: Everyone who works generates lots of consumer surplus even if their net fiscal contribution to the Treasury is negative. The existence of murder, violent crime, and chronic parasitism shows that the correct answer to “What fraction of humans are better than nothing?” is greater than 0%, but the rarity of murder, violent crime, and chronic parasitism shows that the correct answer is probably under 10%. A flimsy reason indeed to violate the moral presumption against exile and sterilization.

While I’m fairly confident that misanthropy is a stronger driver of anti-immigration than xenophobia, I’m hardly sure. What I conclude with confidence is that racism is a minor factor. What would change my mind? If anti-immigrant leaders pushed for much more same-race immigration than currently exists — and their approval ratings soared.

Trust me, neither will happen.

* You could define xenophobia more neutrally as “pessimism about foreigners,” leaving the reasonableness of this pessimism open. But this violates standard usage. If, say, Spaniards are in fact murdering and enslaving the Aztec population, you wouldn’t call fleeing Aztecs “xenophobic.” Why not? Because under the circumstances, the Aztecs’ pessimism is fully justified.