A Tall Wall for Immigration Supporters To Climb
Meet the opposition where they are.
In recent conversations with friends, intelligent and generally well-informed people mind you, it becomes clear to me how much work that immigration supporters, myself among them, have to do.
We, I among them for sure, have underestimated the gap between our position and the one commonly held by those who oppose this view. To be sure, this opposition comes in a variety of forms. I am not so much concerned in this post with those who are adamantly opposed to immigration in all forms. Those minds are too closed for this discussion. I am concerned with people like my friends who do see positives in immigration and would/will support it in some meaningful way. My reference to “people” below is in regard to this collective in general—yes, of course, likely no one in particular is described by all of what follows.
There are two important areas of disagreement: (1) Values—normative beliefs that can reasonably be different given different first principles, and (2) Facts—historical, economical, and current events.1
In my writing I focus a lot on the first, values. I also make what I’ve come to realize is a mistake in assuming this is basically the big source of disagreement. But as important as this work is, it cannot overcome the gap in the second. This is the gap we should practically work to close first.
The upshot is that I believe closing it will largely do much of the work on the other since most people’s principles are not too different from our position. Additionally, understanding the economic gains can at the least allow people with an anti-immigration disposition to soften out of their own self-interest. And the economic angle certainly has opportunity to shift minds who are already but only slightly in favor of immigration. This moves the Overton Window and it pulls many through it.
The challenge is that here, as in most areas of conventional policy wisdom, people’s understanding of the facts is meaningfully different than reality. This is hampered further by a desire to believe hopeful, simple narratives along with an intuition that is misguided.
Media further confusion, but this is as much reinforcing what people want to believe as it is guiding them as to what to believe. So I view the media as amplifying the noise primarily. The persuasion role they play is secondary.
People want to believe America, a land of immigrants, is still friendly to immigration—that the ability to immigrate is like what we learned in school. That there is a process. “Why won’t they just get in line and do it the right way?” Well, because legal immigration is nearly impossible.
People get lost in the assumption that immigrants economically cost the natives something, which is obviously wrong to those with a basic understanding of economics. Unfortunately, most people are economically innumerate. They cannot get past the first-order effects of someone theoretically (or, worse, actually) losing their job. They fail to see how this would be an argument against any economic improvement from a growing native population (e.g., native babies will one day take current workers jobs well before voluntary retirement) to changes in consumer preferences (e.g., the low-carb diet trend put donut firms among others out of business) to technological developments (e.g., robots have replaced workers in manufacturing for decades).
As linked above, the gains from immigration easily outweigh the temporary, transitionary losses. And the individual cases of true job or wage rate loss, while very real for the people involved, are much better addressed through individualized assistance and are rounding errors in the grand scheme of things.
People want to believe the chaos at the border that we witnessed over the past decade (including the chaos of Trump I) was the failure of immigration rather than the failure of government to do its job. They confuse the chaos with an idea of open borders when the two have little to do with one another.
People believe immigrants are a threat to the welfare state, when and where they do support welfare, and confuse their complaints against welfare as being complaints about immigration, when they do not support welfare. They don’t realize how small immigrant use of welfare is or how most government benefits are not legally available to most immigrants.
When people hear about and see evidence of Trump’s recent deportation actions, they assume they are not as bad as people say or bad but necessary. Other times people are simply unaware of the brutality and cruelty either because they are uninformed (typical but defensible rational ignorance) or because they believe what the administration says (typical and indefensible motivated reasoning). They simply don’t know that many people being targeted for deportation are here legally or are being targeted based minor technicalities or are actually U.S. citizens. They don’t realize the composition of illegal immigrants deported are not a worst of the worst and more often than not have no pending criminal charges. And they would be shockingly surprised to learn that immigrants (legal and illegal) are more law-abiding than natives improving the safety of the country.
People don’t know how well immigrants assimilate (Haitian and Somalian fear-bait myths aside). They fall into the trap of thinking these recent immigrants are somehow different than the experience for others in the past. They don’t know about or see the similarities to the way Chinese, Italian, Irish, and other “undesired” immigrants were once feared and protested against. This borders on value differences (the first gap I am not addressing today), but I’m not thinking about the differences that exist between me and bigots or even xenophobes. I am thinking about good-meaning people who believe there is a meaningful cultural difference that somehow prevents assimilation now just like it was wrongly assumed of other groups in the past.
Very often the people opposing my view from this perspective will wholeheartedly proclaim the immigrants they know or have encountered are the exceptions to this point of view. It is usually some “others” who fit the charge of unassimilable. They are too different in the eyes of the immigration doubters from “us” or us plus immigrants they actually know. This is just another version of bad arguments I recently wrote about.
People have a natural desire for order and orderly processes. I would agree these are justified desires. I would also agree the government has repeatedly utterly failed in this regarding immigration (like in so much else). Where the gap between us is the smallest lies in having a reasonable government process to manage the border effectively. We absolutely should expect the government can be as efficient and effective at border management as is the U.S. Patent Office or NTSA.
The gap widens considerably when it comes to understanding how immigrants (legal residents as well as those on a path to citizenship) are positive contributions to our country. This is a gap of understanding of facts and testable theories of socioeconomic relations. It is not a values gap.
It is incumbent upon me and those in my camp to better explain and patiently listen to those who do not yet know what I know. While I certainly remain open to changing/adapting my own views on this matter, it is one I am quite confident I know much better than those I am describing above. I am claiming to be a subject-matter expert from at least a generalist perspective. So I cautiously categorize my strong views in this area as strongly held.
What I need to do is not fail2 into the trap of assuming others do or should know as much as I claim to know even as I assume I do know it. By expecting idealized versions of reality on the part of my interlocutors, I am letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
There are two ways to read this. (1) Charitably - I am actually criticizing my own shortcomings in persuasion even though I am casting shade on the opponents for being literally ignorant. I am not in this reading so much as chastising their ignorance as I am excusing it and framing it as a criticism of me. (2) Uncharitably - I am taking a Straussian approach to simply chastise the opponents. Let me be clear, this is not my intent. This is not snark. It is an honest assessment of myself (primarily) and my camp (secondarily).
The use of “fail” rather than “fall” here is intentional.