Links - Challenging Bad Anti-Immigration Arguments
Taking on the steelmen.
There are a LOT of bad arguments against immigration. These arguments generally rely on fallacious reasoning. Often they make emotional appeals that are non sequiturs. Reliably they have bad facts or facts taken out of proportion.
There are also some good ones. The second group fails not on pure fallacy. Rather, these work on their face at least, and in some cases they rise to a level deserving strong response.
One response in either case is that an argument might be assuming too much. That is the case for capital-C “Culture” as a catchall explanation for differences and as a premise fundamental to the argument being made.
Alex Nowrasteh makes the case that culture is a crutch. His subtitle says it all, “How lazy social scientists and commentators use the c-word to avoid doing their jobs.”
Culture is human behavior that is socially learned and transmitted rather than genetically inherited or individually discovered. In Substack and online debates, culture means whatever the person invoking it needs it to mean. Values. Beliefs. Norms. Attitudes. Customs. Work ethic. Family structure. Trust. Time preference. Cuisine. Music. When someone says “culture explains X,” they’re gesturing at a black box the size of human civilization and calling the gesture a theory.
Keep that definition of culture in mind as I explain how unsatisfying using the word “culture” is as an explanation. You notice a spike in unemployment. Curious what could be causing it, you ask your economist friend why unemployment is rising. He says it’s because of “the economy” and then sits back as if he’s explained something when he has done nothing of the sort. That’s how everybody sounds to me when they say that culture explains a behavior or outcome.
. . .
If you’re going to claim that culture has an effect, you should be able to do four things. First, pinpoint exactly what cultural characteristic you mean. Don’t be vague, be specific by describing the type of behavior. Second, prove that cultural behavior actually exists as a measurable trait. Don’t rely on stereotypes, do the hard work. Third, demonstrate that the cultural behavior differs meaningfully across the groups being compared. Wow, that culture likes food a lot. Which culture doesn’t? Fourth, rule out that the real cultural trait isn’t caused by an exogenous economic force like high real estate prices, rising wages, or different institutions that incentivize behavior. Almost nobody who invokes culture does any of these four things. Culture is endogenous to everything. That’s why you have to do the work to isolate it. That’s also why almost nobody bothers.
Here is the heart of the problem:
Culture is endogenous to everything. Claiming culture causes an outcome without first ruling out that the outcome’s causes also produced the culture is circular reasoning. Every cultural explanation must first survive a price, incentive, and institutional audit. Few of them do, but those that do are extraordinary findings, which is perhaps another explanation why so many claim it. Nobody would let economists get away with explaining a recession of high unemployment with the explanation, “It’s the economy.” We shouldn’t let others get away with the equally lazy non-explanation of “it’s the culture.”
As he says in his conclusion:
The culture-as-explanation discourse is largely anti-intellectual. These are faux explanations for social behavior and outcomes that have real explanations. Think harder. Read the literature on a topic yourself or ask AI to search for you. Other researchers have probably already written about the issue you claim is just caused by culture. Before you write the word “culture” in a causal sentence, search for the price. Search for the institution. Investigate the incentives. Search for the constraints. If you exhaust those and culture is still standing, then maybe you’ve found something. But you probably just didn’t look hard enough.
Throwing up your hands claiming “it’s cultural differences” is another way of saying “I don’t know!” Watch out for this dodge and beware falling for its slight of hand.
Next, Bryan Caplan offers two other responses to weak and strong arguments. Both come in the form of live debates.
The first is from the SoHo Forum where Caplan debated Simon Hankinson on the resolution: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should complete its mandate to deport all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States.”
From his opening statement:
While I’ve done many debates on immigration, this is the first time that you can figure out the correct side without knowing anything about immigration. The resolution states: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should complete its mandate to deport all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States” — and all means all. Which is a crazy view about the enforcement of even the best law imaginable. If we were debating “The NYPD should complete its mandate to imprison all murderers currently residing in New York City,” every person here should still vote nay.
How can I say such a thing? This is the basic economics of crime. Solving and prosecuting all murders would be astronomically expensive. Some murders virtually solve themselves, others require the proverbial 48 hours, others require years of police work, and others might remain unsolved even if the entire NYPD indefinitely focused 100% of its attention on the crime. About 70% of murders committed in NYC currently end in a conviction, but the NYPD couldn’t get to 100% even if they had 100% of the city’s GDP to deploy.
Astronomical expense aside, however, stricter enforcement means more false positives. The easiest way to punish every murderer is to lower the burden of proof. But the lower the burden, the more innocent people you end up punishing.
. . .
Deporting all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States has exactly the same insuperable problems. The cost would be astronomically high, probably exceeding total GDP because the goal is impossible to achieve. And even if it could be achieved, there would be massive collateral damage along the way. You can also think about it like this: To deport every illegal alien, you would have to deport everyone with a 50%, a 10%, or even a 1% chance of being an illegal alien. Otherwise, you will miss some.
Once you accept these two obvious-once-you-think-about-them facts, you really are obliged to vote nay. You’re obliged to vote for me even if you think that an illegal immigrant is as bad as a murderer! But since I have ten minutes left, I’m going to add a bunch of extra arguments to reinforce the conclusion. And along the way, I’m going to tell you exactly what I really think.
. . .
[A] law that forbids a person from living in the United States and having a job is, at minimum, mildly stupid. Why should anyone on Earth need permission from the U.S. government to wash dishes, clean toilets, or take care of kids? Work is good. Production is good. No one should need the permission of any government to work, to produce. If you think it’s OK to break a law against driving 56 mph in the desert, you should think that it’s OK to break a law against mowing grass for money.
On further reflection, though, laws against foreigners living and working here without government permission are worse than mildly stupid. Even unreasonably strict speed limits are only a minor inconvenience. Immigration laws, in contrast, are a terrible burden on everyone without the good fortune to be born a citizen of the First World. Standard estimates say that moving from the Third World to the First World multiplies migrants’ incomes by a factor of 5x, 10x, or 15x. The flip side is that successfully enforcing immigration laws divides migrants’ incomes by a factor of 5x, 10x, or 15x. That is a terrible thing to do to another human being just for doing a normal job without proper paperwork. Imagine if the U.S. government passed a law that divided your income by a factor of 10. It would be a massive harm, and almost everyone — not just libertarians — would demonize not people who broke this law, but those who enforced it.
. . .
What should be done about illegal immigration? Simple: We should make it legal. A massive apology would also be nice, but I don’t ask for miracles. What about all of the problems caused by mass immigration? They’re minor compared to the massive gains of moving hundreds of millions of workers from countries where their productivity is low to countries where it is high. If you’re still worried, then adopt the massively successful immigration policies of countries like the United Arab Emirates, almost 90% foreign-born, which welcomes immigrants of all skill levels to live and work, but not to receive government benefits or participate in politics.
Caplan was brilliant in this debate despite “losing” (I’m certain the audience was stacked). The fallacy-filled arguments by the opponent demonstrated that the anti-immigration side is filled with emotion and devoid of reason or morality.
I do think the opponent, Hankinson, is a reasonable person who could be constructive in a less-absolutist position that he otherwise agreed to take. To wit: During the debate they agreed they could come up with a sensible compromise policy if selected as co-dictators tasked with solving the problem. Unfortunately, as I’m sure Caplan would agree, this is because any compromise would be preferable to the situation we have now.
Still, the crux of the case against immigration relies on emotion-filled hypotheticals that are highly implausible. The task is mighty as I’ve pointed out before.
The second is from his UATX debate with Garett Jones, a truly strong opponent with strong arguments.
From Caplan’s opening statement in that debate:
Estimated magnitude: If everyone on Earth moves to the United States, average IQ falls from 98 to 87, reducing U.S. GDP per-capita by 49%. But on closer examination, this does not show that the immigration is a net negative! On these assumptions, total Gross World Product still rises by 81%, roughly the same as the Clemens calculation that open borders would double the production of humanity.
What would this mean in practice? Specialization and trade between higher- and lower-IQ people. Higher-IQ people — disproportionately current citizens of the First World — would specialize in high-skilled work, especially management and entrepreneurship. Lower-IQ people — disproportionately current citizens of the Third World — would specialize in low-skilled work, especially basic services. This is the same logic as any well-run business: Google doesn’t hire college grads as janitors — but it has plenty of janitors.
. . .
There’s no time to respond to the countless other complaints about immigration, but here’s my general approach. I dismiss all vivid anecdotes as demagogic distractions. If you hear a story so juicy you’re dying to repeat it to “prove your point,” don’t. In contrast, if you’ve got ugly numbers, I’m happy to hear them. But before we act on these numbers, we should always remember the truly massive economic gains of immigration. Immigrant crime, welfare dependence, and so on are sometimes notable problems, but they’re rounding errors compared to the gains. There’s more to life than GDP? Sure, but GDP and almost everything else good go hand in hand.
Both debates are highly recommended. They offer the best in response to the worst and best arguments made by immigration opponents.
Substacks mentioned:
