Which way is right? With Chris Ladd

Solving the Wrong Immigration Problem


As Congress wrestles with an effort to update our outdated immigration laws, no one seems to have noticed a change that shades the whole effort in absurdity. Our arguments over immigration assume that America remains what it once was, the world’s most attractive magnet for migrants. We are not.

America could once afford a highly exclusionary immigration policy that made it difficult for almost everyone to come here. The world has changed. Western countries are facing unprecedented population declines and fertility numbers suggest that we will reach a peak global population in just a few decades. Prosperity over the coming decades will depend more and more on the ability to attract new migrants bringing talent, initiative, and a hunger to succeed.

America is surrendering her advantage in that global competition. This reality makes our current debate over immigration reform seem a petty, if not slightly delusional. While we work to keep people out, other countries are attracting more immigrants than ever before. Our immigration reform efforts so far are aimed at solving a problem we ought to wish we had.

For many years Europe, Canada and Australia have been attracting immigrants at much higher per capita rates than the US, but now we are starting to fall behind in absolute numbers as well. The EU countries in 2011, in the midst of a historic recession, attracted more than triple the number of immigrants that came to the US. Together, Germany and Spain attracted more total immigrants in 2011 than the US.

Among the 25 countries in the OECD, the US now ranks 22nd in annual per capita immigration. In terms of total foreign-born population, Russia (that’s right, Russia) is now second to the US and gaining fast.

While we debate how best to “secure the border,” the US has notched an ominous achievement in recent years: net zero immigration from Mexico. Unemployment in Mexico is barely 5% and under the Obama Administration, the US has deported more illegal immigrants than at any other point in our history. The US is losing some of its allure.

Globally, most immigration is still based on lower-skilled workers leaving developing countries to seek opportunities with a more prosperous neighbor. Some countries though are beginning to out-compete us in the market for highly skilled migrants of choice. Canada, Australia, Germany, Singapore and Dubai are aggressively and successfully attracting a global professional class feeding innovation, capital development, and investment. Competition has arrived and we have hardly noticed.

Opponents of immigration reform often pretend that they are merely upset about people circumventing our laws. Simply force migrants to “obey the law” and we would have no immigration problem.

This rhetorical trick dodges the important reality that unless you have a corporate sponsor or family in the country, legal immigration to America is virtually impossible. For all practical purposes, the US long ago abandoned legal immigration in favor of a de facto system of undocumented permanent limbo.

What sort of immigration policy should we adopt? Unfortunately, for the time being it doesn’t matter. America is experiencing an epochal demographic shift in which the power of institutions dominated by a white, Protestant elite is approaching a critical stage of decline. As we approach the decisive end of white supremacy we are enduring a massive reaction.

In the midst of this Great White Freakout we have, at least momentarily, lost our ability to respond intelligently to straightforward policy matters. Meaningful immigration reform is impossible for some of the same reasons that we cannot pass a budget or a farm bill. The outdated assumptions that warp the debate over immigration reform are symptoms of a wider disconnect from rapidly changing global realities.

Immigration reform is necessary because our immigration laws are almost purely exclusionary, built to operate in a world in which America was an unchallenged destination of choice for migrants. The entire immigration debate is premised on a set of embarrassingly absurd assumptions, insulting to those who have come here and amusing to the rest of the world.

The current immigration reform proposal could become law if fewer than twenty Republican Congressmen decided to back it. That almost certainly will not happen. America’s political seizure will probably continue until the paranoids who have grabbed control of the GOP finally blow the party to pieces, forcing a general realignment across the system. That could take a while and it may be unreasonably optimistic to hope that it can be accomplished without serious collateral damage.

While we worry about the risk of attracting too many immigrants, more and more of the world’s brightest talent is choosing to build lives and careers in other countries. On this matter, as in so many areas, our refusal to pull our heads out of the comfortable assumptions of the past may cost us dearly in the long term.


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