We’re informed that low-skill migrants make a country rich. If this is true, could there be any rational basis for opposing open borders? From Lionel Shriver’s A Better Life, a conversation between a Honduran and the 27-year-old son in her Brooklyn host family (“Big Apple, Big Heart” program):
“America is rich.”
“America is broke—thirty-three trillion dollars in debt, and a couple trill more every year.”
“Los inmigrantes take small money.”
“Small money adds up.”
“You is crowded? This house, three bedroom with nobody. In Honduras, thirty, forty people live here, no hay problema.”
“Okay, no, I’m not personally crowded.”
“You no pay. You no crowded. Why big feeling?”
“The ‘big feeling’ has to do with home. Home isn’t only a place; home is a big feeling. That you belong. That you can understand the people around you, and they can understand you, because you’re mostly the same.” Nico was struggling for a definition that didn’t stray into the tar pit of race. He resorted to Google’s conversation mode. “It’s about feeling comfortable and welcome and not having to try very hard. It’s a place where people laugh at your jokes, and you laugh at their jokes. You can sing some of the same songs. You watch some of the same TV programs. You know you can trust most people, and you know how to recognize the people you can’t trust. When your home fills up with people from somewhere else. Who speak different languages so you can’t understand each other. Who think different things. Who have no deep connection to your home, no ‘big feelings’ for your home. No history there. Who often . . .” Here he hesitated; this was awkward face-to-face, but he remembered Palermo’s unflattering characterization of her brother as only braving negative sentiments about people behind their backs. “Who often come to your home to take advantage, to see how much they can take. Well, then your home doesn’t seem like a home anymore. It seems like anywhere. It makes you sad.”
Of course, rich people in the U.S. can escape the above by moving, e.g., to an all-white ski town in the winter and an all-white beach town in the summer. The only migrants they’ll encounter are deferential service workers (i.e., servants). It is the middle-class resident of Dearborn, Michigan who might be forced by economics to stay in a neighborhood that has become almost entirely Arab-Muslim. It is the middle-class resident of Elmhurst, Queens who doesn’t have the resources to move away when every other family on the block speaks primarily Mandarin.
(I recently met a reasonably-rich-via-trust-fund older lady who’d moved after decades in Key Biscayne, Florida. It was mostly non-Hispanic white when she moved there. It’s now over 70 percent Latinx. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, she unashamedly said that she’d moved to Florida’s Treasure Coast because she was tired of hearing Spanish spoken all the time and not being able to communicate with everyone she encountered in a shared language (she hadn’t learned significant Spanish). ChatGPT: “Key Biscayne went from almost entirely non-Hispanic in 1960 to a Hispanic-majority community by ~2000, and today is roughly two-thirds Hispanic.”)
Loosely related, a visualization of migration into Europe. It would be interesting to see one for the 70+ million migrants who’ve entered the U.S. since 1976 (Pew).
It is possible to see a visualization of “illegal immigrants” (the undocumented, in other words), but only since 2020. And the people who’ve transformed the U.S. in the most profound ways have been legal immigrants.
Related, legal immigrants admitted by qualified government experts under laws passed by our wisest citizens (Congress):
- How was the immigration of Mohamed Sabry Soliman supposed to benefit Americans?
- How was the immigration of Ndiaga Diagne supposed to make Americans better off?
- How was the immigration of Rahmanullah Lakanwal supposed to make Americans better off?
- How was the immigration of Akayed Ullah supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
- How was the immigration of Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov supposed to benefit native-born Americans?
- How was the immigration of Ayman Mohamad Ghazali supposed to make Americans better off?