Some people are naturally tribal and don’t like immigration. So they’ll use whatever justifications they can come up with to argue against it. I’ve seen the topic of immigration make capitalists talk like trade unionists when thinking about wages, and people who’ve never shown any interest in climate policy start worrying about carbon emissions. There’s been a lot of controversy around whether immigrants litter too much, but I never see the people making this complaint talk about littering in any other context. It makes me suspect that it might not be their main concern.

It’s kind of pointless to argue about climate policy with people who don’t think that much about the climate, or wages with people who believe that one set of laws of economics applies when you’re dealing with citizens and another when you’re dealing with foreigners. Most anti-immigration arguments can be dismissed as emotional outbursts that mask concerns people don’t want to be completely honest about.

Of all the anti-immigration arguments that have been made, I see two that one should take seriously and are not just covers for other concerns. These are that immigrants vote for the left, and, relatedly, that they make the country poorer and less functioning due to their lower IQs. I don’t think these are great arguments, but they’re the best that restrictionists have, so they will be the ones I address here. In the end, I don’t think there’s much to suggest we should be concerned about how many immigrants are currently coming to the United States, or the characteristics of newcomers, and in fact we should be letting a lot more people in.

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