By Aleksey Bashtavenko

Academic Composition

In Average Is Over, economist Tyler Cowen makes an optimistic claim: Latino immigration to the United States not only strengthens the American economy, but also transmits liberal and democratic values back to Latin America. The idea is compelling. As immigrants live and work in the United States—ostensibly a beacon of democracy—they absorb its values, take them home, and help foster pluralism, rule of law, and civic participation in their native countries. Cowen frames this as a virtuous cycle, in which freedom multiplies through mobility. But while this view may have once had merit, especially in the Cold War and immediate post-Cold War periods, it has grown increasingly untenable. Today, the lived experience of most immigrants, coupled with the unraveling of liberalism in its Western strongholds, makes Cowen’s thesis less a timeless truth than a fading artifact of a bygone era.

Historically, there are concrete examples where Cowen’s framework holds. During the latter half of the 20th century, many political exiles from authoritarian regimes in Latin America and Southern Europe fled to liberal democracies—France, the United States, Sweden, Canada—and later returned to help democratize their homelands. In post-Franco Spain, exiled socialists, academics, and dissidents returned to rebuild institutions and establish a European-style parliamentary democracy. In post-Pinochet Chile, returnees from exile played key roles in reshaping education, civil society, and electoral politics. Similar patterns held in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, where Western-educated reformers helped integrate their countries into the European Union.

In those cases, migration did indeed carry democratic ideas across borders. But crucially, these were not economic migrants; they were political exiles, intellectuals, and elites—people who had access to the institutions of their host societies and the capacity to enact change upon return. Moreover, they returned during a period when liberal democracy was ascendant. The United States and Europe, whatever their flaws, appeared to be stable, prosperous, and inclusive societies. There was a clear normative hierarchy: liberal democracy was “the future,” and those exposed to it were often motivated to reproduce its tenets at home.

Fast forward to the present, and the underlying assumptions behind Cowen’s thesis begin to crumble. Today’s migrants are primarily laborers, not dissidents. Their experience of American democracy is not through the lens of civic empowerment but through the day-to-day realities of economic exploitation, legal precarity, and social marginalization. A Salvadoran or Mexican day laborer in Los Angeles may not encounter the ideals of deliberative democracy or liberal pluralism; he may instead encounter wage theft, racial profiling, and ICE raids. Rather than feeling included in a just society, many immigrants feel excluded from the very freedoms that Cowen assumes they will absorb.

Even more troubling is the fact that, in many cases, migrants and diasporas today do not support liberal or democratic candidates when they engage politically in their countries of origin. The examples of El Salvador, the Philippines, and Turkey are instructive. In each of these cases, strong diasporic support has gone to populist authoritarian leaders—Nayib Bukele, Rodrigo Duterte, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, respectively—who exhibit open contempt for democratic institutions and norms. These leaders appeal to diaspora communities by projecting strength, order, and nationalist pride, not by promising liberal reforms.

Bukele’s case is especially striking. He has received enthusiastic backing from Salvadorans living in the United States, even as he has suspended constitutional protections, cracked down on press freedom, and undermined judicial independence. This is not a paradox; it is a reflection of a deeper truth. Many in the diaspora see Bukele as a problem-solver who is restoring security in a country long plagued by gang violence and corruption. For them, the appeal of stability and discipline outweighs abstract ideals about checks and balances. Their exposure to U.S. political culture may have reinforced that worldview rather than challenged it—especially if their American experience included the rise of Trump, racial segregation, and economic insecurity.

This suggests a darker interpretation of Cowen’s thesis: what if migration is transmitting not liberalism, but authoritarianism with an American accent? The “values” that immigrants absorb in the United States may include admiration for law enforcement, distrust of government, suspicion of multiculturalism, and a punitive view of justice—all of which align with the playbook of modern illiberal leaders. In this light, the diaspora is not a democratizing force, but a vector for exporting populist conservatism.

It is also important to consider how much the brand of liberal democracy has suffered in recent years. The United States, once the self-appointed model of democratic governance, is increasingly seen as a dysfunctional and divided society. Mass incarceration, rampant inequality, political gridlock, and declining trust in institutions undermine the appeal of the American example. Liberalism, once aspirational, now looks brittle and exhausted to many observers around the world. Migrants may no longer be inspired by their host country—they may instead become cynical or disengaged.

This shift is not just anecdotal. Recent research in political science has begun to challenge the assumed “migration-democratization” nexus. A growing body of empirical evidence shows that diaspora communities often support authoritarian populists, especially when they value remittances, national pride, or security more than procedural democracy. In some cases, migrants send money home to family members who then vote for strongmen promising to deliver order. In others, returnees directly participate in political movements that elevate charismatic leaders over institutional reforms. In either case, the result contradicts Cowen’s hypothesis.

That said, it would be unfair to say Cowen was entirely wrong. His thesis reflects a real and meaningful phenomenon—but one that applied to a specific historical moment. When liberal democracy was globally dominant, and when migrants were often politically motivated, migration did help spread democratic values. But that moment has passed. Today, migration patterns, political conditions, and the global reputation of liberalism have all changed. What Cowen described was not a permanent truth, but a contingent historical pattern—one that is receding further into the rearview mirror with each passing year.

Cowen’s optimism about immigration and democratization was never entirely misplaced—but it now belongs to a different era. Today’s migrants do not arrive in a confident, thriving liberal democracy, nor do they necessarily return home with democratic ideals. They arrive in a fractured, unequal society, and often go home with a preference for order over liberty, for strength over compromise. If there is a political lesson in today’s migration patterns, it is not about the global spread of liberalism—it is about its decline.