Immigrants come here for the economic opportunity, not because they’re excited to vote. Whatever correlations exist between the desire to migrate and liking democracy, the draw of our money and lifestyle are 100x greater.
Otherwise, migrants would be thrilled to arrive in Mexico — a democracy — or countless other safe countries that have elections.
Whether immigrants arrive with incompatible values and culture depends a lot on selection. There are many variables that predict success and assimilation — but the system Democrats want ensures those variables aren’t even considered, because they want anyone who manages to arrive here to stay forever.
Meanwhile, the UK government had to create a guide for asylum seekers warning them not to rape women or try to stop them from doing schoolwork:
There are good arguments for immigration but this isn't it. Culture does matter. We see in Europe and, because there is less Muslim immigration here, that many Muslims do not assimilate and do not adopt Western liberalism as their new default. Progressives bend over backwards to pretend otherwise. Conflating religion with ethnicity, Progressives blind themselves to the well documented illiberal assertiveness of Islam. Countries such as France and Germany have large Muslim enclaves that are "no go" zones for everyone else including law enforcement.
Texas is built on migrants, from its inception to today. Houston is Exhibit A in multicultural integration. There are material differences in outlook and openness between Hispanic, Asian, Hindu and non-Muslim Africans arrivals and an identifiable cohort of rigid Muslim adherents. Hard fact. We need to be honest with ourselves and each other.
A key distinction between Muslim immigrants to the US and Europe is that US Muslim immigrants chose to come here, and so are usually more liberal and democratic than the median Muslim globally. Conversely, Muslim immigrants to Europe tend to be refugees forced there by external events, and so are much more culturally conservative and less likely to be interested in assimilating into their new countries.
This is a fair point about Europe, but it's also worth mentioning that European countries seem to be less interested in assimilating Muslim immigrants than America does. For example, in France, they don't have birthright citizenship; you could be born to parents who came (legally) from Morocco and have grown up in France your whole life but not actually be a French citizen. The belief that a Muslim or Arab — immigrant or not — can never truly be French is much more widespread there than the belief that a Muslim or Arab can never truly be American is here. If someone grows up in a society where the narrative that they're always going to be an outsider is widespread, they will be less likely to buy into the project of assimilation.
"You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.” —Reagan.
But it also makes the immigration policy decisions of European elites over the past decade or so even more confusing to me. Presumably they knew, and even bought into the idea themselves, that the mainstream European view was that foreigners can never truly become Europeans. And yet they've also accepted mass immigration.
An assimilationist culture and mass immigration is sustainable, as is a non-assimilationist culture and relatively low levels of immigration. But a non-assimilationist culture seems incompatible with mass immigration in the long run.
I think a lot of people conflate secular Arabs or Pakistanis with religious Muslims. Observationally and from personal experience, there are clear differences. I’m a lawyer—mostly retired, sort of—and I work with and along a wide variety of other lawyers, including ME and Pakistan (and Filipino) Muslims and secular immigrants from those countries. I know one very successful female, practicing Muslim attorney who has been in two unsuccessful marriages, both arranged. I have drinks with other attorneys of majority Muslim country extraction who are entirely secular and fully assimilated. I’m not super impressed by any survey except the 2017 Pew Survey which was cross-national and very detailed. Yes, US Muslims are relatively more liberal than in other countries, but we are talking now about recent immigrants, and these are two separate cohorts.
There are countries like the US that are aspirational (are at least have long been) to live in. There are certain countries with strong anti-immigrant politics where if you're an immigrant who ended up there, you likely just got stuck or failed.
The surveys show American Muslims are more liberal than those living in Muslim countries, but they are significantly more opposed to homosexuality than the general public.
The best survey is the 2017 Pew Research. American Muslims are more liberal than other Muslim countries, but, as I’ve intimated in this discussion, there are at least two cohorts of American Muslims: long term residents, even 2nd generation Muslims, on the one hand, and recent arrivals on the other. There is at least one other cohort: Muslims that have been radicalized either as long term residents, citizens or as recent arrivals. There are, I’m sure, other identifiable subsets within the Muslim community. But, the topic is immigration, meaning recent arrivals. Surveys of long term residents are irrelevant and surveys of recent arrivals are suspect because, seriously, what do you you expect them to say, “Death to all infidels!”?
I would also expect Muslim immigrants who arrived under Biden (claiming asylum) to be less liberal, because when it becomes much easier to come to America, it means we aren’t selecting as much for things like education and skills.
To take this a step further, liberal is a subjective, often highly subjective, descriptor. Pro-immigrationists (my made-up word), tend to conflate immigrants from every country into a single mass. Not at all the case.
I knew someone would come back with this, but let me ask a question.
Why are these Muslim immigrants coming to countries that do not share their values? Sure they can make some money, but in return they have to live in a country that does not appreciate or value the way they want to live their lives and is going to try to convince their children to live according to Western liberalism. I'm going to ask you to do what the post does and think of them not as cargo but as people making their own decisions.
Is it all economic? Maybe, but then these are people self-selected to value money over their own religious and cultural practices, at least to some extent. What's your perception of what's going on?
My perception is not yours, for sure. Nor does your perception map on to any immigrant culture, particularly Islam. How you or the author perceive others will not cause those others to remake themselves in the image you project. Likewise, economics is a sometimes default Progressives turn to as an explanation for group behavior but other, more realistic observers give weight to culture, customs and religion as heavy elements in the mix of what drives group and individual behavior.
If you are looking for a motivator for why people leave Syria or Somalia, just look at their options: starve, die or leave. Which would you pick?
If you honestly believe that these people are also budding adherents of western liberalism, fine. Reality begs to differ. Take a hard look at Sweden as yet another example of Muslim immigration plays out. For quite a while, many Swedes played make believe. That’s no longer the case. The German establishment continues to play make believe but the voters increasingly aren't having it. It's a bitter pill to swallow for Progressives, steeped as they are in third world multiculturalism. If it helps any, try thinking of Muslims the way you think of Christians.
Man, it feels like you're rushing ahead to shove an argument in my mouth. For the sake of this discussion, I'm believing YOU. I'm going to take you at your word that they're not adherents of western liberalism, that they love oppression and dominating women and honor killings and whatever.
But then why do these people want to live in France, Germany, or Sweden? You said their options to get out of Syria/Somalia are starve, die, or leave. Okay that makes sense, but there's a lot of other Muslim countries they can go to. If Islam is the most important thing in your life, why would you want to go to France rather than Turkey? What is going on in their heads here that makes them think, "I love Allah above all things... so obviously Germany is the place for me!"
[If it helps any, try thinking of Muslims the way you think of Christians.]
Okay, sure, If I'm a hardcore Christian forced out of my country due to a civil war, would I rather take my family to a wealthy Muslim nation or a poor Christian one? If I have to go to the wealthy Muslim nation, do I want to stay there or do I want to get my family out as soon as I reasonably can before my son starts checking out mosques?
Of course they prefer to migrate to countries which will give them socialized healthcare, access to public housing, and other benefits, and not neighboring Islamic nations which suffer similar negative social conditions to the ones they're fleeing and/or may shoot them if they attempt to cross the border. Having to live in a society with broadly divergent values isn't a serious problem if you can reside in an unassimilated enclave and the liberal parties bend over backwards to accommodate you for fear of otherwise being racist or Islamaphobic.
It is completely rational to want to go to a place that liberalized and free and then pull up the ladder behind you by trying to eliminate that freedom for other groups.
Yes, I was going to make a similar comment. Europe's experience with Muslim immigrants clearly shows that immigration can have a really bad effect on culture and that the immigrants don't always want to assimilate
Strong agree with all of this straightforwardly. But also, it's helpful to bear the broader macro-picture in mind. Our main geopolitical rival has 5x our population, but a comparatively weak domestic economy relative to its (government-subsidized) export dominance. One of our major structural advantages involves not just the ability to attract the world's most talented people — it specifically involves the ability to 'poach' some of the world's most talented people *from our major geopolitical rival*. The thing we very much need not to do is structurally cut ourselves off from the one real structural solution to our topline demographic disadvantage.
I agree that we need to continue to import talent if we want to keep up with China. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be selective in whom we are importing. And that selectivity should include cultural fit as well as making sure you have the skills we are looking for
I respectfully disagree with the hasty pessimistic conclusion.
We see in most totalitarian countries with greatest ability for emigration, East Germany and North Korea, take the strictest measures against travel. This would seem to imply the very concept of migration is deeply harmful to authoritarian states.
The most valuable labor in autocracies will tend to be more liberal, and even if they are not liberal-minded, they will tend to be drawn to receiving the best compensation and greatest personal liberties which they can only receive in a liberal democracy. As an economic strategy, remittances and an emigration pipeline can work, but only to the extent that society can reorganize itself around the principle that going to a free country is the culmination of personal fulfilment.
If we could somehow have open borders everywhere, I believe it would have a devastating effect on authoritarian regimes. The only way authoritarians can avoid losing their entire economically valuable population would be to start to liberalize. They could try paying their way out with more generous salaries and benefits, but ultimately they will run out of that political strategy if they aren’t finding a better economic strategy.
To put it one way, companies are like authoritarian states with open borders. They control all the rules of their product and services offered to the customer, but entirely give you the freedom as to whether to take their offer, and by that competitive pressure have to be responsive to the needs and values of the customer.
I think the more realistic part is just to think about the marginal impact on immigration. It used to be conservative/anti-communist position to support the integration of refugees from East Berlin or Cuba.
Now it is the conservative/MAGA position to "punish China" by reducing the number of Western-educated Chinese graduate students who can stay and find a job here. Meanwhile it is official CCP policy, called "A Thousand Talents" to explicitly encourage Western-educated Chinese citizens to return to the mainland. As we speak top AI labs are losing Chinese talent to dumb MAGA policies.
The conservative paranoid version, is always "what if they're spies". The flippant answer is, so what if they are? Put them to use anyway - as long as the Chinese economy is doing fast-follow, it means we are ahead. The more serious answer is - put whatever security clearance and background checks on any job, that still leaves a tremendous number of valuable economic areas which need talent.
This assumes that love of democracy is the primary reason people immigrate, which doesn’t seem true to me. My impression (which may be wrong) is that immigrants are attracted to economic opportunity, not democratic or liberal values. I believe that America’s wealth ultimately flows from our open and liberal society, but that is not so obvious that a hypothetical economic immigrant could not come here for a job, while not particularly liking American culture or institutions
"Authoritarian regimes can more easily target diasporas for political repression — and even bilk them for resources. (The modern Eritrean government obtains much of its money from a tax on all nonresident citizens’ income.)"
as a US citizen living abroad I think it is terrible that Eritrea is doing that and I hope all americans can unite on the need to show our disapproval of Eritrea's actions
The idea that, because prospective immigrants to democracies are among the most democracy-friendly in their illiberal home nations, they have no possible bad social effects on their host nations is completely wrong-headed.
The most democracy-preferring decile among the population of e.g. Saudi Arabia is still pretty dismal by the standards of Western liberalism. And, "likes democracy or not" is only one among thousands of potential points of cultural and political conflict between immigrants and the West. You might want a democracy and also want that democracy to enshrine the tenets of Islam in law; and this desire is still existentially incompatible with Western governments.
This isn't a theoretical question, or one we have to resort to averages over survey data to answer. It is obvious from basic observation that immigrants do usually hold on to important components of their original cultural formation, and that this does often lead to clashes with the culture and law of Western nations they immigrate to. This is true whether they are more favorable to democracy than the average in their home countries or not.
Even if the argument presented in this essay is true, it is only saying that those who come to immigrate are "more" democratically-minded than those in their home country. It is not proof that immigrants value democratic values, or any other values, as much as native U.S. citizens. But that may be a moot point.
They key to whether immigration harms or helps our culture is how well immigrants are assimilated. And assimilation is not instantaneous. It takes three to four generations for full assimilation. While the first generation will almost certainly hang on to much of their native culture, their children will straddle two cultures, and their grandchildren will be almost fully Americanized.
We used to talk about the "melting pot" as a metaphor for this process, though in the last few decades it has been replaced with less helpful metaphors, such as the salad bowl, suggesting that we don't or shouldn't assimilate, which is tied into other unhelpful ideas of identity politics and multiculturalism at academic institutions. But we should re-embrace the melting pot because it is more accurate and significantly more helpful in understanding E Pluribus Unum and its real world relationship to immigration.
More to the point, assimilation is directly linked to happiness in places like Scandinavian countries, which consistently rank at the very top of world happiness and satisfaction surveys. They experimented with multiculturism for a time, but have returned to assimilation and explicit expectations of immigrants. If you move to Denmark, for example, you are expected to learn the language, adopt cultural norms, and be economically independent. They fully reject the idea of parallel societies within their borders.
While it would be difficult to fully embrace this model in the U.S., we can certainly learn lessons from it.
There is no doubt in my mind that beyond prosperity or hopes of upward mobility, immigrants arrive in America believing in something we would be willing to accept as a version of democracy. Immigrants come seeking a better life--and believe they will have rights--not just opportunities. Sometimes these rights are lost or never fully realized --and hopes are dashed. The world can be cruel. But I know my grandparents came for democracy as well as opportunity. My Noni fought desperately from 1938 on to gain her citizenship--and it was critical during the years that our family was treated as enemy aliens during World War II. She proudly became a citizen in 1946. How could she not love a country that embraced her (my grandmother) as a citizen after such a brutal war? My family believed in the words of Emma Lazarus' poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. After he died, my grandmother kept a framed photograph of John F. Kennedy on the dining room wall--and in the afternoons she would frequently light a candle underneath--with a rosary around the picture frame. My Noni came for democracy--however she understood what that meant. I understand that it is complicated--but America can represent a "dream" and especially a chance to leave behind blood and soil nationalism for a nation that takes you as you come. At least--that is the dream (and sometimes illusion). Great post today. It made me think.
How much of this is just immigrants saying what they think they need to say?
I’m sure if you polled the vast migrant worker populations of the Gulf monarchies on whether they support the absolute monarch’s absolute authority to do whatever he wants, they’d say “Yes, of course, a thousand blessings on the Emir”
But they're not interviewing for a job. They're filling out a survey about their views on stuff, where the answers have no bearing on whether they are or are not allowed to immigrate, because the survey is being conducted by a private organization not the US government.
If I got a survey asking me if I wanted to work at a company with a corporate culture like Goldman Sachs, I’d say yes, but it’s because GS pays well, not because I love their culture.
It’s not like poor democracies (India? Mauritius? Costa Rica?) are awash with immigrants from richer authoritarian states (Saudi, Qatar, Brunei) who are willing to make an economic sacrifice for that sweet sweet democracy.
This is one of the weaknesses of the anti-immigrant political coalition: they like to say they're protecting democratic values from invasion, but then they embrace people like Trump and pull schemes like January 6th. I was a Congressional intern back when the anti-immigrant backlash was starting to erode W Bush's base. If you got a letter that was full of misspellings, weird phrasing, and reflected a conspiratorial worldview, they were almost always from anti-immigration activists. Even the pro-torture people could spell better. Part of the reason pre-Trump that such activists had trouble taking over the GOP was that Republican elites found such people who could barely speak English actively embarrassing.
And that should bother everyone. There is such a thing as truth--and it matters.
Hannah Arendt:
"The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world... is being destroyed,"(Essay on Truth in Politics).
Because knowing the difference in that argument is a matter of truth. The false equivalency--the relativism--of that argument frightens me. People in Germany who supported the Nazis in 1933 thought they were fighting for freedom--a freedom that excludes those they hate from the good of society, a a freedom that takes from others what they have because they can, and a freedom to restrict liberty to others who are undeserving in their eyes. It is the freedom to limit and punish. Real democracy floats all of out boats up with the rising tide--at its best. The truth requires equality.
Exactly how was the Biden Administration a "disaster." Biden was a poor candidate who should not have run for reelection--but I need to be shown what "disaster" the administration promulgated: was it the rebuilding of our alliances, the improvement of the post-pandemic economy, the recovery via vaccinations (for free), the effort to address climate change, the re-establishment of institutions and rule of law, or the actual passing of the infrastructure legislation and funding? Look--it was not perfect--but a "disaster?" I would trade the current state of affairs for that "disaster" any day of the week. I remember this too--inflation was coming down. True--people were unhappy with Biden--and he lost the public narrative. AND--the Biden administration was slow to implement some projects in a timely fission. Not good. AND: Biden himself was not up to the task of a second term or a campaign. This made people angry. But --that is not the same as the Biden administration was some kind of unmitigated disaster. No--Trump is the real disaster. In 2024, The United States had (by most measures) the best economy in the world--with a GDP of around 28 Trillion dollars--and was considered the strongest among the G-7 countries. Yes--people were unhappy coming out of the pandemic....trend lines were strong.
Immigrants come here for the economic opportunity, not because they’re excited to vote. Whatever correlations exist between the desire to migrate and liking democracy, the draw of our money and lifestyle are 100x greater.
Otherwise, migrants would be thrilled to arrive in Mexico — a democracy — or countless other safe countries that have elections.
Whether immigrants arrive with incompatible values and culture depends a lot on selection. There are many variables that predict success and assimilation — but the system Democrats want ensures those variables aren’t even considered, because they want anyone who manages to arrive here to stay forever.
Meanwhile, the UK government had to create a guide for asylum seekers warning them not to rape women or try to stop them from doing schoolwork:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a84555dc9205b515d421e22/COB_summary_booklet_FINAL_web.pdf
There are good arguments for immigration but this isn't it. Culture does matter. We see in Europe and, because there is less Muslim immigration here, that many Muslims do not assimilate and do not adopt Western liberalism as their new default. Progressives bend over backwards to pretend otherwise. Conflating religion with ethnicity, Progressives blind themselves to the well documented illiberal assertiveness of Islam. Countries such as France and Germany have large Muslim enclaves that are "no go" zones for everyone else including law enforcement.
Texas is built on migrants, from its inception to today. Houston is Exhibit A in multicultural integration. There are material differences in outlook and openness between Hispanic, Asian, Hindu and non-Muslim Africans arrivals and an identifiable cohort of rigid Muslim adherents. Hard fact. We need to be honest with ourselves and each other.
Muslims do assimilate to U.S. values.
https://www.cato.org/blog/muslims-rapidly-adopt-us-social-political-values
https://www.cato.org/blog/muslim-immigrants-assimilate-even-more-polls-muslims-indicate
A key distinction between Muslim immigrants to the US and Europe is that US Muslim immigrants chose to come here, and so are usually more liberal and democratic than the median Muslim globally. Conversely, Muslim immigrants to Europe tend to be refugees forced there by external events, and so are much more culturally conservative and less likely to be interested in assimilating into their new countries.
This is a fair point about Europe, but it's also worth mentioning that European countries seem to be less interested in assimilating Muslim immigrants than America does. For example, in France, they don't have birthright citizenship; you could be born to parents who came (legally) from Morocco and have grown up in France your whole life but not actually be a French citizen. The belief that a Muslim or Arab — immigrant or not — can never truly be French is much more widespread there than the belief that a Muslim or Arab can never truly be American is here. If someone grows up in a society where the narrative that they're always going to be an outsider is widespread, they will be less likely to buy into the project of assimilation.
"You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.” —Reagan.
That's a good point and very true.
But it also makes the immigration policy decisions of European elites over the past decade or so even more confusing to me. Presumably they knew, and even bought into the idea themselves, that the mainstream European view was that foreigners can never truly become Europeans. And yet they've also accepted mass immigration.
An assimilationist culture and mass immigration is sustainable, as is a non-assimilationist culture and relatively low levels of immigration. But a non-assimilationist culture seems incompatible with mass immigration in the long run.
Yes there are probably multiple reasons the European Muslim immigrants aren't assimilating as well as American ones.
America is probably better at assimilating than Europe
They are different immigrant populations
The scale is different, it's much easier to assimilate if there are less immigrants you can't hide in your little enclave
I think a lot of people conflate secular Arabs or Pakistanis with religious Muslims. Observationally and from personal experience, there are clear differences. I’m a lawyer—mostly retired, sort of—and I work with and along a wide variety of other lawyers, including ME and Pakistan (and Filipino) Muslims and secular immigrants from those countries. I know one very successful female, practicing Muslim attorney who has been in two unsuccessful marriages, both arranged. I have drinks with other attorneys of majority Muslim country extraction who are entirely secular and fully assimilated. I’m not super impressed by any survey except the 2017 Pew Survey which was cross-national and very detailed. Yes, US Muslims are relatively more liberal than in other countries, but we are talking now about recent immigrants, and these are two separate cohorts.
There are countries like the US that are aspirational (are at least have long been) to live in. There are certain countries with strong anti-immigrant politics where if you're an immigrant who ended up there, you likely just got stuck or failed.
The surveys show American Muslims are more liberal than those living in Muslim countries, but they are significantly more opposed to homosexuality than the general public.
The best survey is the 2017 Pew Research. American Muslims are more liberal than other Muslim countries, but, as I’ve intimated in this discussion, there are at least two cohorts of American Muslims: long term residents, even 2nd generation Muslims, on the one hand, and recent arrivals on the other. There is at least one other cohort: Muslims that have been radicalized either as long term residents, citizens or as recent arrivals. There are, I’m sure, other identifiable subsets within the Muslim community. But, the topic is immigration, meaning recent arrivals. Surveys of long term residents are irrelevant and surveys of recent arrivals are suspect because, seriously, what do you you expect them to say, “Death to all infidels!”?
I would also expect Muslim immigrants who arrived under Biden (claiming asylum) to be less liberal, because when it becomes much easier to come to America, it means we aren’t selecting as much for things like education and skills.
On the other hand around 40% of US Muslims support Hamas, and an even larger percentage are anti Semitic.
And of course how many also matters. If the rate of immigration is small its easier to assimilate. But harder if numbers get larger
To take this a step further, liberal is a subjective, often highly subjective, descriptor. Pro-immigrationists (my made-up word), tend to conflate immigrants from every country into a single mass. Not at all the case.
Some, not all.
I knew someone would come back with this, but let me ask a question.
Why are these Muslim immigrants coming to countries that do not share their values? Sure they can make some money, but in return they have to live in a country that does not appreciate or value the way they want to live their lives and is going to try to convince their children to live according to Western liberalism. I'm going to ask you to do what the post does and think of them not as cargo but as people making their own decisions.
Is it all economic? Maybe, but then these are people self-selected to value money over their own religious and cultural practices, at least to some extent. What's your perception of what's going on?
My perception is not yours, for sure. Nor does your perception map on to any immigrant culture, particularly Islam. How you or the author perceive others will not cause those others to remake themselves in the image you project. Likewise, economics is a sometimes default Progressives turn to as an explanation for group behavior but other, more realistic observers give weight to culture, customs and religion as heavy elements in the mix of what drives group and individual behavior.
If you are looking for a motivator for why people leave Syria or Somalia, just look at their options: starve, die or leave. Which would you pick?
If you honestly believe that these people are also budding adherents of western liberalism, fine. Reality begs to differ. Take a hard look at Sweden as yet another example of Muslim immigration plays out. For quite a while, many Swedes played make believe. That’s no longer the case. The German establishment continues to play make believe but the voters increasingly aren't having it. It's a bitter pill to swallow for Progressives, steeped as they are in third world multiculturalism. If it helps any, try thinking of Muslims the way you think of Christians.
Man, it feels like you're rushing ahead to shove an argument in my mouth. For the sake of this discussion, I'm believing YOU. I'm going to take you at your word that they're not adherents of western liberalism, that they love oppression and dominating women and honor killings and whatever.
But then why do these people want to live in France, Germany, or Sweden? You said their options to get out of Syria/Somalia are starve, die, or leave. Okay that makes sense, but there's a lot of other Muslim countries they can go to. If Islam is the most important thing in your life, why would you want to go to France rather than Turkey? What is going on in their heads here that makes them think, "I love Allah above all things... so obviously Germany is the place for me!"
[If it helps any, try thinking of Muslims the way you think of Christians.]
Okay, sure, If I'm a hardcore Christian forced out of my country due to a civil war, would I rather take my family to a wealthy Muslim nation or a poor Christian one? If I have to go to the wealthy Muslim nation, do I want to stay there or do I want to get my family out as soon as I reasonably can before my son starts checking out mosques?
Of course they prefer to migrate to countries which will give them socialized healthcare, access to public housing, and other benefits, and not neighboring Islamic nations which suffer similar negative social conditions to the ones they're fleeing and/or may shoot them if they attempt to cross the border. Having to live in a society with broadly divergent values isn't a serious problem if you can reside in an unassimilated enclave and the liberal parties bend over backwards to accommodate you for fear of otherwise being racist or Islamaphobic.
It is completely rational to want to go to a place that liberalized and free and then pull up the ladder behind you by trying to eliminate that freedom for other groups.
Last time I checked, the US is not Europe and has different immigration patterns and assimilation pathways than Europe.
What is the "Western Liberalism" Muslim immigrants aren't adopting?
Bizarre question. Women's rights, gay equality, religious pluralism, secularism.
Have you tried thinking about Christians the way you think about Muslims?
Yes.
All those are partisan except religious pluralism.
I'd pick philo-semitism.
So like MagaS?
Sure, if that's how you think about Christians. Whatever.
Yes, I was going to make a similar comment. Europe's experience with Muslim immigrants clearly shows that immigration can have a really bad effect on culture and that the immigrants don't always want to assimilate
Strong agree with all of this straightforwardly. But also, it's helpful to bear the broader macro-picture in mind. Our main geopolitical rival has 5x our population, but a comparatively weak domestic economy relative to its (government-subsidized) export dominance. One of our major structural advantages involves not just the ability to attract the world's most talented people — it specifically involves the ability to 'poach' some of the world's most talented people *from our major geopolitical rival*. The thing we very much need not to do is structurally cut ourselves off from the one real structural solution to our topline demographic disadvantage.
I agree that we need to continue to import talent if we want to keep up with China. but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be selective in whom we are importing. And that selectivity should include cultural fit as well as making sure you have the skills we are looking for
Sure. But the key is to be in sync from the jump on the topline parameters.
I respectfully disagree with the hasty pessimistic conclusion.
We see in most totalitarian countries with greatest ability for emigration, East Germany and North Korea, take the strictest measures against travel. This would seem to imply the very concept of migration is deeply harmful to authoritarian states.
The most valuable labor in autocracies will tend to be more liberal, and even if they are not liberal-minded, they will tend to be drawn to receiving the best compensation and greatest personal liberties which they can only receive in a liberal democracy. As an economic strategy, remittances and an emigration pipeline can work, but only to the extent that society can reorganize itself around the principle that going to a free country is the culmination of personal fulfilment.
If we could somehow have open borders everywhere, I believe it would have a devastating effect on authoritarian regimes. The only way authoritarians can avoid losing their entire economically valuable population would be to start to liberalize. They could try paying their way out with more generous salaries and benefits, but ultimately they will run out of that political strategy if they aren’t finding a better economic strategy.
To put it one way, companies are like authoritarian states with open borders. They control all the rules of their product and services offered to the customer, but entirely give you the freedom as to whether to take their offer, and by that competitive pressure have to be responsive to the needs and values of the customer.
Very interesting argument--really. A dream--but interesting thought.
I think the more realistic part is just to think about the marginal impact on immigration. It used to be conservative/anti-communist position to support the integration of refugees from East Berlin or Cuba.
Now it is the conservative/MAGA position to "punish China" by reducing the number of Western-educated Chinese graduate students who can stay and find a job here. Meanwhile it is official CCP policy, called "A Thousand Talents" to explicitly encourage Western-educated Chinese citizens to return to the mainland. As we speak top AI labs are losing Chinese talent to dumb MAGA policies.
The conservative paranoid version, is always "what if they're spies". The flippant answer is, so what if they are? Put them to use anyway - as long as the Chinese economy is doing fast-follow, it means we are ahead. The more serious answer is - put whatever security clearance and background checks on any job, that still leaves a tremendous number of valuable economic areas which need talent.
I think you have this right.
This assumes that love of democracy is the primary reason people immigrate, which doesn’t seem true to me. My impression (which may be wrong) is that immigrants are attracted to economic opportunity, not democratic or liberal values. I believe that America’s wealth ultimately flows from our open and liberal society, but that is not so obvious that a hypothetical economic immigrant could not come here for a job, while not particularly liking American culture or institutions
"Authoritarian regimes can more easily target diasporas for political repression — and even bilk them for resources. (The modern Eritrean government obtains much of its money from a tax on all nonresident citizens’ income.)"
as a US citizen living abroad I think it is terrible that Eritrea is doing that and I hope all americans can unite on the need to show our disapproval of Eritrea's actions
The idea that, because prospective immigrants to democracies are among the most democracy-friendly in their illiberal home nations, they have no possible bad social effects on their host nations is completely wrong-headed.
The most democracy-preferring decile among the population of e.g. Saudi Arabia is still pretty dismal by the standards of Western liberalism. And, "likes democracy or not" is only one among thousands of potential points of cultural and political conflict between immigrants and the West. You might want a democracy and also want that democracy to enshrine the tenets of Islam in law; and this desire is still existentially incompatible with Western governments.
This isn't a theoretical question, or one we have to resort to averages over survey data to answer. It is obvious from basic observation that immigrants do usually hold on to important components of their original cultural formation, and that this does often lead to clashes with the culture and law of Western nations they immigrate to. This is true whether they are more favorable to democracy than the average in their home countries or not.
Even if the argument presented in this essay is true, it is only saying that those who come to immigrate are "more" democratically-minded than those in their home country. It is not proof that immigrants value democratic values, or any other values, as much as native U.S. citizens. But that may be a moot point.
They key to whether immigration harms or helps our culture is how well immigrants are assimilated. And assimilation is not instantaneous. It takes three to four generations for full assimilation. While the first generation will almost certainly hang on to much of their native culture, their children will straddle two cultures, and their grandchildren will be almost fully Americanized.
We used to talk about the "melting pot" as a metaphor for this process, though in the last few decades it has been replaced with less helpful metaphors, such as the salad bowl, suggesting that we don't or shouldn't assimilate, which is tied into other unhelpful ideas of identity politics and multiculturalism at academic institutions. But we should re-embrace the melting pot because it is more accurate and significantly more helpful in understanding E Pluribus Unum and its real world relationship to immigration.
More to the point, assimilation is directly linked to happiness in places like Scandinavian countries, which consistently rank at the very top of world happiness and satisfaction surveys. They experimented with multiculturism for a time, but have returned to assimilation and explicit expectations of immigrants. If you move to Denmark, for example, you are expected to learn the language, adopt cultural norms, and be economically independent. They fully reject the idea of parallel societies within their borders.
While it would be difficult to fully embrace this model in the U.S., we can certainly learn lessons from it.
There is no doubt in my mind that beyond prosperity or hopes of upward mobility, immigrants arrive in America believing in something we would be willing to accept as a version of democracy. Immigrants come seeking a better life--and believe they will have rights--not just opportunities. Sometimes these rights are lost or never fully realized --and hopes are dashed. The world can be cruel. But I know my grandparents came for democracy as well as opportunity. My Noni fought desperately from 1938 on to gain her citizenship--and it was critical during the years that our family was treated as enemy aliens during World War II. She proudly became a citizen in 1946. How could she not love a country that embraced her (my grandmother) as a citizen after such a brutal war? My family believed in the words of Emma Lazarus' poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. After he died, my grandmother kept a framed photograph of John F. Kennedy on the dining room wall--and in the afternoons she would frequently light a candle underneath--with a rosary around the picture frame. My Noni came for democracy--however she understood what that meant. I understand that it is complicated--but America can represent a "dream" and especially a chance to leave behind blood and soil nationalism for a nation that takes you as you come. At least--that is the dream (and sometimes illusion). Great post today. It made me think.
How much of this is just immigrants saying what they think they need to say?
I’m sure if you polled the vast migrant worker populations of the Gulf monarchies on whether they support the absolute monarch’s absolute authority to do whatever he wants, they’d say “Yes, of course, a thousand blessings on the Emir”
The population polled wasn't immigrants. It was "those who want to immigrate."
yes and they would almost certainly answer the question in what they thought was the desired manner right?
It's like if you ask somebody interviewing for a job why they want to work there.
But they're not interviewing for a job. They're filling out a survey about their views on stuff, where the answers have no bearing on whether they are or are not allowed to immigrate, because the survey is being conducted by a private organization not the US government.
If I got a survey asking me if I wanted to work at a company with a corporate culture like Goldman Sachs, I’d say yes, but it’s because GS pays well, not because I love their culture.
It’s not like poor democracies (India? Mauritius? Costa Rica?) are awash with immigrants from richer authoritarian states (Saudi, Qatar, Brunei) who are willing to make an economic sacrifice for that sweet sweet democracy.
This is one of the weaknesses of the anti-immigrant political coalition: they like to say they're protecting democratic values from invasion, but then they embrace people like Trump and pull schemes like January 6th. I was a Congressional intern back when the anti-immigrant backlash was starting to erode W Bush's base. If you got a letter that was full of misspellings, weird phrasing, and reflected a conspiratorial worldview, they were almost always from anti-immigration activists. Even the pro-torture people could spell better. Part of the reason pre-Trump that such activists had trouble taking over the GOP was that Republican elites found such people who could barely speak English actively embarrassing.
An important note, the people who voted for Trump thought they were saving Democracy. You disagree and that's fine.
But the vast majority of people weren't voting for Trump because they wanted authoritarianism, they were rejecting the Dems version of it
And that should bother everyone. There is such a thing as truth--and it matters.
Hannah Arendt:
"The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world... is being destroyed,"(Essay on Truth in Politics).
Because knowing the difference in that argument is a matter of truth. The false equivalency--the relativism--of that argument frightens me. People in Germany who supported the Nazis in 1933 thought they were fighting for freedom--a freedom that excludes those they hate from the good of society, a a freedom that takes from others what they have because they can, and a freedom to restrict liberty to others who are undeserving in their eyes. It is the freedom to limit and punish. Real democracy floats all of out boats up with the rising tide--at its best. The truth requires equality.
I actually agree that electing trump was the wrong choice.
Jan 6th was a deal breaker for me.
But I can certainly understand after the disaster that was the biden administration. Why millions of other people felt differently
Exactly how was the Biden Administration a "disaster." Biden was a poor candidate who should not have run for reelection--but I need to be shown what "disaster" the administration promulgated: was it the rebuilding of our alliances, the improvement of the post-pandemic economy, the recovery via vaccinations (for free), the effort to address climate change, the re-establishment of institutions and rule of law, or the actual passing of the infrastructure legislation and funding? Look--it was not perfect--but a "disaster?" I would trade the current state of affairs for that "disaster" any day of the week. I remember this too--inflation was coming down. True--people were unhappy with Biden--and he lost the public narrative. AND--the Biden administration was slow to implement some projects in a timely fission. Not good. AND: Biden himself was not up to the task of a second term or a campaign. This made people angry. But --that is not the same as the Biden administration was some kind of unmitigated disaster. No--Trump is the real disaster. In 2024, The United States had (by most measures) the best economy in the world--with a GDP of around 28 Trillion dollars--and was considered the strongest among the G-7 countries. Yes--people were unhappy coming out of the pandemic....trend lines were strong.