{"id":99387,"date":"2025-12-02T04:00:35","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=99387"},"modified":"2025-12-03T09:30:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T14:30:38","slug":"the-elites-will-continue-pushing-high-immigration-despite-the-obvious-social-costs-it-imposes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/12\/02\/the-elites-will-continue-pushing-high-immigration-despite-the-obvious-social-costs-it-imposes\/","title":{"rendered":"The elites will continue pushing high immigration despite the obvious social costs it imposes"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the very tip-top luxury beliefs is that massive immigration is always and under all circumstances a good thing. A great thing, even. One of the things about the holders of luxury beliefs is that they are almost always completely insulated from any of the consequences of their beliefs, and this is especially true in this case. As Lorenzo Warby<\/a> points out, the elites’ devotion to this cause contributes to collapsing levels of trust in the society absorbing all those immigrants and deeply undermines confidence that the leadership have anyone else’s but their own best interests at heart:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a straightforward, respectable view on immigration to Western countries. More people means more transactions, means more gains from trade<\/a>, so immigration is a good thing. Immigration grows the economy, it increases GDP, so sensible folk support immigration.<\/p>\n

There are extra bells and whistles, such as providing needed skills; compensating for<\/a> falling fertility; willingness to do jobs locals are not. All the extra bells and whistles have responses. Why not train locals (i.e., citizens)? Won’t the immigrants’ fertility also fall? (Yes, though possibly more slowly.) The real willingness is to do jobs at lower<\/em> wages and conditions than the locals would accept. For instance, potentially using US H1B visas<\/a> to bring in entry-level employees who will work for less, and in worse conditions, than the locals.<\/p>\n

Moreover, increasing total<\/em> GDP is not the same as increasing per capita<\/em> GDP. Even with per capita<\/em> GDP, there are always questions about the distribution of those gains to GDP.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the basic intuition is: immigration means more transactions, more gains from trade. Those who believe in markets \u2014 in positive-sum<\/a> interactions \u2014 should support immigration.<\/p>\n

This is not the trumping response it appears to be. Immigration does not only import workers\u2014nor even just increase mutual-gain transactions \u2014 it imports people<\/em>, so potentially affects all aspects of the receiving society. This means, of course, that there are a much wider range of possible concerns about immigration that “yes, but more gains from trade<\/em>” is not an adequate response to.<\/p>\n

Efficiency and number of transactions are not the only issues for a social order, particularly not a flourishing<\/em> social order. There are also issues of social cohesion; social resilience; connections and social capital<\/a>; the distribution of GDP gains; effects on relative prices; congestion costs; how well institutions are managing the influx; effects on local communities; cultural differences; social coordination issues and the ability to manage collective action problems; increased competition for positional goods<\/a> \u2014 goods that cannot, or are blocked from, responding to increased demand.<\/p>\n

These are all legitimate grounds for concern that are not answered by “yes, but more gains from trade<\/em>“. How many of those “yes, but more gains from trade<\/em>” folk have grappled with mass rape and sexual exploitation of young women and girls<\/a> as a cost of culturally divergent immigration (and its systematic mismanagement)? How many of those “yes, but more gains from trade” folk have grappled with violent disturbance, even civil war, as a potential cost of immigration, even though we have historical examples<\/a> of precisely that<\/a>?<\/p>\n

If, on one hand, the respectable people insist “yes, but more gains from trade<\/em>” is an adequate response, and that other concerns are not legitimate, this will almost certainly be taken as the contemptuous dismissal it is. Not only will it not be persuasive, it will (and does) generate anger and resentment.<\/p>\n

If people have concerns that the “reasonable”, “liberal-minded” folk will not deal with \u2014 or, worse, are dismissive of such concerns even being raised \u2014 then people will turn to unreasonable and illiberal folk, if they are the only people who will respond to their concerns. Significant gaps in political markets will be filled by political entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

If folk are told that “if you believe in markets, you have to support (high levels of) immigration<\/em>” then many folk will respond with “OK, I reject markets<\/em>“. Moreover, it is simply false that market economics entails that mass immigration is a good thing.<\/p>\n

The idea that there is some economic phenomena such that marginal costs exceeds marginal benefits for all people over all ranges in all forms is not Economic thinking, it is magical thinking. (More precisely, it is class-signalling parading as Economics.)<\/p>\n

It is magical thinking that falls foul of economist Thomas Sowell<\/a>‘s dictum that there are no solutions, only trade-offs<\/em><\/a>. Immigrants may be engaging in lots of positive-sum, gains from trade transactions, yet still be imposing more costs than benefits on a society, and on resident citizens, precisely because societies are not<\/em> just efficiency arenas for free-floating transactions and no one is just<\/em> an economic transactor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update, 3 December<\/strong>: Welcome, Instapundit<\/em> readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack<\/em> \u2013 https:\/\/substack.com\/@nicholasrusson<\/a> that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the very tip-top luxury beliefs is that massive immigration is always and under all circumstances a good thing. A great thing, even. One of the things about the holders of luxury beliefs is that they are almost always completely insulated from any of the consequences of their beliefs, and this is especially true […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,28,53],"tags":[343,1094,554,95,1481,1020,1033],"class_list":["post-99387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-media","category-politics","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-gdp","tag-immigration","tag-jobs","tag-luxurybeliefs","tag-progressives","tag-unintendedconsequences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pR1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99420,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99387\/revisions\/99420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}