Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig: (Anti-)Immigration Policy: What the World Gets Wrong, and Israel Gets Right
Anti-immigration is the new hot topic in world politics. The recent European Union (EU) election results were a clear win for the Right – paralleled by the national Dutch and French national elections. Yes: in France as well. Despite the temporary, self-enforced (and highly unnatural) unity of the Left enabling it to “win” the election, Marin Le Pen’s far-Right party went from 89 to 140 seats. The main issue: stopping the massive flow of immigration from Africa and the Middle East. Those election returns were not surprising. After all, Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections in large part running on an anti-immigration platform, employing unpresidential epithets to describe illegal immigrants from Mexico and further south.
As a not-so-gross generalization, one can state that people who are against unfettered immigration tend to be strong “national conservatives” whereas their pro-immigration counterparts are “universalistic liberals.” These two antithetical positions, however, contain a couple of profound paradoxes – or even internal contradictions. Luckily, Israel has managed to escape this, as I’ll explain below. But first: the two contradictions.
On the one hand, liberals tend to place a large amount of trust in social science, whereas conservatives are far more skeptical about science as such, especially when it contravenes dearly held beliefs. However, when regarding specific policy areas, conservatives vote first and foremost on economic issues. And what has research in economics found? Overwhelming evidence that immigration is invariably a net economic positive for the receiving nation.
It might be (although I personally doubt it) that conservatives discount such research evidence precisely because it purports to be “scientific.” Much more likely is the fact that they are involved in heavy (successful) cognitive dissonance: they don’t want immigrants, so the positive research is ignored. From their perspective, it doesn’t help (politically) that liberals tend to couch their pro-immigration stance in terms of human rights instead of down-to-earth, pragmatic economics. In any case, here is a case of conservatives shooting themselves in the foot – while their liberal counterparts aren’t providing them with bullet-proof shoes.
A second paradox involves science as well – but this time in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Put in simple (not simplistic) terms: accepting immigrants is contrary to human nature: homo sapiens evolved over many millennia within a very small social unit – perhaps 30-50 people at most. Given that life back then was mostly “nasty, brutish and short” (Thomas Hobbes’ famous expression), any other group would be seen as a threat. Such “anti-otherness,” therefore, has been bred deeply into our genes. This is not to say that out-group friendliness is impossible, but rather that the “social default” position of the human being is to trust “our own” and to distrust everyone else.
We’ve come a long way since those days in the African savannah – building villages, towns, cities, countries, and eventually empires. However, social violence and political force continued throughout history; indeed, as the latest wars in Gaza and the Ukraine testify, they still continue today, albeit overall on a lesser scale (per capita). Here, then, it’s the liberals who have it wrong (practically, not necessarily morally). People harboring strong “national” feelings is a completely natural phenomenon; a universalistic creed, on the other hand, has to work against human nature. Scientific-oriented liberals should understand that.
What to make of all this? First, the general evolution of human society has been moving towards the liberal position, albeit very gradually. After all, if tens of thousands of years ago the “other” was almost everyone and “we” were a mere 50 or so people in an extended family grouping, then modern nationalism is a very large step away from a small “we” to a much bigger number of “us”. Indeed, the “nation” that we all feel a part of is so big that we have never even met the vast majority of our “national compatriots”! If so, then it is not a leap of faith to believe that at some future time, we can come to see our mutual humanity as the main common denominator holding “us” together (perhaps that day will come when extra-terrestrial aliens arrive at our planet).
A second important point – closer in time to the present: those who are against immigration today might not have much choice in the near future but to accept large numbers of immigrants. Why? With the demographic “baby bust” occurring almost everywhere in the world (except for Africa, and tiny Israel), there will soon not be enough workers to sustain Europe’s social democratic welfare state – not to mention China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea (among others) where the generational pyramid is already turning topsy-turvy, with disastrous economic and social consequences. America, too, is undergoing a birth decline but its overall economy is still relatively robust because of… immigration!!
Third, and related to the second point: immigration brings “new blood” – not in a biological sense but rather regarding creativity, ambition, and thinking out of the box. For example, the number of Fortune 500 CEOs in America who are foreign-born (or children of immigrants) is far larger than their proportion in the general population.
As opposed to most of the world, Israel has it “right” (as in “correct”). The number of Jews around the world is about equal to those living in Israel today so that there’s lots of immigration potential – encouraged by Israel’s Law of Return. There is no animosity among the Israeli public against Jewish immigrants, albeit some disagreement as to “who is a Jew?” that entitles such Aliyah. But even if no more Jews immigrated, Israel’s birth rate (three children per woman) is the highest by far among all advanced OECD countries – the Jewish State by itself is doing fine demographically. Nevertheless, immigration continues apace (and might even increase given rising anti-Semitism around the world) – a very significant source of Israel’s economic dynamism. The country is a gigantic melting pot of people from dozens of countries, each contributing a different way of looking at things (being Jewish helps too, what with the tradition of dialectical thinking).
For the rest of the world, how to square the circle? Immigration is absolutely necessary for continued social and economic dynamism, but like so many other things in life it needs to be done in a measured way. The conservative “old-timers” (not age-wise but rather national seniority e.g., WASPs in the U.S.) need to get used to the newcomers. Educating the nativists about the “human nature” vs “economics” conundrum would let many of them see that immigration is a net plus – especially for themselves and their cherished nation. Not only Israel understands that; Americans should be reminded that it was immigration that “Made America Great” – and that only continued immigration can make it “Great Again.”
