The attitude of modern parties towards immigration policy is pretty insane. I understand that politicians, being cultural elites, tend to be much more cosmopolitan than the population average. But repeatedly overriding your own constituents’ preferences inevitably invites backlash, and ultimately sets back the very cause you wanted to champion. On this topic, I liked David Frum’s 2019 article, If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will.
Pro-immigrant stance is not just “cosmopolitan”—it’s also the stance backed by the economic interests.
From an economic standpoint, the case is clear: immigration is very good for economic growth. The macro scale effect is pronounced, sticky, and it takes a spectacularly failed immigration policy to undo it.
Big business also tend to be pro-immigration: a lot of them stand to benefit from increases in supply of labor directly, and a few interest groups stand to benefit from the demand driven by increases in population too—i.e. the housing sector.
This means that there’s a lot of money riding on “pro-immigration”, which has a way of distorting policy decisions.
I’m sure that a part of this attitude is created by the idealism of “cosmopolitan elites”—but the cynic in me can’t help but notice all the financial incentives to take a pro-immigration stance, social costs and popular opinion be damned.
This is certainly true for US-style immigration, where immigrants are higher-skilled and likely to speak English. But surely the effect is comparatively worse for European-style immigration, where immigrants tend to be much poorer, often refugees from religious third-world countries, and have a low chance of speaking the native language. All of which complicates integration and increases anti-immigration sentiment.
Don’t mistake my “very good for economic growth” for “any good for social cohesion”.
I make no such claim. My claim is that there is a lot of economic incentives to overlook the negatives of immigration.
My honest opinion is that immigration is not going to be good for social cohesion unless the immigration policy is nothing short of immaculate. And the gap between “spectacularly failed” and “nothing short of immaculate” is where most immigration policies currently reside.
From an economic standpoint, the case is clear: immigration is very good for economic growth. The macro scale effect is pronounced, sticky, and it takes a spectacularly failed immigration policy to undo it.
I think that this is in question. Even in the short term, many of the employers that rely on low-wage labor encourage employees to seek transfer payments to make up the difference. Moreover, there are substantial costs associated with additional infrastructure use, education of ESL students, support of multiple languages in public and private communications, and enforcing laws on a larger and less homogeneous population.
To my knowledge, nobody has done the exact math yet, but given the fairly consistent unpopularity of increased migration rates and the relative public apathy towards corporate subsidies, I would not be surprised if it were less costly, in both economic and political terms, to simply provide a government-backed discount to the cost of domestic labor directly.
In the longer term (12 years, as opposed to 12 months), I think the stability and human capital costs of current youth unemployment alone vastly outweigh the costs of paying 20-30 percent more for labor. Moreover, quality of work is a factor—I’ve already seeing pretty substantial tech debt at major companies in the wake of mass H1B visa abuse(the causation is anecdotal, but consistent with the experience of every other programmer I’ve spoken to on the subject), and newer-build homes have a reputation for vastly poorer quality than Americans are used to.
Edit: It is worth noting that even AEI, a Bush Conservative think tank with a generally pro-migration tack, acknowledges the above (see section “Why not just bring in more immigrants?”).
I don’t think it’s just a matter of being cosmopolitan. Being cosmopolitan is more of a general political view. If I remember right Merkel’s decision was due to her experience of being asked by a young struggling and fearful refugee whether Merkel thought it was right for her to be deported. It’s not easy to sleep with answering “Yes”. The political consequences of her decisions were pretty catastrophic, but it’s clear that it was the decision that lead to easier sleep.
If I remember right Merkel’s decision was due to her experience of being asked by a young struggling and fearful refugee whether Merkel thought it was right for her to be deported.
I don’t see why I’d believe any career politician when they claim that a particular one-off event (that seems well-suited for journalistic reports) fundamentally changed their mind about a topic. And in the first place, did she even claim this to be the reason?
If you think this event is not the reason the policy changed soon afterwards, you would need to find a different explanation. I don’t think that inner-CDU party politics in that year would account for that.
It’s also German party politics, and my priors for what motivates German career politicians comes from private interactions in contexts where people have no reason to lie about motivations for political purposes.
I did a bit more research and it seems less clear than in my memory. In her book, Merkel does start the discussion of why the shift in policy happened with that episode, but then talks that the concrete episode was six weeks later when she felt she was forced to act “Wenn Europa es nicht zulassen wollte, dass es Tote auf der Autobahn geben würde, musste etwas geschehen. → If
Europe didn’t want to allow deaths on the highway,
something had to be done.”
Interestingly, Horst Seehofer from the CSU who was later one of the voices criticizing the decision simply stayed out of it by not being reachable by telephone.
The attitude of modern parties towards immigration policy is pretty insane. I understand that politicians, being cultural elites, tend to be much more cosmopolitan than the population average. But repeatedly overriding your own constituents’ preferences inevitably invites backlash, and ultimately sets back the very cause you wanted to champion. On this topic, I liked David Frum’s 2019 article, If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will.
Pro-immigrant stance is not just “cosmopolitan”—it’s also the stance backed by the economic interests.
From an economic standpoint, the case is clear: immigration is very good for economic growth. The macro scale effect is pronounced, sticky, and it takes a spectacularly failed immigration policy to undo it.
Big business also tend to be pro-immigration: a lot of them stand to benefit from increases in supply of labor directly, and a few interest groups stand to benefit from the demand driven by increases in population too—i.e. the housing sector.
This means that there’s a lot of money riding on “pro-immigration”, which has a way of distorting policy decisions.
I’m sure that a part of this attitude is created by the idealism of “cosmopolitan elites”—but the cynic in me can’t help but notice all the financial incentives to take a pro-immigration stance, social costs and popular opinion be damned.
This is certainly true for US-style immigration, where immigrants are higher-skilled and likely to speak English. But surely the effect is comparatively worse for European-style immigration, where immigrants tend to be much poorer, often refugees from religious third-world countries, and have a low chance of speaking the native language. All of which complicates integration and increases anti-immigration sentiment.
Don’t mistake my “very good for economic growth” for “any good for social cohesion”.
I make no such claim. My claim is that there is a lot of economic incentives to overlook the negatives of immigration.
My honest opinion is that immigration is not going to be good for social cohesion unless the immigration policy is nothing short of immaculate. And the gap between “spectacularly failed” and “nothing short of immaculate” is where most immigration policies currently reside.
I think that this is in question. Even in the short term, many of the employers that rely on low-wage labor encourage employees to seek transfer payments to make up the difference. Moreover, there are substantial costs associated with additional infrastructure use, education of ESL students, support of multiple languages in public and private communications, and enforcing laws on a larger and less homogeneous population.
To my knowledge, nobody has done the exact math yet, but given the fairly consistent unpopularity of increased migration rates and the relative public apathy towards corporate subsidies, I would not be surprised if it were less costly, in both economic and political terms, to simply provide a government-backed discount to the cost of domestic labor directly.
In the longer term (12 years, as opposed to 12 months), I think the stability and human capital costs of current youth unemployment alone vastly outweigh the costs of paying 20-30 percent more for labor. Moreover, quality of work is a factor—I’ve already seeing pretty substantial tech debt at major companies in the wake of mass H1B visa abuse (the causation is anecdotal, but consistent with the experience of every other programmer I’ve spoken to on the subject), and newer-build homes have a reputation for vastly poorer quality than Americans are used to.
Edit: It is worth noting that even AEI, a Bush Conservative think tank with a generally pro-migration tack, acknowledges the above (see section “Why not just bring in more immigrants?”).
I don’t think it’s just a matter of being cosmopolitan. Being cosmopolitan is more of a general political view. If I remember right Merkel’s decision was due to her experience of being asked by a young struggling and fearful refugee whether Merkel thought it was right for her to be deported.
It’s not easy to sleep with answering “Yes”. The political consequences of her decisions were pretty catastrophic, but it’s clear that it was the decision that lead to easier sleep.
I don’t see why I’d believe any career politician when they claim that a particular one-off event (that seems well-suited for journalistic reports) fundamentally changed their mind about a topic. And in the first place, did she even claim this to be the reason?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/16/angela-merkel-comforts-teenage-palestinian-asylum-seeker-germany?utm_source=chatgpt.com is the event in question and it’s not exactly an event that showed her in her best light. It’s the kind of event where it makes sense that someone who’s not a psychopath would have sleep less nights over it.
If you think this event is not the reason the policy changed soon afterwards, you would need to find a different explanation. I don’t think that inner-CDU party politics in that year would account for that.
It’s also German party politics, and my priors for what motivates German career politicians comes from private interactions in contexts where people have no reason to lie about motivations for political purposes.
I found that event online, but not the claim that this was what motivated the shift in policy.
I did a bit more research and it seems less clear than in my memory. In her book, Merkel does start the discussion of why the shift in policy happened with that episode, but then talks that the concrete episode was six weeks later when she felt she was forced to act “Wenn
Europa es nicht zulassen wollte, dass es Tote auf der Autobahn
geben würde, musste etwas geschehen. → If Europe didn’t want to allow deaths on the highway, something had to be done.”
Interestingly, Horst Seehofer from the CSU who was later one of the voices criticizing the decision simply stayed out of it by not being reachable by telephone.