Immigrants are the West’s best hope for growth and stability: Ivo Vegter

Key topics:

• Anti-immigrant rhetoric is false, dangerous, and fuels prejudice.

• Immigrants boost economies, support welfare, and lower crime rates.

• Western nations need immigrants to address demographic decline.

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By Ivo Vegter*

Across the developed world, populist politicians are riding a rising wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. It will sink the West.

If right-wing populist rhetoric is to be believed, a rising tide of illegal immigrants threatens to swamp the West, washing away its native culture and traditional family values.

Entire political movements are based on the false and prejudicial notion that immigrants are the cause of major socio-economic problems, and that nations will become great again if only they can keep immigrants out.

This is not true.

Politicians and media personalities frequently characterise immigrants as criminals, as mentally ill, as gang members, as agents of uncivilised culture, or as violent terrorists.

This is an odious libel. While such individuals undoubtedly exist, they are not representative of immigrants in general, whether legal or illegal, any more than native-born criminals reflect the character of that entire nation.

Western countries actually need far more immigrants, not fewer. But before explaining further, let me burn some straw men first.

Straw men

I’m not going to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. Doing so is mere sophistry, as Martin van Staden eloquently explained. Nobody defends illegal immigration, and all illegal immigrants would prefer to be legal. Like him, I prefer to draw a distinction between whether it is easy or hard to become a legal immigrant.

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I’m also not going to entertain arguments about letting in criminals or enemy agents. Although I will propose that immigration should be easier and happen in much greater numbers, I have nothing against vetting would-be immigrants for criminal records, gang affiliations or extremist links.

Immigrants and prejudice

Anti-immigrant rhetoric is dangerous. It reinforces prejudice against people simply based on where they were born.

Again I defer to Van Staden: “The last two centuries have been ones of finding inborn characteristics and removing them as legitimate factors of political discrimination. Feminism has done it with sex and gender… The same has largely been achieved with race. Arguably the most important remaining inborn characteristic that remains on the political table is place of birth.”

Today’s right-wing populists (except Javier Milei) all denounce entire classes of people based merely upon their country of birth.

Hauptmann Kristi Noem, in charge of America’s masked immigrant elimination squads, recently declared that foreign truck drivers pose a threat to innocent Americans, because they can’t drive properly, and besides, they’re criminals.

The Trump administration blames immigrants for fentanyl smuggling, when there is no correlation between immigration (legal or otherwise) and fentanyl seizures, and a large majority of fentanyl is brought into the US by US citizens.

In the UK, an entire immigrant population has been demeaned as being “groomers” because of the actions of a few dozen people. Meanwhile, they forget that they have an entire prince who just got kicked out of the Royal Family for being a nonce.

There are many more examples of immigrants being unjustly scapegoated for social or economic ills.

Here’s the Nazi analogy

This plays on the exact same fears and prejudices that the Nazis whipped up against Jews, back when it was still socially acceptable to be antisemitic. It plays on exactly the same fears that the apartheid government evoked against black Africans.

They were painted as uncivilised, a threat to the nation’s wives and daughters, a threat to its morals, a threat to it jobs, and a threat to the peace.

Demonising entire population groups like this is dangerous and evil, and we should under no circumstances tolerate it. This is how genocides start. There is no rhetoric that can justify it.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is often a mere smokescreen for racism, but even when it isn’t, it negatively stereotypes people based on a characteristic over which they have no control, and which does not determine the content of their character.

That some immigrants are bad people is not a justification for whipping up prejudice and hatred against all of them. That some are “illegal” is not a justification, either. Nor is it a justification that they are not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and do not pray to the same god.

Immigrants and demographics

The irony is that Western countries, including the US, desperately need immigrants. Almost the entire world outside Africa and the Middle East faces a major demographic crisis. Just as older people are living better lives for longer than ever, younger people are choosing to have fewer children.

Unless you count South Africa among “Western” countries, there is not a single Western country that has a fertility rate that exceeds the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. (South Africa comes in at 2.2, just under the global average of 2.3 – an average which is also declining.)

New Zealand, Australia, the United States and France are doing the best among major Western countries, with fertility rates of between 1.62 and 1.65. Some are doing much worse (though not as bad as China, at 1.0, or South Korea, with the world’s worst fertility rate, a mere 0.7 children per woman).

This means that all of their native-born populations are declining. That most Western countries still have marginally growing populations is entirely thanks to immigration.

The consequence of a low fertility rate and increasing life expectancy is that the ratio between working-age people who pay taxes and pensions, and retired people who depend on pensions and tax-funded services, is declining.

“The potential consequences of inaction are dramatic: a dwindling workforce straining to support burgeoning numbers of retirees, a concomitant explosion of age-related morbidity and associated health care costs, and a declining quality of life among older people for lack of human, financial, and institutional resources,” says the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF also points to a solution: “Insofar as over 96 percent of the world’s people are still living in the countries of their birth, there would appear to be considerable scope for international migration to relieve demographic-related pressures. Increased migration could also increase remittances from expatriate workers to support the economic development of their native countries.”

Immigrants and crime

That rising immigration brings crime with it is largely a myth. US boss Don Trump has painted so-called “sanctuary cities” as hotbeds of uncontrolled crime, but that simply is not true.

As immigration into the US rose, crime has fallen. Immigration does not increase crime rates. Sanctuary cities are actually safer. Immigrants, particularly first-generation immigrants, and even undocumented immigrants, are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, which stands to reason, because they have a lot more to lose.

In other Western countries, the pattern is similar. While claims that immigrants commit more crime can in some cases be made using cherry-picked data (data which is skewed by bias in prosecution, or by the fact that members of a younger, male demographic are in any case more likely to commit crimes), there is no consistent evidence that immigration is associated with higher crime rates.

On the contrary. Recent research that attempts to go beyond mere correlation to determine causation “overwhelmingly suggests that immigrants do not increase crime levels in the communities where they settle”. Moreover, the research shows that the easier it is for illegal immigrants to obtain legal status and work permits, the lower the chance that they will become involved in crime.

Immigrants and economics

That immigrants are a drag on a country’s economy is also a myth. Research has shown, over and over again, that immigrants to Western countries, at all levels of skill, are net contributors to the economy.

They do not increase unemployment, do not depress wages, and do not use more social services than they pay for in taxes.

On the contrary. They positively contribute to the economy, whether they are seasonal agriculture workers, manual construction labourers, or among the 224 Fortune 500 company founders who are first- or second-generation immigrants.

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(US findings: Immigrants boost economic activity, promote innovation, and improve the productivity of native-born workers; immigrants are contributing billions of dollars to the US economy; Benefits of Immigration Outweigh the Costs; a strong body of research and consensus by most economists finds that immigration, on balance, is a net positive for the US; The Administration’s justification for the rule rests on the erroneous assumption that immigrants currently of modest means are harmful to our nation and our economy; The success of our nation comes, in large part, from our longstanding tradition of encouraging people seeking a better life to leave everything they know to contribute to the United States; Immigration has been a source of strength for the U.S. economy and has great potential to boost it even more; to cite just a few. European findings: in the medium- to long-term, the short-term costs of refugee integration such as language and professional training may be significantly outweighed by socio-economic and fiscal benefits; most European countries see migrants as immigrants who can lift the economic stability of the country in the long term; stronger-than-expected net migration over 2020-23 into the euro area (of around 2 million workers) is estimated to push up potential output by around 0.5 percent by 2030—slightly less than half the euro area’s annual potential GDP growth at that time—even; the macroeconomic implications of this immigration surge … suggests a positive effect on potential output in the range of 0.2-0.7% by 2030 for recipient countries; migrants in the EU, on average, contribute more than natives to welfare states; immigrants, on average, make a positive contribution to EU government finances and economic activity; As European populations get older, migrants are becoming more important for supporting welfare systems … The evidence clearly shows that migrants usually contribute more than they receive; and there are more.)

In South Africa, the same is true. Immigrants are net job creators, raise the average income per capita, and positively affect the country’s fiscus.

Immigrants and individual freedom

Immigrants are largely young, working-age individuals. They have the get-up-and-go to leave their own countries and seek greener pastures elsewhere. That alone points to the kind of character that is likely to contribute to an economy if given the opportunity to do so.

And why shouldn’t they be able to move to better climes? If we are unhappy with the service we get from a company, we stop doing business with them and find a competitor who can do better.

A government provides a service. It protects life, liberty and property, and it keeps the peace. If a government fails at doing so, because it is socialist, corrupt, repressive, or warlike, then why shouldn’t its people up sticks and leave to find better prospects elsewhere?

It is a basic principle of liberty that one should be free to act in one’s own best interests, and the best interests of one’s family or community, unless one has violated the rights and freedoms of someone else.

If it is a matter of individual freedom to be able to trade freely across borders, and it is a matter of individual freedom to send capital across borders without government intervention, then why shouldn’t it be a matter of individual freedom for labour to migrate across borders?

Learn to love immigrants

The world over, we really need to learn to love immigrants. Many countries desperately need immigrants to contribute to their fiscus and economic vitality as their native populations age and decline.

The benefits aren’t marginal, either. A regime of free global labour mobility could double world GDP. You’d have to be a moron to dismiss that sort of economic potential.

There are good arguments to be made for investing in integration and assimilation. The returns on such investments are positive, and they reduce friction between native populations and immigrants.

If you’re trying to maintain a liberal democracy, it is not unreasonable to expect immigrants to understand principles such as the rule of law, tolerance, free markets, freedom of speech, and civil rights.

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However, the threat of importing illiberal mores such as restrictive religious law is largely overblown. The size of immigrant populations that advocate for such laws is negligible in Western countries.

Economically sensible

Instead of railing against immigration, which brings with it such awful echoes of prejudice and fascism, Western countries ought to do everything they can to welcome and embrace immigrants and the vibrant, young, cosmopolitan energy that they bring to their economies.

Encouraging immigration is the only economically sensible policy, for a growing majority of the world’s countries. They should be importing people from countries with failing governments in Africa and the Middle East, in order to strengthen their own economies and demographic profile.

They ought to see it as a vote of confidence in their own governments, and a guarantor of future prosperity.

The populist position in the US and the other liberal democracies of the West ought to be enthusiastically pro-immigration. That it isn’t reflects poorly on the character, judgement and understanding of those who vote against immigration.

And they will pay dearly for that mistake.

*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker who loves debunking myths and misconceptions, and addresses topics from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets.

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission