On January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump issued an
executive order barring aliens (non-US citizens) from Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Iran,
Somalia, Libya, and Yemen from entering the United States for at least 90 days[1].
The order resulted in about 600 people either being blocked from boarding
flights to the US or being prevented from leaving the airport upon arrival. All
but two of the 394 of these who were permanent residents of the US were
eventually let in, although some of them were detained for multiple hours
before then[2].
The order sparked outrage and protests from the left, and not
just because of its chaotic implementation. Many strongly objected to the
principle of excluding people from the country on the basis of their national
origins; denouncing it as ‘racist’ and ‘intolerant’. It is this principle which
we shall evaluate in this post.
Excluding a person from a country involves two different
things: 1. Denying the person to right to live long-term, work long-term, or
participate in the political institutions of, the country (immigration ban). 2.
Denying the person the right to enter the country for any purposes whatsoever
(travel ban). The latter is clearly more all-encompassing than the former, so
we will start with its evaluation.
A travel ban based on national origin is, in most cases, inadvisable.
There are several reasons why this is the case. Firstly, it cuts down on the
number of tourists spending their foreign resources in the country; something
which is almost always a negative for the country’s economy. Secondly, it
prevents outstanding academic, cultural, and entertainment figures with the
banned origin from visiting and sharing their unique knowledge, skills, or art
with the country; a culturally-impoverishing proposition. Thirdly, it is unnecessarily
antagonistic to the countries on the banned list; which is likely to cause
problems in diplomatic and trading relationships. Finally, it prevents citizens
of the country from hosting their relatives with the banned origins; something
which is likely to make them feel alienated and like second-class citizens.
Ah, but what of terrorism? Preventing terrorists with the
banned origins from committing acts of violence in the US was the stated
rationale for Trump’s travel ban. But there is little reason to believe that
such a ban will be at all effective at preventing acts of terror. The leaders
of terrorist organizations are smart and resourceful people; if a ban is in
place, they will find ways around it. That could involve radicalizing and
convincing citizens of the target country to commit terrorist acts, or it could
involve getting a terrorist with a national origin that is not on the banned
list into the target country. Though travel bans may prove inconvenient to terrorist organizations, they are unlikely to be
effective at actually stopping terrorist
acts.
Alright, so a travel ban is no good: but how about for immigration? Here, a strong case can be made for the desirability of
discriminating on the basis of national origin. The general culture (including
the political culture) of a country is determined by the views and values held
by its individual citizens. If the majority of citizens hold ‘traditional’
views on most issues, the country will have a ‘traditional’ culture. Likewise,
if the majority of citizens hold ‘progressive’ views on most issues, the
country will have a ‘progressive’ culture. The same applies to sub-regions or
sub-groupings within a country, such as states/provinces, cities/counties, or
communities of various kinds. Each of these will have some kind of general
culture, determined by the views and values held by its individual
residents/members.
Immigration policy for a desirable, developed country is all
about selecting which, of the long list of people who wish to immigrate, to
invite into the country as permanent residents, and eventually, citizens. Most
would agree that economic considerations should be an important part of the
selection process. Applicants with in-demand labor abilities (and the language
skills necessary to use them in the country) should be given priority over
those who don’t. Such people are more likely to prove a net benefit to the
country economically.
While important, economic considerations are not everything.
Cultural considerations also play an important role in determining whether a
given applicant will make a desirable immigrant or not. To take an extreme
example: imagine that an applicant has impeccable economic credentials, but
that they also believe that women should be chattel slaves to men, that
homosexuals should all be beheaded, and that richer people should be able to
hit poorer people without facing any legal consequences. If you were someone
who held ‘progressive’ cultural views, would you really think that such a person
would make a desirable immigrant? Of course not! Such a person would either push
the country’s culture further away from where you want it to be (however
minutely), or else lash out violently against a culture they despise and cause
harm to people. Either way, the cultural values that they hold prevent them
from being desirable immigrants.
Now, what does all this have to do with the desirability of
national origin discrimination? Basically, it is the best proxy (however
imperfect) that we have to determine what cultural values an immigration
applicant might hold. And for cultural considerations, we need a proxy, because
it is obviously impractical to try to determine an applicant’s beliefs directly
by asking them about it. Any applicant with half a brain (and hopefully we are
not considering anyone with less than this) will simply determine what the most-favored
answers to the ‘cultural values’ questions are and then give them, whether they
actually believe them or not. Also, such an evaluation would necessarily be highly
subjective, which would leave the immigration official with altogether too much
(easily abusable) discretion.
So, how exactly can national origin be used as a proxy for
cultural values? The first step is to determine whether a given applicant is
looking to immigrate for primarily economic, or primarily cultural, reasons. Cultural
migrants are, usually, those that are applying either from other wealthy
countries, or from elevated economic positions in poorer countries. They don’t
expect to become all that much richer in the country to which they are applying,
but they expect that the generally-held cultural (and political-cultural)
values of that country will suit them
better than those of their home country. For example: people with
conservative/libertarian views from the ‘progressive’, socialist, Scandinavian
countries looking to immigrate to the US; or secular professionals from Iran
who sought to immigrate to the West after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in their
country. With such people, it would be unwise to assume that their individual,
cultural values lined up with the general culture of their home countries; in
fact, something closer to the opposite assumption would probably be more
accurate. It is precisely the culture of their old countries from which they
are fleeing, which suggests that their individual values do not align with it
in some fundamental way.
The case of economic migrants is very different though. These
are applicants, usually from poorer countries, who wish to leave their old
countries, not because they dislike the culture, but because they expect to
have more economic opportunities and access to more resources in the country to
which they are applying. For these, there is a fairly high probability
(certainly more than 50%) that they share many of their individual values with
the general culture of their home countries. Because after all, the general
culture is, by definition, the majority culture, and this majority culture
exerts a powerful influence on most people to conform to it so that they can
feel included in their social group.
But hold on: wouldn’t, by the same logic, the cultural values
of the immigrants begin shifting the moment they find themselves in a new
country with a new general culture? Yes, but immigrants (especially economic
immigrants) have a tendency to conglomerate into ethnic communities in their
new country. This will greatly retard the integration process, such that it
will take multiple generations (if ever) before the culture of the old country
is discarded.
In light of all this, here’s how I think the immigration
application process should work. First, officials should determine, to the best
of their abilities and based mainly on objective markers, whether an applicant
is primarily an economic or primarily a cultural migrant. If cultural, they
should be assumed to be sufficiently sympathetic with the host country’s
general culture, and evaluation should focus primarily on economic
considerations. If economic, their national origin should become a factor in the
evaluation. If their old country’s values are deemed to be largely antithetical
to those desired by the new country’s government, then, unless they are truly
stellar economically, their application should be rejected.
Let’s make this discussion more concrete. Economic migrants
from Muslim-majority countries tend not to integrate very well, and are
significantly more likely to hold more oppressive, traditionalist views than members
of the western countries’ general populations. As illustration of this, take a
survey of British Muslims done by ICM in April 2016. According to this survey,
39% of Muslims believed that ‘wives should always obey their husbands’,
compared to 5% in the general population. Only 18% of Muslims believed that
‘homosexuality should be legal in Britain’, compared to 73% in the general
population. 87% of Muslims believed that ‘publications should not have the
right to publish picture that make fun of the Prophet Mohammed’, compared to 44%
in the general population[3].
In sum, the Muslims in Britain are more likely to be (genuinely) sexist,
homophobic, and anti-free-speech than the general population. Since none of
these attitudes are conducive to a free society (something that I, and many
others, value highly), I think that nearly all economic migrants from
Muslim-majority countries should be denied the right to immigrate to developed
western countries.
It was something like this kind of national origin
discrimination that Donald Trump had in mind when he called for a ‘Muslim ban’
during the campaign (something he later changed to ‘extreme vetting’ of those
from Muslim countries), and when he signed the controversial executive order
discussed above. The difference is that I think the focus should be narrowed to
economic migrants applying for immigration, rather than to travelers generally,
and that the main rationale is a cultural one, rather than an anti-terrorism
one.
But whether I think that Trump’s specific policies on this front
are good or not, one thing is clear: the left-wing position that the national
origin of an immigration applicant should not be considered at all is silly.
National origin is the best proxy we have for the cultural values held by an
applicant, and cultural values are very important in determining whether an immigration
candidate, if approved, will make a positive contribution to the country or
not. To ignore all this because taking it into account might appear ‘racist’ is
to limit the effectiveness of our country’s immigration policy in the name of ‘political
correctness’. It is to put our country’s prosperity and societal harmony at
risk in order to make some self-righteous leftists feel better about
themselves. This is something that I must vociferously object to.
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