How to Make Immigration Great Again
The key to welcoming outsiders is to give more power back to locals who worry their communities and way of life are under threat.
Citizens do benefit from borders.
Photographer: Ariana Drehsler/AFP/Getty ImagesWhen the community is dysfunctional, alienated individuals need some other way to channel their need to belong. Populist nationalism offers one such appealing vision of a larger imagined community -- whether it is white majoritarianism in Europe and the U.S., the Islamic Turkish nationalism of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party, or the Hindu nationalism of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Populist nationalists identify minorities and immigrants -- the supposed favorites of the cosmopolitan elite establishment -- as usurpers, and blame foreign countries for keeping the nation down. Left unchecked, populist nationalism will undermine the liberal democratic market system that has brought developed countries the prosperity they enjoy. It risks closing global markets down just when these countries are aging and need both international demand for their products and young skilled immigrants to fill out their declining workforces. It is dangerous because it offers blame and no real solutions, and it moves the world closer to conflict rather than cooperation on global problems.