My Buzzfeed post on immigration generated a bit of traffic yesterday and a bit of disagreement, too. The most common objection to our approach to immigration is that it's one-dimensional—OK, we might be right about the economics, but c'mon, who really cares? It's culture that matters. This point was made to me a few times yesterday and there's definitely something to it. My first response is that I think people underestimate the public's ignorance of the economics, and hence the public's fears about immigration. This poll by Ipsos MORI (I love those guys) asked opponents of immigration what they were worried about—as you can see, their concerns are overwhelmingly about job losses and the like:
The top five concerns are all basically to do with economics, with the highest-ranking cultural/social concern getting a measly 4%.
Obviously this isn't the whole story. People might be lying to avoid seeming "racist", for example. But in other polls people seem less reserved—last year 27% of young people surveyed said that they don't trust Muslims. Less than 73% of the population say they'd be quite or totally comfortable with someone of another race becoming Prime Minister, and less than 71% say they'd be quite or totally comfortable with their child marrying someone of a different race. So the 'embarrassment effect' of seeming a bit racist can't be that strong, and clearly the ceiling is higher than 4%.
I reckon it's more likely that people have a bunch of concerns, of which the economic ones seem more salient. Once they've mentioned them, they don't need to add the cultural concerns to the pile. Either that, or we just believe people in the absence of evidence to the contrary.
That's why I think it's legitimate to focus on the economics of immigration, even if we concede that the cultural questions are important (and tougher for open borders advocates to answer). Persuading some people that their economic fears are misguided should move the average opinion in the direction of looser controls on the borders.
If we could put the economic arguments to bed we might be able to have a more productive discussion about immigration. If culture's your problem, then let's talk about that, but remember that the controls we put on immigrants to protect British culture come with a price tag. Maybe we'd decide that more immigration was culturally manageable if we ditched ideas like multiculturalism and fostered stronger social norms that pressurised immigrants into assimilating into their new country's culture. I don't know. (Let's leave aside my libertarian dislike of using the state to try to shape national culture.)
The point, for me, is this: the economics of immigration does matter a lot to people. Immigration is not either/or—we can take steps towards more open borders without having totally open borders. At the margin, then, persuading people about the economics of immigration should move us in the direction of more open borders. And that, in my view, makes the world a better place.