If you were czar . . .

Of immigration

Suppose you were the immigration czar of a make-believe country. What goals would you pursue? What guidelines would you follow? More precisely: Who would you let in?

Two models suggest themselves. One is that of the nation-state. In this model, which became popular during the 19th century, the boundaries of the nation and of the state coincide. The nation is the group of people who share ancestry, language, culture, religion, history. These are the French people, the Spanish people, the Chinese people, the Japanese people. The state is the political entity, geographically bounded, in which the people live. Nationalism, as it developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, is the idea that each nation ought to have its own state. Thus Italian nationalism, German nationalism, Vietnamese nationalism. 

If you’re the immigration czar of a nation-state, and nationalism is an important value in your country, you’ll want to restrict immigration narrowly, allowing free access only to those who have ties of ancestry, culture, religion to your existing population. Thus Israel gives preference to Jewish immigrants. 

The second model is that of the multicultural or polyglot state. Empires have typically looked like this. The Roman empire, the Ottoman empire, the Mongol empire, the British empire each contained lots of peoples, lots of languages, lots of cultures. Empires look on immigration differently than nation-states do. Immigration is fundamentally a matter of increasing population. Where nation-states do this by letting people in, empires increase population by acquiring lands where people live. They might have an immigration policy on top of conquest, but it is less important.

If you’re immigration czar, you’ll consider carefully the purpose of immigration policy. Why do you want to let people in? Historically for nearly all countries, and for many countries today, the sole criterion is national interest. Will more people be good for my country? 

During the last eighty years or so, another criterion has been added. Will more people in my country be good for those people? Under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to asylum from persecution is fundamental. Reformers have since promoted a general right to migration—simply to better one's lot by moving to another country.

This version hasn’t caught on everywhere. But countries that like to consider themselves liberal feel an obligation to let in other people for the good of those other people, rather than merely the good of the recipient country. Not all countries are liberal, and those that aren't maintain the older view that immigration is for their benefit first and foremost.

By this standard, the main reason for accepting immigrants has been that the receiving country needs workers. The United States long boasted of being a nation of immigrants. The reason for America's openness to immigrants was that it needed workers. In fact it needed so many workers that it couldn't rely on free immigrants and thus resorted to enslaved and indentured immigrants.

Periodically native-born workers complained that immigrant workers were stealing their jobs and reducing their standard of living. But not until the 1920s did this view take legislative form, in a 1924 immigration act that for the first time imposed comprehensive limits on immigration. By then the United States had become an approximation of a nation state, with the nation consisting of the descendants of northern Europeans who arrived here under British colonial rule. The 1924 immigration law was an approximation of a nationalist immigration law, strongly favoring immigrants from northern Europe.

Immigration-averse countries like Japan long made do without importing workers from abroad. Yet this may be changing. Japan's population is shrinking and growing old. The demands of pensioners are already outstripping the ability of workers to support them. Possibly robots and artificial intelligence will save the day for Japan. Possibly the Japanese will simply resign themselves to getting poorer as they get older. But it's also quite possible that the Japanese will decide to open their doors to young immigrants.

It's tempting to ask whether immigrant-friendly or immigrant-averse countries have fared better in history. The American economy has benefited from the energy and ideas immigrants have brought. On the other hand, some native-born Americans have felt threatened by the newcomers, for cultural reasons as well as economic. Immigration policy has been a battleground in American politics for centuries. 

Countries that kept closed doors have been spared the political fights over immigration. The closed doors have often helped maintain the social cohesion that comes with being a nation-state. Perhaps these countries have sacrificed some economic vibrancy, although it's hard to characterize Japan or China as uncreative.

In the end, each country seems to find its way to the immigration policy that suits it best. Which is to say that before you accept a job as immigration czar, you should check out the history of the country making the offer.