Consider the following specimens of Social Desirability Bias.
1. This is my country, I would never want to live anywhere else.
2. Patriotism matters more than money!
3. I couldn’t bear the thought of my children not growing up as citizens of [my country of birth].
4. This is the greatest country in the world.
5. Nothing is more important than keeping our whole family together.
6. We’re nothing without our traditions.
7. Our identity matters more than gold.
8. We’ve got to solve our country’s problems our own way.
9. We don’t need foreign help to build a better country.
10. My country, right or wrong.
Claims like these are popular all over the world. No matter how awful their country is, people love to proclaim their undying devotion to folk and land. Why then have hundreds of millions of people left their countries of birth? Because the migrants don’t literally believe this flowery talk. Though almost everyone voices these sentiments, actions speak louder than words. The act of migration says something like:
1. My country is subpar, I want to live somewhere better.
2. Money matters more than patriotism.
3. I can bear the thought of my children not growing up as [citizens of my country of birth].
4. This is not the greatest country in the world. Not even close.
5. Enjoying a higher standard of living is more important than keeping our extended family together.
6. We’re going to dilute our traditions and adopt some foreign ones.
7. I would like more gold and less identity.
8. Our country isn’t going to solve its problems “its own way,” so I’m moving to another country that has its act together.
9. I need foreign help to build a better life.
10. My country is a major disappointment to me.
Quite a list of heresies! You could demur, “This may be what migrants say with their actions. All the people who don’t move, however, are saying the opposite.” But this overlooks the glaring reality of draconian immigration restrictions. At least a billion people would migrate if it were legal. And since migration is a drastic step, belief in these heresies must be widespread indeed.
My point: Immigrants do what people aren’t supposed to say. They are the living embodiment of the fact that nationalism and identity politics are mostly doth-protest-too-much rhetoric rather than earnest devotion. As I’ve explained before:
[Note] the stark contrast between how much people say they care about community, and how lackadaisically they try to fulfill their announced desire. I’ve long been shocked by the fraction of people who call themselves “religious” who can’t even bother to attend a weekly ceremony or speak a daily prayer. But religious devotion is fervent compared to secular communitarian devotion. How many self-styled communitarians have the energy to attend a weekly patriotic or ethnic meeting? To spend a few hours a week watching patriotic or ethnically-themed television and movies? To utter a daily toast to their nation or people?
The main reason people resent immigration is probably just xenophobia. But a secondary reason, plausibly, is that every immigrant is a tiny beacon of unwelcome candor. The act of immigration says, “Trying to fix my country of birth is a fool’s errand. The people I grew up with are hopeless. Instead, I’m going to personally fix my own life by moving to a new county that works. It won’t be perfect, but I’m willing to suffer for years to make the switch.”
As an iconoclast myself, I love what the act of immigration says. Most people, however, hear the implied heresy and recoil.
READER COMMENTS
robc
Jun 24 2020 at 8:43am
You left out “I am young and I can live temporarily in a foreign land and make more money/have a fun adventure, and still believe all the top stuff and return home for all of that.”
My first job after college was in Switzerland. Not saying I believe all of your first group, but more so than the second. I had fun living abroad, got some good work experience, and turned down the offer to make the job permanent.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 24 2020 at 9:05am
“Claims like these are popular all over the world.”
They sound like an extreme version of a minority view in the US and I’d guess even more of a minority elsewhere.
Of course even if they are the views of a majority in every country, that would still leave plenty of people in the minority who want to immigrate.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 24 2020 at 10:16am
I’ve lived in several different countries and have never heard such sentiments. But even if they were the sentiments of the majority of people, that would still leave many others that would want to immigrate
Tyler Wells
Jun 24 2020 at 12:29pm
My wife is from Guatemala and she personifies a conflict that the entire country, which sadly is not a success story and exports many citizens, collectively shares between resentment (and jealousy?) of the migrants and their success on one hand and the huge pull that the United States has on the other.
Many migrants, some with low levels of education, make more than professional Guatemalans. When they return home bearing gifts and spending cash they are like the conquering heroes, something like Vikings must have been when they returned to their villages after sacking Rome.
The educated class has a number of mild slurs for migrants, the most common is to claim that the migrants have lost their Guatemalan identity; “agringarse” is the verb that they use. To become like a gringo. However, there is tension, as so many Guatemalans, even the middle class, have family members in the USA.
When my wife returns to Guatemala I see this tension in her. One moment she is a super patriot and the next she laments the poor infrastructure or lack of public conscientiousness. I believe that the immigrants (USA perspective) love of their abandoned countries as it is also a longing for the past; for a time when they were younger, the world was smaller and simpler, and they were (usually) surrounded by family and community.
As to whether natives have antipathy towards immigrants due to their having abandoned their homeland, I am not sure. As I was driving through northern Indiana over the weekend and observing the growing signs of meso-american immigration to that area I thought a lot about that. It would seem like a match made in heaven, the immigrants seem to love God, family and pickup trucks, just like the natives. Plus there were a ton of mom-and-pop Mexican restaurants that I would have loved to have been able to visit. It would seem to be a match made in heaven.
Fazal Majid
Jun 24 2020 at 5:54pm
My immigration lawyer used to say “immigration is the sincerest form of flattery”…
Atanu Dey
Jun 24 2020 at 8:35pm
All very fine and good. But do the people of the host country have a say in who should be allowed to immigrate to their country?
The immigrants to a country may have a culture that is totally incompatible with the prevailing culture. How does that work? Should we not also consider the wishes of the residents and not just the preferences of the immigrants?
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 25 2020 at 7:41am
This seems like a pretty hypothetical concern. If the immigrant’s culture were so different as to produce loss of value to existing residents, they would not find jobs and would leave.
robc
Jun 25 2020 at 7:55am
There is no prevailing culture. At least not within much larger than Dunbar’s number of people.
I think whether immigrants should be allowed should totally depend on the wishes of the land owners. If someone wants to rent or sell to them, then they can come in, if not they are trespassing.
Atanu Dey
Jun 25 2020 at 9:32am
robc:
I agree that the immigrants should buy whatever they need from current owners. That’s the position that Hans-Hermann Hoppe takes on immigration.
robc
Jun 25 2020 at 9:49am
It isn’t an unusual position. When I immigrated to South Carolina from Kentucky last year, I bought a house. No border checks at all.
Not sure why Mexico should be any different.
Mark Brady
Jun 24 2020 at 11:14pm
In 1992 I immigrated to the United States.
Only “3. I can bear the thought of my children not growing up as [citizens of my country of birth]” would capture a part of my thinking at the time.
And some. e.g., “2. Money matters more than patriotism” are false dichotomies.
Mark Z
Jun 25 2020 at 3:25am
I don’t have any data on this, only second-hand anecdotes, but many immigrants to the US (especially from more socially conservative parts of the world) seem to resent their children and grandchildren becoming “Americanized” rather than celebrate it. They don’t seem to view their immigration as admitting the superiority of the culture, values, and behaviors of their destination country; rather despite preferring the culture of their home country, they move to find work (or higher paid work than they can find in their home countries).
Even economically, many don’t entirely “blame” their home countries for their failures. In fact it’s not uncommon for someone to blame the wealthier country one is moving to for the poverty of the one one is leaving behind (e.g., some Indians moving to the UK or Cubans moving to the US may have this view. In some cases the sentiment is at least partly justified, though I think it’s believed even often when it isn’t). So it doesn’t necessarily follow that migration from one country to another really constitutes an admission to the superiority of the latter in any way, as I think many immigrants themselves would adamantly deny. Ultimately, the descendants of immigrants assimilate the values and norms of the destination country, but I think this may be more of an inevitable accident (or byproduct of original immigrants valuing material well-being more than they are acknowledge) than a conscious decision to adopt a ‘better’ country.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jun 25 2020 at 7:52am
Inter-generational conflict over the speed of assimilation is a pretty old story. I do not see it as particularly relevant to Kaplan’s thesis that people who oppose immigration do so because they see their action as violating the immigration opponent ideas of nationalism.
Mark Z
Jun 25 2020 at 5:59pm
But nationalism is an inherently idiosyncratic ideology; that is, nationalists love their own nation, not nations in general, so if one is a nationalist, why would other people moving to one’s own country undermine one’s nationalism? If a nationalist really believes his country is the best country in the world, then he’d expect other people to flee their inferior countries for his superior country, and take it as confirmation of their nationalism. Mexicans failing to behave like Mexican nationalists and trying to flee to the US doesn’t undermine American nationalism, it indulges it, it’s taken as a concession that America really is ‘the best country in the world.’
This is especially the case for Americans. To some extent maybe many nationalists have historically believed that it’s a universal duty to serve one’s country, even if that meant the Frenchman doing his duty inevitiably puts him in conflict with the German doing his duty, but American nationalism is wrapped up in the idea of ‘exceptionalism.’ America, the story goes, is a uniquely great country, that’s why we should love it so much, not just because of some universal obligation to one’s country. Everyone else in the world can eschew nationalism without it saying anything about the merits of American nationalism.
Robert Schadler
Jun 25 2020 at 9:28am
It was good to see this point included in the discussion: “At least a billion people would migrate if it were legal.”
But no further discussion of this, rather relevant point. Would economists, who tend toward open borders and praise immigration, see this as a matter for “economies of scale” or one of “diminishing returns”?
As a child of immigrants myself, I grateful for being a native US citizen and favor a generous immigration policy. But it should be a policy not a non-policy and it should be democratically arrived at and enforced legally. And spread out over time.
Yes, not every immigrant would come to the U.S. but a good many would. Is there some level where free market oriented economists could enter the real world and engage where immigration is seen as an invasion?
On the other side, it is an irony that those who argue “the U.S. is the best possible (or exceptional) nation” fail to see it encourages a level of immigration they often dislike. They may think it is only an encouragement for other countries to become more like the U.S., but if those who find it persuasive may also think “my country will never become like the U.S., so I might as well go there.”
Henry
Jun 25 2020 at 1:41pm
Some immigrants to the US came because they were unwelcome in their native land. I am a Jew, and we tried to live in Europe for about a thousand years. This didn’t work out. The most assimilationist Jews lived in Germany, and one could make an impressive list of businessmen, scientists, scholars, and even Nobel laureates among them. Of course, many others including Vietnamese, Cubans, and Somalis have similar tales. It takes a lot to overcome the natural attachments to place, people, and culture, but human history is full of cruel forces that made people move.
Jose Pablo
Jun 26 2020 at 8:18pm
Looking the Earth from the space should be a mandatory experience for everybody.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrC4vDcWmxk
What are the benefits we get from having “countries”?. I think this is a very interesting question that requires a methodologically complex answer (We do need a “The Case Against Countries” kind of book … come on Bryan you can do it!!).
Which is clear is that “countries” are the origin of some of our worst threats (ie world wars, nuclear weapons) and that they make the solution of our main problems even more difficult (pandemics, global warming, free trade).
What do we get them from the “country idea” that make us to stick to this terrible idea?. Funny you mentioned “religion”, the main benefit of the “country concept” is to provide us with an identity we can not produce by ourselves. It is the “identity provider of last resort” (very much like religion is).
Very often the “specimens” that you mention in the first part of your comment are the evidence of a defeat in the task of building a meaningful “personal” self.
Nationalism and patriotism are the true opium of the people.
Jimbo
Jul 1 2020 at 10:45am
I want us to have countries in the same way I like that we have plenty of relatively autonomous states and localities to choose from. It just adds to our freedom, as it gives us more options, more “laboratories of democracy”. And also because smaller jurisdictions make government close to the people, wherein the individual has a greater voice.
My ideal would be plenty of countries, but greater freedom of movement and trade among them.
Daniel
Jul 2 2020 at 12:15pm
What exactly is the libertarian response to the statement that one would welcome others into the country as citizens were it not for the fact that the policies libertarians want are exactly what the new citizens would vote against?
And, please, if you are responding to this point, at least give one answer that accepts the above premise.
I’d be really interested in hearing real answers to the above.
Thanks.
Comments are closed.