The Self-Refuting Fareed Zakaria

It isn’t often that a newspaper columnist refutes his own thesis within the first couple of paragraphs but Fareed Zakaria has accomplished that in his most recent Washington Post piece. His thesis is that high levels of immigration have resulted in a right-wing populist backlash, not just in the United States but all over the world, and that “better management” would resolve the problem:

Western societies will have to better manage immigration. They should also place much greater emphasis on assimilation. Canada should be a role model. It has devised smart policies on both fronts, with high levels of (skilled) immigration, strong assimilation and no major recoil.

Eventually, Western societies will be able to adjust to this new feature of globalization. Look at young people in Europe and the United States, most of whom deeply value the benefits of diversity and seek to live in an open and connected world. That’s the future. We just have to ensure that we don’t wreck the world before we get there.

But consider this paragraph:

One way to test this theory is to note that countries without large-scale immigration, such as Japan, have not seen the same rise of right-wing populism. Another interesting case is Spain, a country that has taken in many immigrants, but mostly Spanish-speaking Latinos, who are easier to assimilate. While you see traditional left-wing economic populism in Spain, you do not see right-wing nationalist movements.

There are two countries other than Spain I think should be added to the analysis, both are quite similar to the United States, and neither are experiencing the right-wing backlash he mentions: Canada and Australia. Both have very large immigrant populations and high rates of immigration.

Both countries are highly selective in the immigrants they admit without the diversity quotas or family reunification policies that are primary features of U. S. immigration policy. Canada’s immigrants are mostly from China, India, or Europe. Australia’s immigrant population is overwhelmingly from the United Kingdom, China, or India.

Is any country anywhere in the world experiencing a right-wing populist backlash as a consequence of Chinese immigration? I don’t think so. But I’d really like to know.

The United States experienced very high levels of immigration, mostly from Mexico, over a period of forty years without the right-wing populist backlash that concerns Mr. Zakaria. More recently we’ve had roughly zero net immigration from Mexico. During most of that period we had significantly higher economic growth than we do now. And we didn’t have a populist backlash.

If an abstract “better management” will stave off a populist backlash, let me make a challenge to Mr. Zakaria. What should we have done in the case of the Somali immigrants? After twenty-five years their unemployment rate is still in double digits and they send more soldiers to DAESH than any other group in the U. S.

If by “better management” he means “deport illegal immigrants and don’t accept immigrants from West Asia or North Africa” he may have a point. Let me suggest an alternative model and solely for the United States, the country with which I am most familiar:

• We can tolerate high levels and a high rate of immigration but
• We should have a serious regime of workplace and border enforcement and
• We should deport illegal immigrants and
• The immigrants we accept from West Asia should be limited to the Iraqis, Afghans, etc. who have aided our military in our wars in the region and their families and
• The federal government needs to convince the American people that the immigrants we accept will make them (the American people) better off rather than just the immigrants and their families.

If that’s the “better management” he’s proposing, then I’m in agreement with him. But I don’t think it is.