The era of mass unrestricted migration is ending

And not a moment too soon

Illegal immigration is dead.

And legal migration may be about to get a lot harder.

Thank voters on the right — and the New York Times Magazine on the left.

On Sunday, voters in Germany swung right, echoing the turn the United States made in November. In both cases anger over illegal immigration drove much of the switch.

This morning, the Times magazine explained why. Times reporter David Leonhardt¹ analyzed the unique situation in Denmark, where the party in power is both leftist and favors tight immigration rules. And his piece is likely to have consequences in a way that most journalism does not.

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(Reading with the enemy (frenemy?) For less than 20 cents a day.)

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Leonhardt argued cogently that the situation in Denmark isn’t a coincidence.

The left must choose between migration and all its other policy goals, he wrote, and not because immigration fuels racism, as some leftists claim. In fact, unskilled immigration lowers working-class wages and corrodes support for social welfare programs.

Paraphrasing the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, Leonhardt wrote:

[Frederiksen] described the issue as the main reason that her party returned to power and has remained in office even as the left has flailed elsewhere.

Leftist politics depend on collective solutions in which voters feel part of a shared community or nation, she explained… High levels of immigration can undermine this cohesion, she says, while imposing burdens on the working class that more affluent voters largely escape, such as strained benefit programs, crowded schools and increased competition for housing and blue-collar jobs. Working-class families know this from experience. Affluent leftists pretend otherwise and then lecture less privileged voters about their supposed intolerance.

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Leonhardt, who is very liberal, is comes at this issue from the perspective that more social welfare programs are a good idea. Whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant to his take on immigration, which could come straight out of the Conservative Political Action Conference:

Immigration has often been chaotic, extralegal and more rapid than voters want. The citizens of Europe, the United States and other countries were never directly asked whether they wanted to admit millions more people, and they probably would have said no…

[R]ecent history makes clear that discrimination based on skin color is not the only cause of skepticism and may not even be the leading one… rapid, large-scale immigration is almost always unpopular, regardless of who the arrivals are. Hectoring voters to feel differently does not tend to work.

Finally, Leonhardt takes aim at the canard that “climate change,” the left’s favorite bugaboo for any and all modern problems (Xavier and I aren’t having kids, because climate change!), is driving mass migration, or that countries cannot control their borders.

Supporters of mass migration often claim that it is inevitable, stemming from some combination of demography, globalization and climate change. Yet like most arguments for historical inevitability, this one is more wishful than accurate.

In fact, in March and April 2020, countries all over the world closed their borders quickly and almost completely. All they needed was a virus with a 0.3 percent mortality rate.

Occasionally, an article lands at exactly the right moment, and this piece feels like one of those. As the left reels, Leonhardt’s cogent argument that less migration will both help it politically and makes sense societally is likely to influence top Democrats - encouraging them to work with Republicans to keep the borders closed.

President Trump closed the borders, quickly, aggressively, and efficiently. It’s been the most popular move of his first month. This piece suggests they aren’t going to reopen anytime soon.

1. I went to high school and college with Dave. I don’t know if I’d call us friends - it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other and he still won’t admit I was right about Covid - but we’re friendly and I respect him. He’s progressive but intellectually honest, a rare combination these days.