What Immigrants Should the West Accept?
The ROI of immigration, productivity, identity, crime, housing pressure, national cohesion, secularism, terrorism, and elite competence
There’s a backlash on immigration across the US, Europe, and Japan right now. How did we get here? Why did politicians open the gates? Were they right?
1. The Fear
Maybe you’ve seen a graph like this one:
If we look at a few European countries individually, it looks like this:
When seeking a culprit, immigration springs to many people’s minds:
This leads to fears of replacement. And viral videos like this one appear, to make the stats feel more visceral and associate immigration with disease:
They think maybe the increase in sexual violence in Europe is due to immigrants. Then they stumble on data like this:
They conclude that immigrants drive a majority of crime in the West.
In parallel, they might come across data like this:
And see the two types of data from above—economics and sexual crime—combined into one:
I assume most people, when presented with these graphs, either become uncomfortable, or say: Let’s stop immigration immediately. And that’s one of the main reasons why right-wing parties are growing across Europe:
But that is flawed thinking:
