Although immigrants in Europe cause more crime, drain more state resources, and work less than natives, Europe should still receive immigrants: People get the causality wrong
This is a factor that is really under-appreciated by both xenophobic right-wingers and the progressive people who oppose them: most the reason immigrants don't integrate well in European welfare states is that they're *literally prevented from working for years!*
Not because they're lazy. Or because they aren't educated enough. It is literally against the law for them to work. Until their status is regularized. And these are countries where it's also really difficult to live "off the books," so being unable to get regular legal status in essentially exile from any chance to become part of society. The years-long delay, alone, can permanently reduce your life-chances and (rightly) make you rather alienated from the society that has refused to accept you.
In Sweden, for example, the much-maligned group of refugees that came after 2015 were expressly prohibited from entering the labor force while their applications were being processed. Which took years! So what do you do when you can't work for years?
Oh, and you also have been put in a crappy apartment on the edge of various declining parts of the country because that's where the housing was cheapest. Makes perfect sense, right?
And that's your life for your first 18-36 months in the country: Sitting around at home at the end of the train line or on the forgotten edge of a declining industrial town without any exposure to locals. What a great recipe for people integrating to their new home! Not to mention being well-adjusted and grateful to be there!
Sure, those people should just be happy to be alive and safe, right? Well, imagine you adopt a child from a broken home and then have them live in your shed where you ignore them. Think they'll thrive and come to cherish your hospitality? As an immigrant myself, I can assure you that leaving home and moving to another home is already extremely stressful in every way and even privileged "expats" hit a wall in their first year where they seriously reconsider their choices. Imagine that it just never gets better.
The United States de facto does something very different: Even for "illegal" immigrants who don't speak the language and lack formal skills, they will settle in the areas of the country where there are ready jobs to be had. They will be adopted into a pre-existing community of fellow immigrants who show them what's what. And they will generally be able to immediately work (often off the books) in ways that slowly but surely begin to integrate them into society. Americans are well-familiar with the many undocumented immigrants (including, infamously, the "Dreamers") who do, indeed, achieve their American Dream, even as they're living out their lives undocumented for years and decades. Ironically, people outside of any system can find it much easier to become normal members of society than people whose access to the formal system is so blocked for years that they become permanently socially excluded.
And that's arguably a knock-on effect of the parents being excluded, especially in the case of mothers:
Imagine you're the child of an Afghan immigrant family living in a bleak public housing block on the last stop of the subway line in Stockholm. Your area is economically marginal, anyway, but even if it weren't, your mom doesn't speak the language very well, has no work experience (again, she's from Afghanistan!) and can't find one of the few local jobs available in eldercare or something. Even those jobs, as low-paid as they are, require fluent Swedish. And maybe Dad's no longer around. He's developed an alcohol problem after years of emasculation and alienation. So the little money coming in is coming from the state.
Yes, there's housing. Yes, the kids are getting schooling (albeit in a troubled classroom environment, since the neighbors' kids are in the same difficult situation). Yes, there's sufficient food and healthcare (but it's very hard for Mom to navigate). So everything's great, right?
But, meanwhile, local drug gangs have taken root and find a steady stream of alienated preteens with no hope for the future and a justifiable sense that pushing narcotics might be their only path to "the good life" they see on TikTok.
So, despite your life being materially better than it would be back in Afghanistan (or the United States, initially) it's a kind of hell. And, unlike in the United States, it never gets much better than that. Those kids, even if they can avoid being seduced (or conscripted) into the local drug scene, won't ever have the socialization required to fit into polite Swedish society. They will face discrimination, of course. But even if they didn't face racism, xenophobic, Islamophobia, etc. daily, they're also just not equipped for adult success in a society that rewards education, comportment, and conformity. It's a variation on the same reason why American kids from "tough" backgrounds struggle to fit into the middle-class norms of a university campus or professional workplace.
I didn't specify it but I wasn't thinking about Sweden specifically. I have my own french context in mind and I was talking about plain old racism. There is a particular study that was able to measure the percentage of chances one had to be called back based on gender, neighborhood, race, ability....
People made similar arguments about how slavery was essential! White civilized people can’t be expected to do menial work when there is a dull docile race available to do it for them.
The theory rests on three premises: that certain work is beneath the dignity of citizens, that a civilized society nonetheless requires someone to do it, and that the solution is to source a subordinate class whose legal status forecloses the possibility of refusal. That structure persists to the present day.
Check out this Commonplace article titled From Human Bondage to Open Borders : Americans must reject the Mudsill Theory of a two-tiered labor system.
The phrase “jobs Americans won’t do” is the slavery era theory translated into the language of labor economics: the work cannot be transformed; the only question is where to find people desperate enough to do it. To accept that premise is to assert that such work is beneath the dignity of citizens by nature, and that someone else’s dignity is a lesser concern.
A nation that insists on maintaining a two-tiered labor class—whether through slavery, sharecropping, the tacit acceptance of illegal employment, the relocation of production to wherever labor is cheapest and least protected, or temporary visa programs that bind labor to a single employer—has made a political choice. It has chosen the mudsill. But it can choose otherwise. Lincoln’s answer, and the right one, is to build an economy that does not need one.
Yes, and I found it particularly distasteful that the example chosen for this article implied that raising one's own children and caring for one's own home are work beneath the dignity of citizens, and that outsourcing those connections to generate more GDP is worth it.
This comment shocked me, so I went to look at the article, and you're right, I did imply that raising children is not optimal. This is not at all what I meant, so I corrected the article.
What I said was that going back to work allows a mother (and family) to have a more fulfilling life. What I didn't make explicit was: "for the mothers who do prefer that".
I actually think having children is wonderful, that mothers who want to do that are amazing, and they should be able to do it. So thanks for the correction.
I also think that mothers who want to go back to work should be able to, if that makes them more fulfilling.
The house slave you have raising the kids gets old (and needs a pension) and has their own kids (that need to get educated). That has to be paid for by taxing the woman going back to work.
Consider a Central American immigrant with two children in NY. She is a maid on Medicaid. She has a subsidized apartment. Her kids go to NY public schools which costs that state $80k a year (double her entire salary).
The result is that when making the individual decision to use cheap childcare her decision is based on the government subsidized price, but the actual price when government expense is included is much higher especially considering whole lifecycle cost.
Big fractions of the workforce are increasingly dedicated to feeding and wiping the butts of elderly people, and getting rid of the immigrants means millions of people will need to have their parents move in with them and take care of them. Hundreds of other jobs no one wants to do from taxi driver, fast food worker, farm hand. People say they will do them, no one actually does.
It’s true we should stop pretending we don’t have a caste system and abolish the one we have, but it will take large changes. Most likely with large price increases. Somehow the cost of living is already going up incredibly fast and this will make it even worse. I don’t know if voters actually have the stomach for what they say they want or are they going to blame the politicians who give it to them?
Yeah slavery was “profitable” (not really) so long as the slaves had no rights.
Then all of a sudden 600,000 people died in the civil war.
The UAE “works” until 90% of the population wonders “why are we doing all the work and some people who have done nothing other then be born on top of some oil long ago get all the benefits.” Then either the UAE guns them down the in the street or you get a Haitian revolution.
Yes! And anybody who's hung out with natives without education knows that competition from more desperate immigrants is what nullifies their negotiating power.
Not sure there's much escape from this though. The reality is that people would rather work less and have more, even if, or precisely because, that means living in a caste society. Yeah, being an upper caste is good, but only as good as you can abuse the lower caste, let's face it.
As an aside, the native workers negotiating power to zero means end of the republic, as it did for Romans when slaves were doing all the work.
Oh, and once we have robots you won't even need slaves, immigrants, or outsourcing.
So we do have some figuring out to do, urgently, about what matters in society. I think this article is a good contributor to that.
If robots are going to do all the work immigrants do why are we importing a bunch of people who need expensive medical care, education, real estate, and can vote?
Robots don’t get welfare and can’t influence my elections. They don’t go to my kids school.
Yes of course, model has improved. The point is that having a lower caste, or group, whatever it is called, is the point. Somebody to cook, clean, all that.
Robots will change a lot. But, to dig a bit more on the dark side: one thing they will not be able to give is the pleasure of power over other humans. No joy in having a robot obey. Not saying this is good. Just saying these are some of the drivers, and taboo to speak about at that, of the immigration issue.
> I don't think bringing data to light should ever be a problem. [...] The truth can never be bad.
They sound similar, but they aren't. Data ≠ Truth.
Perhaps humans can't reliably arrive at "the truth" about anything non-trivial. Pick any interesting historical question -- "what caused war X", or "was Y a good president" -- and the answer varies enormously depending on who you ask, how you ask, or even _when_ you ask. History and policy don't behave like maths. Collective opinion shifts even when the underlying data doesn't.
I've seen expert organisations with vast resources and purpose-built measurement systems argue bitterly about questions far simpler than "what should Europe do about immigration." Not because anyone was stupid or dishonest, but because the question was genuinely hard and because "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it", as Sinclair noted.
I value your work and none of this means you shouldn't present quality data collected and processed with the genuine intention of finding "the truth". But I'd love to see you hold your conclusions a little more loosely; counter-argue your own points more.
> Some readers accused me of being right-wing for bringing this data to light. [...] Decades ago, it seemed more true on the right. Now, it seems common on the left.
It would be good for political discourse to recognise the limits of truth and data. It won't, because doubt and complexity don't win in polling stations nor sell ads. But if you adopt more doubt it may nullify the question of whether you are right-wing or left-wing. Be true-wing.
The author is referring to empirical data and stats on crime, incomes and so on. I think he would agree that policy recommendations are not true or false.
I once had a top executive ask me for a chart showing something. They didn't like the chart I offered, so my team made a long deck of contradictory charts based on the same data, changing things like filter criteria and aggregations. The exec picked the one they like and presented it to dozens of other execs. Everyone involved was happy other than my team; my lead analyst quipped "they don't need a data scientist, just a data artist".
"Empirical data" may be "empirical" if a representative sample of research teams reach the same data independently. I'm not an expert on crime stats, but I can think of many ways to manipulate "what fraction of violent crimes in Europe in 2025 were caused by immigrants". This is true when the research team is honest, competent and diligent, and a lot truer when they're not.
So what do we do when we must make a decision, as @JBjb4321 correctly points out? We look at the data we have, but we take deliberate care when communicating it to decision maker (and in Pueyo's case, the public). There are some fantastic publications on this, see for example the work of Sir David Spiegelhalter and his colleagues at Cambridge's Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication.
All true. Yet, decisions require some choices, and successful execution require and end to constant questioning. Poor data is better than no data when making such choices.
I'm not a big fan of this article. For one thing you recommend copying the UAE to reduce immigrant crime rates. Sooo slavery and violence? Is that what you're suggesting?
Furthermore I don't see why we should accept the premise that we need to compensate for falling birthrates. I think it's worth drawing that premise into question before looking into how to restore it. Could it not actually end up being a godsend in the case that AGI results in massive job automation? In that scenario productivity is decoupled from headcount and a much smaller population would increasingly benefit from it. Also, we have no idea how it could influence natality! Maybe people just stay at home and have children once we have AGI and universal income.
Overall, let down by the quality and depth of this article.
I don't know so well the Saudi Arabian model, but I'm slightly acquainted with the UAE one. A lot of the worst elements (debt from recruitment fees, passport confiscation, wage theft, weak exit options, deportation risk...) that existed are being consistently eradicated.
Disregarding an entire system because it's imperfect is myopic. You take the good things, not the bad things.
The Supreme Court is going to uphold birthright citizenship. Prop 187 never saw the light of day. The idea that western democracies could have a permanent apartheid state just doesn’t seem realistic.
And would it be desirable? Do you know a lot of apartheid states that are well functioning? That are creating frontier innovation and growth at scale?
The UAE used oil money to pay slaves to build luxury hotels. This was a decent use of their oil money! And I’m sure the hotels are nice! And I bet there are some tax and regulation arbitrage PO Boxes domiciled there as there are in any number of similar city states. I think this model is fine and the leaders of the UAE have played their cards as best they could.
I just don’t see this as a model the OECD could actually adopt. It a niche that doesn’t scale. At the end of the day the UAE needs real countries full of real people that it can import from and be protected by as a tiny niche player.
And if the slave ever decide that they outnumber the citizens 9:1 and are the ones doing all the work and getting little in return…cotton plantations were profitable right up until 600,000 people died in the civil war.
Yes, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey are all majority Muslim as well as having a great deal of government control/few civil liberties. Of course you’re less likely to break the law.
I also have the same concerns about AI/robotics and immigration. -Karen
Which is more harmful to a country as both would cause disruptions - large numbers of immigrants or a reduction in population? Maybe the length of the disruptions?
When the population declines in a country, wouldn't it eventually stabilize as there would not be a need for so many workers such as plumbers, etc? Also, if AI reduces need for workers, then maybe a population decline is good for a country?
I don't know, but would be interested in your thought.
"When the population declines in a country, wouldn't it eventually stabilize as there would not be a need for so many workers such as plumbers, etc?"
As I understand it, a small population will lack specialisation, just like a small town has a less specialised workforce than a city: e.g. there won't be both dungeon synth and math rock bands, just some more common genre bands; no ecology department and genetics department, just a smallish biology department; no plumbers specialised on small residences and those on large institutions, just a plumber and his son. Some time forward, there won't be a plumber at all, everybody needs to do their own plumbing.
Interesting and very welcome articles on a very contentious topic. I dont agree with all the inferences but I welcome the level headed attempt to come up with pragmatic beneficial approaches to messy complex problems and issues.
Thanks for writing such a great and controversial series of articles. I too am a big fan of legal immigration, at least when handled well. OTOH, it doesn’t seem to be handled well in most places, and is especially dysfunctional in Europe.
I would say that I think it is so screwed up their that the appropriate response would probably be to just stop it cold turkey as the institutions and selection mechanisms are redesigned from the base up to be reasonably functional. They are probably better off with no immigration than more of what they are getting.
Considerations:
Completely eliminate the entire asylum program.
Screen immigrants and take only the best of the best, such as college graduates who speak the language, with families from cultures proven to be compatible with the receiving country. These folks can pay for a third party to bond them (that they won’t commit crimes or milk welfare).
On the lower end, build a temporary system for lower skilled workers. These can be sponsored by the prospective employers or perhaps industry groups.
Require immigrant adults work.
Strictly prohibit welfare benefits (either deport abusers, or claim the funds from the company that bonded or sponsored them).
Place limits on how many people can come any given year in total and from specific countries.
If every country is only taking the best of the best, that leaves a big population that is taken by no one. There are only so many "best of the best" people.
One theory of mine is that part of Europe's problem is they are getting leftovers that the US rejected. Many migrants are simply seeking a higher income, and US incomes are higher than European incomes.
A better plan might be to work to prevent the emergence of enclaves, as Denmark does.
Good points. I think countries need to either get the best or not take them at all. Luckily, the definition of best (best low skilled vs best professional) can differ dramatically by need. Also, there are still a lot of people in the less developed world to draw from. This may change in next few decades though.
Dude we can’t even get birthright citizenship nixed. Prop 187 never got implemented. “What if they live and work here but we didn’t give them welfare and the vote” is a total pipe dream.
Good points, dude. I basically agree that to the extent the solution is politically infeasible, that we should not open our doors to immigration.
If we can’t screen our immigrants and enforce that they work rather than become parasites, then we should not allow them in. I would argue that California, for example, would undermine any rational immigration policy, and that when I protested, they would call me names.
What happens when population growth slows or turns negative? Is a sigmoid function or similar possible for population in a nation? In the world? What happens to GDP? What about some other measures of "well being"? Because of the experience I've had of the world over the past decades, I can't viscerally conceive of anything but growth. Is progress without growth possible?
Why would somebody who gets paid €15k also get €6k in welfare *and* pay €4k in taxes? At least in Germany the general rule is that wages up to the subsistence minimum (fixed at €12k as of 2025) aren't taxed. The other relevant tax is VAT; on her whole income it would be a maximum of ~€3k, but the VAT for food is 7% instead of 19% and other expenses (rent, money sent to relatives at home, …) aren't subject to VAT at all.
In Spain, for example, everybody pays income tax. Then you have social security costs, plus of course VAT. If €15k go out of the employer's pocket, the effective spend of the employess is a bit below €10k
Of course, then there's welfare, which will include healthcare, education, pensions... This is into th thousands of euros, I don't know if €2k or €6k, but the point is that even in a situation where such a person would cost a lot to the state, they might still be beneficial for the economy.
In general everyone costs money when they are old and young. It’s really hard to be a net fiscal sink during prime working ages, but some really low iq subgroups can manage it.
But the real bottom line is you’ve got to generate a lot of surplus during your prime working years to net out to a positive for society. If you’re even debating the matter then it’s a clear fiscal loser over the persons entire lifetime.
Thanks for the article. I much appreciate it. I would like to mention a possible correction to it. I think that the Baby Boom generation is not the generation at the age 60-77. But the generaton 77-81. The babyboom generation was generated by the end of WW2 and lasted a few years. From 1945 to 1949 s that is around 77-81 years ago. The generation you call baby boomers is the offspring of that earlier generation. This generation is also bigger than normal because ther wer more potential mothers at that time. It is the second effect generation. Morever I think the second effect generation is more of the age 55-65. I hope you can appreciate my feedback. Note: I was born in 1968 and my mother in 1945, so we are both a typical example of both phenomena.
I, my sister, my aunt and her family are immigrants to Europe. not from a Muslim country. To different countries: Portugal, Germany, and France. Me and my sister arrived legally and maintained legality all throughout. We never engaged in crime, my sister works in healthcare, I started companies and created jobs for natives.
My aunty and her family are illegal migrants. Heavy burden on France. Receiving housing, allowance, and free medical care. Her husband earns money through shoplifting. Regularly getting arrested, authorities fail to deport constantly, when they do deport, he finds the way back.
I think for all these statistics the distinction should be made between legal and illegal immigration. I’m sure outcomes for legal migrants are going to be dramatically better regardless of their ethnicity and religion and that will start to shift people’s mindset from “all migrants are evil” to maybe we should just manage it better.
Great piece, it covers the economic and policy dimensions really well. I'd only add that beyond the rational and administrative level, there's an anthropological layer that's hard to ignore: the psychology of receiving populations, tied to identity and national belonging, often overrides economic logic. Which is precisely why this issue remains so deeply complex.
Surely there are other countries besides the US with deep history of immigration? Seems bad to index too much on a single data point. People have been walking from place to place on this planet for millenia.
Q: In the migration data, for Romania, population without migration is forecast higher than without. Does it mean that models assume outbound net migration for this country?
Good points. Another factor to consider is the effect on the countries the immigrants came from. And also, in turn, the effect that those countries can have on Europe. For example if Turkey has been made more stable and prosperous because of emigration to Germany than it would have otherwise been, then that is good for Turkey and also likely good for Europe.
This is a factor that is really under-appreciated by both xenophobic right-wingers and the progressive people who oppose them: most the reason immigrants don't integrate well in European welfare states is that they're *literally prevented from working for years!*
Not because they're lazy. Or because they aren't educated enough. It is literally against the law for them to work. Until their status is regularized. And these are countries where it's also really difficult to live "off the books," so being unable to get regular legal status in essentially exile from any chance to become part of society. The years-long delay, alone, can permanently reduce your life-chances and (rightly) make you rather alienated from the society that has refused to accept you.
In Sweden, for example, the much-maligned group of refugees that came after 2015 were expressly prohibited from entering the labor force while their applications were being processed. Which took years! So what do you do when you can't work for years?
Oh, and you also have been put in a crappy apartment on the edge of various declining parts of the country because that's where the housing was cheapest. Makes perfect sense, right?
And that's your life for your first 18-36 months in the country: Sitting around at home at the end of the train line or on the forgotten edge of a declining industrial town without any exposure to locals. What a great recipe for people integrating to their new home! Not to mention being well-adjusted and grateful to be there!
Sure, those people should just be happy to be alive and safe, right? Well, imagine you adopt a child from a broken home and then have them live in your shed where you ignore them. Think they'll thrive and come to cherish your hospitality? As an immigrant myself, I can assure you that leaving home and moving to another home is already extremely stressful in every way and even privileged "expats" hit a wall in their first year where they seriously reconsider their choices. Imagine that it just never gets better.
The United States de facto does something very different: Even for "illegal" immigrants who don't speak the language and lack formal skills, they will settle in the areas of the country where there are ready jobs to be had. They will be adopted into a pre-existing community of fellow immigrants who show them what's what. And they will generally be able to immediately work (often off the books) in ways that slowly but surely begin to integrate them into society. Americans are well-familiar with the many undocumented immigrants (including, infamously, the "Dreamers") who do, indeed, achieve their American Dream, even as they're living out their lives undocumented for years and decades. Ironically, people outside of any system can find it much easier to become normal members of society than people whose access to the formal system is so blocked for years that they become permanently socially excluded.
Agreed, this is a major issue
Lol
There is no assimilation
https://hereticalinsights.substack.com/p/the-pot-that-refuses-to-melt
Even when they're not prohibited, they may be discriminated against. There is also less employment amongst second generation immigrants.
And that's arguably a knock-on effect of the parents being excluded, especially in the case of mothers:
Imagine you're the child of an Afghan immigrant family living in a bleak public housing block on the last stop of the subway line in Stockholm. Your area is economically marginal, anyway, but even if it weren't, your mom doesn't speak the language very well, has no work experience (again, she's from Afghanistan!) and can't find one of the few local jobs available in eldercare or something. Even those jobs, as low-paid as they are, require fluent Swedish. And maybe Dad's no longer around. He's developed an alcohol problem after years of emasculation and alienation. So the little money coming in is coming from the state.
Yes, there's housing. Yes, the kids are getting schooling (albeit in a troubled classroom environment, since the neighbors' kids are in the same difficult situation). Yes, there's sufficient food and healthcare (but it's very hard for Mom to navigate). So everything's great, right?
But, meanwhile, local drug gangs have taken root and find a steady stream of alienated preteens with no hope for the future and a justifiable sense that pushing narcotics might be their only path to "the good life" they see on TikTok.
So, despite your life being materially better than it would be back in Afghanistan (or the United States, initially) it's a kind of hell. And, unlike in the United States, it never gets much better than that. Those kids, even if they can avoid being seduced (or conscripted) into the local drug scene, won't ever have the socialization required to fit into polite Swedish society. They will face discrimination, of course. But even if they didn't face racism, xenophobic, Islamophobia, etc. daily, they're also just not equipped for adult success in a society that rewards education, comportment, and conformity. It's a variation on the same reason why American kids from "tough" backgrounds struggle to fit into the middle-class norms of a university campus or professional workplace.
I didn't specify it but I wasn't thinking about Sweden specifically. I have my own french context in mind and I was talking about plain old racism. There is a particular study that was able to measure the percentage of chances one had to be called back based on gender, neighborhood, race, ability....
People made similar arguments about how slavery was essential! White civilized people can’t be expected to do menial work when there is a dull docile race available to do it for them.
The theory rests on three premises: that certain work is beneath the dignity of citizens, that a civilized society nonetheless requires someone to do it, and that the solution is to source a subordinate class whose legal status forecloses the possibility of refusal. That structure persists to the present day.
Check out this Commonplace article titled From Human Bondage to Open Borders : Americans must reject the Mudsill Theory of a two-tiered labor system.
https://commonplace.substack.com/p/from-human-bondage-to-open-borders?selection=f64171fb-d7cf-4398-a883-2679f3ef311c&r=rluf&utm_medium=ios
(Quotes from the article)
The phrase “jobs Americans won’t do” is the slavery era theory translated into the language of labor economics: the work cannot be transformed; the only question is where to find people desperate enough to do it. To accept that premise is to assert that such work is beneath the dignity of citizens by nature, and that someone else’s dignity is a lesser concern.
A nation that insists on maintaining a two-tiered labor class—whether through slavery, sharecropping, the tacit acceptance of illegal employment, the relocation of production to wherever labor is cheapest and least protected, or temporary visa programs that bind labor to a single employer—has made a political choice. It has chosen the mudsill. But it can choose otherwise. Lincoln’s answer, and the right one, is to build an economy that does not need one.
Yes, and I found it particularly distasteful that the example chosen for this article implied that raising one's own children and caring for one's own home are work beneath the dignity of citizens, and that outsourcing those connections to generate more GDP is worth it.
This comment shocked me, so I went to look at the article, and you're right, I did imply that raising children is not optimal. This is not at all what I meant, so I corrected the article.
What I said was that going back to work allows a mother (and family) to have a more fulfilling life. What I didn't make explicit was: "for the mothers who do prefer that".
I actually think having children is wonderful, that mothers who want to do that are amazing, and they should be able to do it. So thanks for the correction.
I also think that mothers who want to go back to work should be able to, if that makes them more fulfilling.
The house slave you have raising the kids gets old (and needs a pension) and has their own kids (that need to get educated). That has to be paid for by taxing the woman going back to work.
Consider a Central American immigrant with two children in NY. She is a maid on Medicaid. She has a subsidized apartment. Her kids go to NY public schools which costs that state $80k a year (double her entire salary).
The result is that when making the individual decision to use cheap childcare her decision is based on the government subsidized price, but the actual price when government expense is included is much higher especially considering whole lifecycle cost.
Big fractions of the workforce are increasingly dedicated to feeding and wiping the butts of elderly people, and getting rid of the immigrants means millions of people will need to have their parents move in with them and take care of them. Hundreds of other jobs no one wants to do from taxi driver, fast food worker, farm hand. People say they will do them, no one actually does.
It’s true we should stop pretending we don’t have a caste system and abolish the one we have, but it will take large changes. Most likely with large price increases. Somehow the cost of living is already going up incredibly fast and this will make it even worse. I don’t know if voters actually have the stomach for what they say they want or are they going to blame the politicians who give it to them?
There is no mass underclass in Japan, denmark, or Switzerland. Yet people still get services
Yeah slavery was “profitable” (not really) so long as the slaves had no rights.
Then all of a sudden 600,000 people died in the civil war.
The UAE “works” until 90% of the population wonders “why are we doing all the work and some people who have done nothing other then be born on top of some oil long ago get all the benefits.” Then either the UAE guns them down the in the street or you get a Haitian revolution.
Yes! And anybody who's hung out with natives without education knows that competition from more desperate immigrants is what nullifies their negotiating power.
Not sure there's much escape from this though. The reality is that people would rather work less and have more, even if, or precisely because, that means living in a caste society. Yeah, being an upper caste is good, but only as good as you can abuse the lower caste, let's face it.
As an aside, the native workers negotiating power to zero means end of the republic, as it did for Romans when slaves were doing all the work.
Oh, and once we have robots you won't even need slaves, immigrants, or outsourcing.
So we do have some figuring out to do, urgently, about what matters in society. I think this article is a good contributor to that.
Note that what you call lower caste are people who are opting in and are happy to have a better life than where they came from.
Also, studies say competition at the lower end of skill set reduces native salaries but only a bit.
Robots will change everything
If robots are going to do all the work immigrants do why are we importing a bunch of people who need expensive medical care, education, real estate, and can vote?
Robots don’t get welfare and can’t influence my elections. They don’t go to my kids school.
Yes of course, model has improved. The point is that having a lower caste, or group, whatever it is called, is the point. Somebody to cook, clean, all that.
Robots will change a lot. But, to dig a bit more on the dark side: one thing they will not be able to give is the pleasure of power over other humans. No joy in having a robot obey. Not saying this is good. Just saying these are some of the drivers, and taboo to speak about at that, of the immigration issue.
You make two statements at the beginning:
> I don't think bringing data to light should ever be a problem. [...] The truth can never be bad.
They sound similar, but they aren't. Data ≠ Truth.
Perhaps humans can't reliably arrive at "the truth" about anything non-trivial. Pick any interesting historical question -- "what caused war X", or "was Y a good president" -- and the answer varies enormously depending on who you ask, how you ask, or even _when_ you ask. History and policy don't behave like maths. Collective opinion shifts even when the underlying data doesn't.
I've seen expert organisations with vast resources and purpose-built measurement systems argue bitterly about questions far simpler than "what should Europe do about immigration." Not because anyone was stupid or dishonest, but because the question was genuinely hard and because "it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it", as Sinclair noted.
I value your work and none of this means you shouldn't present quality data collected and processed with the genuine intention of finding "the truth". But I'd love to see you hold your conclusions a little more loosely; counter-argue your own points more.
> Some readers accused me of being right-wing for bringing this data to light. [...] Decades ago, it seemed more true on the right. Now, it seems common on the left.
It would be good for political discourse to recognise the limits of truth and data. It won't, because doubt and complexity don't win in polling stations nor sell ads. But if you adopt more doubt it may nullify the question of whether you are right-wing or left-wing. Be true-wing.
You are right on data vs truth. And indeed, I try to be true-wing. Thank you.
Can you please find ways to support your class interests that don't destroy the lives the others?
The author is referring to empirical data and stats on crime, incomes and so on. I think he would agree that policy recommendations are not true or false.
I once had a top executive ask me for a chart showing something. They didn't like the chart I offered, so my team made a long deck of contradictory charts based on the same data, changing things like filter criteria and aggregations. The exec picked the one they like and presented it to dozens of other execs. Everyone involved was happy other than my team; my lead analyst quipped "they don't need a data scientist, just a data artist".
"Empirical data" may be "empirical" if a representative sample of research teams reach the same data independently. I'm not an expert on crime stats, but I can think of many ways to manipulate "what fraction of violent crimes in Europe in 2025 were caused by immigrants". This is true when the research team is honest, competent and diligent, and a lot truer when they're not.
So what do we do when we must make a decision, as @JBjb4321 correctly points out? We look at the data we have, but we take deliberate care when communicating it to decision maker (and in Pueyo's case, the public). There are some fantastic publications on this, see for example the work of Sir David Spiegelhalter and his colleagues at Cambridge's Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication.
This is a better argument. Thanks!
All true. Yet, decisions require some choices, and successful execution require and end to constant questioning. Poor data is better than no data when making such choices.
No mention of the economic impact on blue collar native workers. Without immigration dont their wages increase?
If so doesnt that explain a rational opposition?
The economic benefits in this article seem focused on professionals
The evidence I've seen suggests it reduces slightly in the short term, correct.
My take on this is that differences in welfare should compensate this.
I'm not a big fan of this article. For one thing you recommend copying the UAE to reduce immigrant crime rates. Sooo slavery and violence? Is that what you're suggesting?
Furthermore I don't see why we should accept the premise that we need to compensate for falling birthrates. I think it's worth drawing that premise into question before looking into how to restore it. Could it not actually end up being a godsend in the case that AGI results in massive job automation? In that scenario productivity is decoupled from headcount and a much smaller population would increasingly benefit from it. Also, we have no idea how it could influence natality! Maybe people just stay at home and have children once we have AGI and universal income.
Overall, let down by the quality and depth of this article.
I don't know so well the Saudi Arabian model, but I'm slightly acquainted with the UAE one. A lot of the worst elements (debt from recruitment fees, passport confiscation, wage theft, weak exit options, deportation risk...) that existed are being consistently eradicated.
Disregarding an entire system because it's imperfect is myopic. You take the good things, not the bad things.
The Supreme Court is going to uphold birthright citizenship. Prop 187 never saw the light of day. The idea that western democracies could have a permanent apartheid state just doesn’t seem realistic.
And would it be desirable? Do you know a lot of apartheid states that are well functioning? That are creating frontier innovation and growth at scale?
The UAE used oil money to pay slaves to build luxury hotels. This was a decent use of their oil money! And I’m sure the hotels are nice! And I bet there are some tax and regulation arbitrage PO Boxes domiciled there as there are in any number of similar city states. I think this model is fine and the leaders of the UAE have played their cards as best they could.
I just don’t see this as a model the OECD could actually adopt. It a niche that doesn’t scale. At the end of the day the UAE needs real countries full of real people that it can import from and be protected by as a tiny niche player.
And if the slave ever decide that they outnumber the citizens 9:1 and are the ones doing all the work and getting little in return…cotton plantations were profitable right up until 600,000 people died in the civil war.
Yes, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey are all majority Muslim as well as having a great deal of government control/few civil liberties. Of course you’re less likely to break the law.
I also have the same concerns about AI/robotics and immigration. -Karen
Yes, AI and robots will change that dramatically
Which is more harmful to a country as both would cause disruptions - large numbers of immigrants or a reduction in population? Maybe the length of the disruptions?
When the population declines in a country, wouldn't it eventually stabilize as there would not be a need for so many workers such as plumbers, etc? Also, if AI reduces need for workers, then maybe a population decline is good for a country?
I don't know, but would be interested in your thought.
"When the population declines in a country, wouldn't it eventually stabilize as there would not be a need for so many workers such as plumbers, etc?"
As I understand it, a small population will lack specialisation, just like a small town has a less specialised workforce than a city: e.g. there won't be both dungeon synth and math rock bands, just some more common genre bands; no ecology department and genetics department, just a smallish biology department; no plumbers specialised on small residences and those on large institutions, just a plumber and his son. Some time forward, there won't be a plumber at all, everybody needs to do their own plumbing.
Interesting and very welcome articles on a very contentious topic. I dont agree with all the inferences but I welcome the level headed attempt to come up with pragmatic beneficial approaches to messy complex problems and issues.
Thanks for writing such a great and controversial series of articles. I too am a big fan of legal immigration, at least when handled well. OTOH, it doesn’t seem to be handled well in most places, and is especially dysfunctional in Europe.
I would say that I think it is so screwed up their that the appropriate response would probably be to just stop it cold turkey as the institutions and selection mechanisms are redesigned from the base up to be reasonably functional. They are probably better off with no immigration than more of what they are getting.
Considerations:
Completely eliminate the entire asylum program.
Screen immigrants and take only the best of the best, such as college graduates who speak the language, with families from cultures proven to be compatible with the receiving country. These folks can pay for a third party to bond them (that they won’t commit crimes or milk welfare).
On the lower end, build a temporary system for lower skilled workers. These can be sponsored by the prospective employers or perhaps industry groups.
Require immigrant adults work.
Strictly prohibit welfare benefits (either deport abusers, or claim the funds from the company that bonded or sponsored them).
Place limits on how many people can come any given year in total and from specific countries.
You will love the next article!
If every country is only taking the best of the best, that leaves a big population that is taken by no one. There are only so many "best of the best" people.
One theory of mine is that part of Europe's problem is they are getting leftovers that the US rejected. Many migrants are simply seeking a higher income, and US incomes are higher than European incomes.
A better plan might be to work to prevent the emergence of enclaves, as Denmark does.
Denmark has extremely strict immigration policies. Google them.
Good points. I think countries need to either get the best or not take them at all. Luckily, the definition of best (best low skilled vs best professional) can differ dramatically by need. Also, there are still a lot of people in the less developed world to draw from. This may change in next few decades though.
Dude we can’t even get birthright citizenship nixed. Prop 187 never got implemented. “What if they live and work here but we didn’t give them welfare and the vote” is a total pipe dream.
Good points, dude. I basically agree that to the extent the solution is politically infeasible, that we should not open our doors to immigration.
If we can’t screen our immigrants and enforce that they work rather than become parasites, then we should not allow them in. I would argue that California, for example, would undermine any rational immigration policy, and that when I protested, they would call me names.
What happens when population growth slows or turns negative? Is a sigmoid function or similar possible for population in a nation? In the world? What happens to GDP? What about some other measures of "well being"? Because of the experience I've had of the world over the past decades, I can't viscerally conceive of anything but growth. Is progress without growth possible?
This is a good question. I suspect it is possible, but will be very different in its nature. But I need to think more on the topic…
Fantastic question. I don't have answers. Yet.
Why would somebody who gets paid €15k also get €6k in welfare *and* pay €4k in taxes? At least in Germany the general rule is that wages up to the subsistence minimum (fixed at €12k as of 2025) aren't taxed. The other relevant tax is VAT; on her whole income it would be a maximum of ~€3k, but the VAT for food is 7% instead of 19% and other expenses (rent, money sent to relatives at home, …) aren't subject to VAT at all.
Same with the USA, low earning people are not really taxed proportionately.
In Spain, for example, everybody pays income tax. Then you have social security costs, plus of course VAT. If €15k go out of the employer's pocket, the effective spend of the employess is a bit below €10k
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a1db048-0818-83eb-ba3a-a3763a816669
Of course, then there's welfare, which will include healthcare, education, pensions... This is into th thousands of euros, I don't know if €2k or €6k, but the point is that even in a situation where such a person would cost a lot to the state, they might still be beneficial for the economy.
I asked ChatGPT and it ventured €8k annualized...
(same link as above)
In general everyone costs money when they are old and young. It’s really hard to be a net fiscal sink during prime working ages, but some really low iq subgroups can manage it.
But the real bottom line is you’ve got to generate a lot of surplus during your prime working years to net out to a positive for society. If you’re even debating the matter then it’s a clear fiscal loser over the persons entire lifetime.
Hi Tomas,
Thanks for the article. I much appreciate it. I would like to mention a possible correction to it. I think that the Baby Boom generation is not the generation at the age 60-77. But the generaton 77-81. The babyboom generation was generated by the end of WW2 and lasted a few years. From 1945 to 1949 s that is around 77-81 years ago. The generation you call baby boomers is the offspring of that earlier generation. This generation is also bigger than normal because ther wer more potential mothers at that time. It is the second effect generation. Morever I think the second effect generation is more of the age 55-65. I hope you can appreciate my feedback. Note: I was born in 1968 and my mother in 1945, so we are both a typical example of both phenomena.
Greetings,
Leon van Heijningen
Thanks!
I followed what Google and Wikipedia say!
I, my sister, my aunt and her family are immigrants to Europe. not from a Muslim country. To different countries: Portugal, Germany, and France. Me and my sister arrived legally and maintained legality all throughout. We never engaged in crime, my sister works in healthcare, I started companies and created jobs for natives.
My aunty and her family are illegal migrants. Heavy burden on France. Receiving housing, allowance, and free medical care. Her husband earns money through shoplifting. Regularly getting arrested, authorities fail to deport constantly, when they do deport, he finds the way back.
I think for all these statistics the distinction should be made between legal and illegal immigration. I’m sure outcomes for legal migrants are going to be dramatically better regardless of their ethnicity and religion and that will start to shift people’s mindset from “all migrants are evil” to maybe we should just manage it better.
Absolutely. This is addressed in the next article
Great piece, it covers the economic and policy dimensions really well. I'd only add that beyond the rational and administrative level, there's an anthropological layer that's hard to ignore: the psychology of receiving populations, tied to identity and national belonging, often overrides economic logic. Which is precisely why this issue remains so deeply complex.
I do think this is a result of policy too! See tomorrow's article
Surely there are other countries besides the US with deep history of immigration? Seems bad to index too much on a single data point. People have been walking from place to place on this planet for millenia.
True. But the US also is the biggest, and the best studied.
Others include Canada (which I look into tomorrow), Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Uruguay. I'm sure there are many more
Q: In the migration data, for Romania, population without migration is forecast higher than without. Does it mean that models assume outbound net migration for this country?
Correct. Romania is net negative in population migration
Good points. Another factor to consider is the effect on the countries the immigrants came from. And also, in turn, the effect that those countries can have on Europe. For example if Turkey has been made more stable and prosperous because of emigration to Germany than it would have otherwise been, then that is good for Turkey and also likely good for Europe.