The Mistaken Assumption That Immigration Is Inevitable
“They keep coming. The numbers are climbing with no end in sight,” claims an ominous voice over images of migrants crowded at the southwestern U.S. border. The implication of the 30-second spot sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies for lower immigration, is that the mass migration of people across borders is inevitable. On that point, even many immigration advocates agree. Only their interpretation is different: If large-scale population movement is inevitable, they argue, the receiving countries—and especially wealthy liberal democracies such as the United States—need fairer, more humane systems for processing people as they arrive.
The widespread assumption that immigration is inevitable shapes public discourse in other ways. To light a fire under Western governments only sluggishly moving to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, climate activists have cited a looming migration of people from countries prone to
