The "necessary evil" immigration myth

The persistent narrative that immigration represents a "necessary evil" for maintaining economic prosperity, public finances, and pension systems has become deeply embedded in political discourse. This myth suggests that despite potential social costs, immigrants are essential for economic growth and fiscal sustainability, especially in the context of aging populations in the West. However, mounting evidence reveals this framework to be fundamentally flawed, built upon economic misconceptions and ignoring the substantial negative impacts that immigration imposes on host populations.

No Evidence That Aging Populations Harm Economic Performance

The foundation of the immigration necessity argument rests on the assumption that aging or declining populations inherently compromise socio-economic performance. This assumption has been challenged by research from Bradshaw and McDermott. Their analysis of nine different indices of socio-economic performance—including domestic comprehensive wealth, income equality, research and development expenditure, patent applications, human capital, corruption perception index, freedom, planetary pressure-adjusted Human Development Index, and healthy life expectancy at birth—found no evidence that slower population growth or aging populations are linked to worse economic or social outcomes.

In fact, their research demonstrates that countries with low or negative population growth perform better on average for all indicators, and even within-country time series show that most older and slower-growing populations fare better on average. The study explicitly challenges the common assumption that more people automatically mean more growth, highlighting that long-term prosperity depends more on how societies invest in education, skills, and technology rather than sheer population numbers.

The economic reality is that demographic-economic linkages are far more nuanced than immigration advocates suggest. Classic economic growth models emphasize the importance of capital and knowledge per person rather than headcount alone. If a country's stock of capital and knowledge does not decline when the population shrinks, per-capita output can remain stable or even increase. Population decline does not automatically lead to economic decline—what matters more is how societies invest in and share their capital and skills.

Immigrants as Net Economic Burdens

Contrary to the myth of immigrants as fiscal saviors, research reveals that many immigrant groups impose significant negative fiscal impacts on host countries. The National Academies study on immigration's economic and fiscal consequences found that while immigrants with graduate degrees made substantial positive fiscal contributions, immigrants without high school diplomas imposed lifetime fiscal costs of $246,000.

The Manhattan Institute's updated analysis confirms these findings, showing that immigrants without high school diplomas represent net fiscal burdens to federal budgets over 30-year periods. The study reveals that education level is the primary driver of immigrant fiscal impact, with college-educated immigrants contributing positively while less-educated immigrants impose substantial costs.

European Union research provides similar evidence. The Joint Research Centre's analysis of fiscal impacts across 27 EU member states found that extra-EU migrants show substantially higher life-cycle deficits than natives, with particularly pronounced differences in traditional welfare states such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

The fiscal burden extends beyond direct costs to include indirect effects on public services. Immigrant families typically have more children than native families, driving up education costs at state and local levels. The National Academies study showed that immigrants were net fiscal positives at the federal level but net negatives at state and local levels, primarily due to the cost of public education for immigrant children.

Labor Market Displacement and Wage Depression

The myth that immigrants fill essential labor shortages ignores evidence of wage depression and employment displacement among native workers. Research using administrative data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages reveals that immigration has negative effects on earnings and employment of native workers, with particularly pronounced impacts on competing workers in specific industries and earnings quintiles.

The CES Working Paper analysis demonstrates that immigration reduces wages for native workers, with effects varying by skill level and industry concentration. The study found that native workers respond to immigrant competition by changing industries or geographic locations, but this mobility does not eliminate the negative wage effects—it merely spreads them across broader areas.

Employment rate disparities further undermine the labor shortage argument. OECD data shows that immigrants are economically idle at higher rates than host populations. Across OECD countries, immigrant unemployment rates are consistently higher than native unemployment rates, with extra-EU migrants showing particularly poor labor market integration.

While intra-EU migrants show employment rates of 80%, extra-EU migrants show employment rates of only 71.5%, compared to 74% for natives. More concerning, extra-EU migrants have unemployment rates of 12.5%—twice that of natives at 6.1%.

Immigration Depresses Birthrates

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of the immigration necessity myth is that immigration itself contributes to the demographic challenges it purports to solve. Research by David Solomon demonstrates that increased racial diversity and immigration are robustly associated with lower birth rates among native populations.

The study finds that women who live in less racially concentrated areas, and from smaller racial groups within an area, have robustly lower birth rates, with one standard deviation resulting in 0.064 fewer children. This pattern holds across multiple races, time periods, and countries, and persists even when diversity is instrumented by immigration shocks. The rise in diversity since 1970 explains 20% to 44% of the US birth rate decline during that period.

The mechanism appears to be related to homophily preferences for same-race marriage and social trust. Increased diversity makes it more difficult for individuals to find compatible partners within their preferred social groups, leading to delayed marriage and childbirth. The study finds that diversity is associated with lower marriage rates and delayed family formation, creating a demographic spiral where immigration reduces native fertility rates.

Housing Affordability and Economic Displacement

Immigration's impact on housing markets provides another example of how the supposed solution creates the problem it addresses. Research by Cabral and Steingress demonstrates that immigration significantly increases housing costs, with immigrant inflows equal to 1% of a county's population associated with increases in median housing prices by 3.5% and rents by 2.0%.

The effects are particularly pronounced in areas with constrained housing supply and higher-educated immigrants. In counties with the most restrictive building permit issuance receiving highly educated immigrants, an immigrant inflow of 1% of the county's population would increase shelter prices by 6 to 8%. The study also finds that immigration reduces homeownership rates, with a percentage point increase in local population reducing home ownership by 6 percentage points.

This housing cost inflation directly undermines the economic prospects of native families, making it more difficult for them to afford homes and raise children. The research shows that house prices increase significantly more than incomes following immigration, leading to reduced housing affordability and creating additional economic pressure on native populations.

Economic Self-Destruction

Beyond the empirical evidence, the immigration necessity myth contains fundamental logical flaws that reveal its true nature as a form of economic self-destruction. By filling perceived labor shortages with foreign workers, immigration destroys the economic incentive for the host population to develop valuable skills through education and training. This creates a dependency cycle where critical industries become dominated by foreigners with questionable allegiance to the host nation.

The cheap labor model that immigration advocates promote is precisely the wrong goal for a prosperous society. Expensive labor allows families to raise many children, invest in their education, and prosper across generations. Cheap labor undercuts the economic lifeblood of the native population, creating a race to the bottom that benefits only employers seeking to minimize labor costs. This systematic undercutting of native economic prospects bears the marks of economic warfare rather than beneficial economic policy.

The brain drain argument reveals another logical inconsistency. If immigrant talent were truly coveted and valuable, immigrants' home countries would be fighting to retain their supposedly skilled individuals. Instead, these countries enthusiastically participate in their export, suggesting a parasitic economic relationship where the host country's resources are drained rather than enhanced. This pattern indicates that immigration serves the interests of source countries seeking to offload their economic burdens rather than representing a genuine transfer of valuable human capital.

Conclusion

The evidence is clear: the "necessary evil" immigration myth is built upon false premises and ignores substantial negative consequences for host populations. Aging populations do not compromise economic performance when societies invest properly in human capital and technology. Immigrants impose significant fiscal burdens, particularly at state and local levels. Immigration depresses wages, reduces employment opportunities for natives, and creates housing affordability crises. Most ironically, immigration contributes to the demographic challenges it purports to solve by depressing native birth rates.

The immigration necessity argument represents a form of economic self-sabotage that benefits employers seeking cheap labor while undermining the long-term prosperity of native populations. Rather than accepting this false narrative, societies should focus on policies that enhance human capital development, technological advancement, and family formation among their existing populations. The path to prosperity lies not in importing foreign workers but in investing in the education, skills, and economic opportunities of native citizens.

If, as we have observed, immigration systematically produces outcomes diametrically opposed to its stated objectives—economic decline instead of growth, fiscal burdens instead of benefits, demographic collapse instead of demographic health—then it follows that the public is being deliberately deceived about the true motivations driving this destructive policy. We propose, instead, that mass migration is a form of racial warfare waged by the International Jew against the White race, intended to dispossess him of his homeland and render him incapable of resisting Jewish power. As Bari Weiss, a Jewish opinion writer for the New York Times, candidly admits in an NPR interview, "The Jewish connection to the refugee is not a conspiracy. That's something that we're very, very proud of."