Is suella braverman making the melting pot boil over? | thearticle

Liberal free trade relishes all the good things that are found abroad — foreign food, foreign movies, and foreign holidays. But a fault line cracks open in liberalism once letting in goods

comes with letting in people. There is demand for foreign goods; for the humans who make them, rather less so. We enjoy having a holiday home where they live, but prefer not to have them

come to work here where we live. Even so, when migration hardliners speak out, tensions begin to simmer. Resisting immigration is illiberal. And if that hardliner happens to be the Home

Secretary — herself of immigrant stock — accusations fly. Is she driven by bravado or by bigotry? The answer is complex, as shown by timely research from the United States, but not in the

way one might expect. The attitude study _Do immigrants ever oppose immigration?*_ looks at the phenomenon of high-income immigrant-on-immigrant aversion. One of the surprises of Donald

Trump’s 2016 campaign performance was his strong polling amongst a particular segment of minority ethnics, namely wealthy Hispanic Americans. It is easy enough to understand the immigration

resentment of low-income demographic voters, where it is driven by fears over jobs. But what about the motivation of doctors and lawyers who are insulated from immigrant competition? What

does bother high-income immigrants, according to the survey, is letting in “_unemployment, crime, and the risk of a terrorist attack”._ On its own, that finding does not reveal something

surprising. But the attitude study then goes on to tell us something new, by comparing US respondents with respondents in corresponding demographic segments in Australia, Canada, and New

Zealand. In those countries, immigration aversion is markedly lower. The study explains this discrepancy by differences in immigration policies. In all three countries, the barriers to

immigration are much higher than in the USA. This supports the inference that immigration aversion is motivated not by a rejection of immigrants as such, but by a rejection of the absence of

vetting procedures. There is a corollary, namely that immigration resistance will go down once entry requirements go up. The study debunks certain misperceptions of the underlying

motivation of immigration aversion amongst high-income resident ethnics. One such insinuates that high status immigrants assimilated to their host culture by internalising native social

biases and overcompensate in their compliance with majority culture. They are, so to speak, like Catholic converts who feel the need to be more Catholic than the Pope.  Another misperception

is that successful immigrants feel no need to make life easier for those who arrive later. If they had to work their way up without any help, why should others not go through the same

ordeal? The study teases out that the stance of high status immigrants is indeed unique. Yes, the experience of immigration has been formative; yes, they still look over their shoulder to

take into account how the majority perceives them; and yes, they do worry that the status of high status ethnics will be tarnished by the influx of low status ethnics. But there is more to

it. High status ethnics have, so to speak, a foot in two camps, native as well as ethnic. Their integration into majority culture inclines them to anticipate that natives will tar all

immigrants with the same brush if problems with immigrants increase. And when it comes to resisting immigration, high status ethnics are liable to be more outspoken than high status natives

because they have a better feel for and insight into the makeup of the immigrant pool. High status immigrants, precisely because they straddle native as well as immigrant cultures, are more

alive than natives to the risks of open borders. One might quibble with the way the authors have mapped their field. They could have benefited, for example, from looking at other comparator

countries. Even so, they offer readers on this side of the Atlantic a useful takeaway, especially at this particular juncture of the Braverman imbroglio. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are

the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing

throughout these hard economic times. So please, make a donation._ *Do immigrants ever oppose immigration? is forthcoming in the European Journal of Political Economy.