How to Win Friends and Increase Skilled Immigration

In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular, by Alexander Kustov, Columbia University Press, 320 pp., $32

Self-interest is a powerful driver of behavior, as anyone from Dale Carnegie to Adam Smith could tell you. In Our Interest, a recent book from the Notre Dame political scientist Alexander Kustov, brings that idea into the immigration debate. It also adds a crucial insight: even when people’s views about migration are shaped by altruism—which they are, to some extent—it’s generally because people care about how immigration affects their fellow countrymen, not how it affects foreigners.

The upshot? Those seeking to boost immigration levels should focus on policies that are “demonstrably beneficial” to the receiving countries, such as selecting immigrants based on their skill levels and ability to address economic needs.

This may seem obvious, but it’s out of step with the way many developed countries, including the United States, structure their immigration policies and promote them to the public. Perhaps that’s why In Our Interest—coupled with several Substack essays taking a similar middle-of-the-road approach to other immigration topics—has already made Kustov a rising star among immigration wonks.

Kustov’s argument relies largely on public-opinion surveys and experiments. In one early chapter, for example, he highlights an oddity he discovered in the General Social Survey (GSS): in general, Americans with stronger altruistic values (for example, those who believe that “people should be willing to help others who are less fortunate”) are more likely to support higher social spending. But this pattern does not hold for foreign aid spending, and altruists aren’t more likely to support higher immigration levels, either.

These findings suggest that altruism can be “parochial”—coexisting and interacting with a preference for one’s countrymen. In other words, the belief that we should generically “help others” often really means we should help others here at home. For people who express low levels of national favoritism, higher altruism translates to more pro-immigration attitudes, Kustov found. But among those high in national favoritism, the opposite happens: higher altruism goes along with lower support for immigration, presumably because these respondents think immigration will harm their fellow countrymen.

Kustov ran some experiments to evaluate the dynamics at play. In one, he collected information about participants’ attitudes, then entered the participants in a raffle and asked them how he should split the payment between three potential recipients—the participant, a global charity, and a charity that benefited only Britain (where the survey was conducted). Fifty-seven percent decided that they would keep the whole thing for themselves, while 30 percent earmarked charitable donations mostly or entirely to the national charity. Only 9 percent gave donations mostly or entirely to the global charity, and another 4 percent gave an even split between the two charities.

Kustov labeled the participants 57 percent “egoists,” 30 percent “parochial altruists,” and 13 percent “altruistic cosmopolitans.” Mirroring his findings from the GSS, Kustov discovered that these categories predicted the individuals’ stated support for foreign aid and higher immigration.

In another exercise, Kustov gave his participants a randomized pair of immigration policies. These policies varied in total immigration levels, immigrant country of origin, and how the policy affected the respondent’s personal wealth, along with the wealth of their town, their country, and the globe. The participants had to pick which of the two policies they preferred, allowing Kustov to see which of these attributes shifted opinions most powerfully.

Once again, pure selfishness was a big motivator, with household wealth being the strongest variable. But when it came to altruistic motives, benefits to the receiving country were more powerful than global benefits, though the latter would help far more people. Higher immigration levels, and immigration coming from outside Western Europe, also reduced support.

To some extent, the study participants did simply prefer less immigration in and of itself, in addition to liking some types of immigrants more than others. But benefits to their own pocketbooks and to their nation’s economy proved capable of massively shifting support.

In the book’s later chapters, Kustov shifts toward broader forms of evidence. He shows, for example, that people view immigration more favorably in places where policy is more selective, meaning greater shares of immigrants are highly educated, skilled, and brought in for work.

Kustov also spends a chapter contrasting the experiences of Canada and Sweden. Both have had high levels of immigration. But Canada has focused on selecting beneficial immigrants, while Sweden has welcomed large numbers of refugees and others with low skill levels—and has suffered a much greater backlash.

Putting all this together, the takeaway is simple: people in developed countries aren’t eager to admit countless immigrants just because those newcomers will personally benefit. They want a policy that serves their own nations’ interests.

Of course, the open-borders crowd will insist that most immigration does benefit the host country’s native population (and they can cite research to that effect, too). Even low-skilled immigrants providing cheap labor, they say, might bring down some prices natives pay. Such immigrants can also “complement” the work of natives rather than compete with it directly, such as by providing services like child care that allow native-born doctors and lawyers to work longer hours.

Yet, even if we accept that argument (despite considerable debate over immigration’s effects), it serves to show the significance of Kustov’s phrase “demonstrably beneficial.” As he writes, you shouldn’t need a Ph.D. to understand how your country’s immigration policies are benefiting you and the nation as a whole. If your government admits immigrants with high skill levels who satisfy the needs of the economy and pay oodles in taxes, it’s not hard to see how everyone benefits. And when a country has strong control of its immigration levels and a clear willingness to advance its national interests, it’s easier to have a conversation about exceptions for sympathetic cases like refugees.

In Our Interest is a fascinating book because it focuses not on what the “right” immigration policy would be but on how native populations react to different policies. Like it or not, in a democracy the public gets a say. And while most developed-world voters don’t oppose immigration across the board, they do insist on seeing tangible benefits from it.

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