A thoughtful piece from Greg Ip of WSJ: What
Really Drives Anti-Immigration Feelings
“Yet the link
between economic circumstances and acceptance of immigrants is surprisingly
weak. In fact, the current backlash against immigration has less to do with
jobs and wages and more to do with concerns about national identity and control
of borders, research suggests.
This is an
important distinction. Immigration is different from other facets of
globalization. Foreign-born people affect the makeup of society in a way that a
foreign-made car or a foreign-owned factory doesn’t.
By yoking those
issues together, populists have leveraged anxiety about immigration into a
broader attack on globalization and elites, as advocates of Britain’s departure
from the European Union did so successfully in last week’s referendum. Britons
would have no doubt stayed in the EU’s single market for goods, services and
capital if they could opt out of the single market in labor. But that option
wasn’t available, and as a result the EU is about to lose one of its biggest
members.”