I don’t want to compare myself with other people, but I will tell you what my analysis is. Without understanding the very big macroeconomic trends, generationlong trends in some cases, such as the catching up of the non-West with the West, which has been taking place all my lifetime and I think will span the rest of my lifetime too, and of course the technological dimensions of that—without understanding the impact very big, really unshakable trends are having on the middle of our societies, and therefore on the sort of bedrock of our democracies, I think it’s very hard to understand what is going on across much of the West. And of course each particular democracy in the West, like each particular unhappy Tolstoyan family, is manifesting its reaction to this in different ways, some way better than others. [...]
It is no accident that the country that’s least affected by this is Germany. Germany has a very, very good program for absorbing skilled middle-class jobs, training people, and giving them vocational ability to succeed in the workplace without getting a college degree. A point that needs particular emphasis in the English-speaking democracies is that we confuse having a college degree with being skilled. And they are quite different things. You and I both know people with college degrees who are unskilled and we know people without college degrees who are highly skilled. And I think that part of the— [...]
The scapegoating of course is easier to do when there’s more immigration. But just to the first part of your question: Is immigration a good thing or a bad thing? It’s an unmixed blessing economically. Almost regardless of the type of immigrant, whether skilled or unskilled, documented or undocumented, not just in the broad American sense of “this is part of your tradition and your creed, the American creed” but also for very basic economic reasons, first and foremost it adds to the labor force, which adds to growth.
Secondly, it diversifies the skillset and is a net positive for the economy. There is some debate about whether it has a downward effect on certain kinds of middle-class—particularly lower-income—jobs. There might be a marginal downward effect there but nothing compared to the benefits that it brings. And that of course includes the benefits to the taxpayer of generating greater taxable income that shows that immigrants put in far more than they take out.
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