Boosting immigration would seem a no-brainer to address the West’s ongoing demographic implosion and revive its stagnating economies. Even Japan now recruits foreign temporary workers for its rapidly aging economy. Yet mass migration has aroused fierce opposition, not only in the United States but in Great Britain, Netherlands, and France. Moves to reduce migration are already in place in Italy, and seem imminent in Germany, whose welfare state is creaking under the burden.
This runs against conventional economic theory. Both libertarian conservatives and progressives see unregulated migration—upwards of 10 million during Joe Biden’s presidency—as a net plus. Many businesses see it as a source of cheap labor and demographic vitality. But if migrants have boosted population number, they have done little to revive stagnating economies in Europe and Canada.
“Mass immigration doesn’t seem to go along naturally with economic growth.”
Opposition to migration is often blamed on racism and xenophobia, and depicted as a drag on economic progress. Yet if you actually look at what is occurring on the ground level, mass immigration doesn’t seem to go along naturally with economic growth.
This is particularly evident in Britain and France, both of which have experienced massive increases in migration but have largely stagnant economies. Canada once based its migration policy on luring newcomers who could boost the country’s economy. But under Justin Trudeau the mantra was simply the more the merrier. In 2023 the country of 40 million received a million immigrants, accounting for 97.7 percent of Canada’s population growth. But despite the influx, over the past decade Canada has suffered the slowest economic growth rates among advanced countries while its once high standard of living continues to decline.
This failure is less obvious in the more dynamic United States. But here too many newcomers, particularly the undocumented, are low-skilled and now must compete in poorly paid manual labor or service jobs with other recent immigrants or the indigenous poor. Jobs requiring extensive manual labor have dropped to 22 percent of all jobs in 2025, from 35 percent 50 years ago. As we add more workers to the low-wage pool, their presence does tend to retard wage growth, as noted by a recent Congressional study, and could discourage natives from work.
But much of the pain is borne by the immigrants themselves. In the past, immigration came with the promise of upward mobility. Today we offer immigrants jobs that pay poorly, and make up the difference with social assistance, creating what Michael Lind calls a “low-wage/high-welfare model.” Under such a system, there’s not much incentive for employers to upgrade their operation or grant better working conditions and wages.
Prospects for upward mobility for the children of immigrants further suffer from dysfunctional schools, particularly in immigrant-rich places such as California. At the same time, educational institutions tend to focus increasingly on anti-colonial themes. In the last century, schools worked to promote loyalty to America, Canada, France, or Britain. Now they increasingly agitate new arrivals against their host countries.
Such indoctrination does not help immigrants already ill-equipped for modern society. Throughout Europe, newcomers are far more dependent on welfare transfers than natives. In Spain, the rate of poverty for immigrants from outside the continent, mostly Latin America and Africa, is roughly three times that of the native population. In Canada, one in five recent immigrants now suffers “deep poverty—an income below 75 percent of the poverty line—compared to only 5 percent of the whole population.
Even in the most dynamic Western economy, the United States, immigrants increasingly struggle. Since 1993, the immigrant share of the US population living in poverty has almost doubled to around one in four. Among the undocumented, nearly 30 percent now live in abject poverty.
We see the ill effects on the ground in California, where I have lived for 54 years. During its last great boom, in the closing decades of the last century, California attracted millions of immigrants who had a fair chance to participate in a wide-ranging economic boom. Immigrants, including the undocumented not only found opportunities to work in an expanding industrial economy, but often started their own firms.
But today, California’s economy is stagnant. Immigrants, legal and illegal, have suffered much from the continuing erosion of the blue-collar industries that traditionally nurtured immigrant opportunities. In 2023 California’s poverty rate increased to 18.9 percent, the nation’s highest, according to new Census data. Another recent study found that 41 percent of undocumented under 26 live in poverty. These people are often invoked by those who run California. But these enlightened worthies have engineered an economy that gives them very little opportunity to rise into the middle orders.
So, do we still need immigrants? In the short run, certainly. We have enormous shortages of skilled manufacturing workers, as well as medical services and some technical jobs in the future. We may not need to continue importing so many software writers from places like India with the rise in artificial intelligence. We certainly should not encourage the migration of highly educated, and often radicalized, academics, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, as we already have far too many of this ilk, and demand is likely to fall in the future.
As Canada and Australia did in the past, we could encourage people with the needed skills—something that changes over time—to come to the country. As for low-wage immigrant workers, 4 percent of the labor force, we might consider something like the old bracero program, allowing foreign laborers to do specific jobs without having them bring their families. Even President Trump has been forced to acknowledge that in fields like agriculture and hospitality, immigrants, including the undocumented, may be difficult to replace, at least in the near future.
But ultimately, we need to acknowledge that immigration is no cure-all for our demographic and economic challenges. Rather than prattle on about how migrants will do the work Americans won’t, maybe we should focus first on the fact that an estimated third of American working-age males are neither in school or working, the highest percentage in half a century. Similarly, in much of Europe one quarter to one-third of the population under 30 is neither employed nor attending school.
This retreat from work colors the immigrant experience. In the past, migrants imbibed a healthy work culture. Today, the undocumented often get free housing, health care, and other benefits while local authorities refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement efforts. This, too, reduces public support for immigration.
Simply put, stupid immigration policies, particularly non-enforcement, represent the ultimate stimulus for anti-migrant backlash, particularly in tough economic times. It leads to the elevation of Donald Trump, and in the future perhaps Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, or someone from Germany’s AfD. Given the unaddressed problem of low labor participation among the native born, we need to understand that, if we want to help humanity, a good start would be first to consider what lies in the basic interest of our countries and communities.