The closing of the conservative mind

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Dear Editor,

Hillsdale’s Praxis hosted two phenomenal lectures last week. One was a speech arguing in favor of open borders from Shikha Dalmia, a brilliant young scholar in public policy for the Reason Foundation, and one was a lecture by Israel Kirzner, one of of Ludwig von Mises’ most brilliant students, who is also on the cusp of a Nobel Prize in economics.

Most conservative students would embrace Israel Kirzner’s message that markets work very well in part due to entrepreneurship. However, fewer Hillsdale students would support looser immigration restrictions. Hillsdale’s aversion to immigration is an understandable extension of what Russell Kirk called “the conservative mind.” Conservatives are averse to change, and immigrants could change the American national image.

However, thinkers such as F.A. Hayek would remind us that perhaps not all cultural change is bad. We can think of immigration, in Kirzner’s language, as an entrepreneurial discovery process for better cultural practices. America surely has some good cultural practices; however, if we truly want what’s best for America, allowing experimentation by loosening immigration restrictions can help us discover better cultural practices. Cultural pluralism and patriotism need not conflict.

Another conservative contention with open borders is the possibility that more immigrants could grow the welfare state. Some of the brightest of America’s conservative minds of the last generation, from Thomas Sowell to Milton Friedman, have expressed skepticism about immigration, mostly worrying that more immigrants could grow the size of the welfare state and the national debt with it.

It is, ultimately, an empirical question: Whether the benefits of more immigrants to America outweigh the costs of more immigrants on welfare. It is uncontested among economists that immigration is economically beneficial. Studies have shown that the global elimination of borders could double the world’s GDP. More immigration also increases tax revenue.

The next question that arises with respect to welfare is who we allow to immigrate. Conservatives often worry that predominately Hispanic immigrants could bring drugs, crime, and poverty to the United States. However, historically, immigrant groups have been some of America’s most socially mobile groups. There was a huge amount of social distance between Irish immigrants and American immigrants in the late nineteenth century — arguably, more than exists between modern Hispanics and Americans. Yet the Irish assimilated and became wealthy.

As conservatives, we should show respect for our intellectual heirs. But as lovers of liberty, we should also show respect for the freedom to associate. Immigration reform allows us to do both at once.