Immigration skeptics fear newcomers will ruin America, but corruption of our constitutional order has come mostly from within.

The most common arguments against more liberal immigration policies are economic. Immigrants will depress wages, displace native-born workers, or drain the public treasury as they lazily live off the welfare state – or so we’re often told. 

These arguments, though — in addition to being internally contradictory (How do lazy welfare leeches displace native-born workers?) — are poorly supported by the careful empirical record.

Yet there’s another, quite different argument at play: the cultural one. This argument is rooted in the reality that the institutions responsible for America’s stability, prosperity, and freedom depend upon a set of shared understandings, habits, and moral commitments – in short, upon a set of shared cultural values. 

In his superb new book, The Civilization of Commerce, AIER president Sam Gregg summarizes these values nicely; they are a commitment to “liberty, personal responsibility, self-command, creativity, humility.” If the population fills with too many individuals who don’t share these cultural values, America’s institutions will fail even if no economic problems directly materialize.

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