Thanks Matt for the warm welcome! I plan to use my blog posts at BHL to write down stray thoughts and pass along resources that might be useful to BHL readers. I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s some thoughts for today. I’m an open borders zealot. Long ago, the great Bryan Caplan and Lant Pritchett persuaded me that immigration restrictions are a moral catastrophe and that states should open their borders to immigrants. I’ve spilled some ink defending that view over the years.

But, as some guy once said, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” So I want to discuss what I take to be the best objection to open borders here and see what people think.

Here’s the objection. It’s incredibly important for liberal democracies to survive and flourish. About a century ago, there were hardly any liberal democracies in the world. Despotism was the norm. Now, there are plenty of liberal democracies (I’m thinking of places like Australia, Germany, South Korea, and other countries that score in the top of the Freedom House rankings).

Why is the survival of liberal democracy so important? That’s probably kind of obvious. Liberal democracies do much better at protecting individual rights than every other government known to man. And their institutions generate sustained economic growth.

But too much immigration endangers liberal democracy. Immigration generates a populist backlash. Proximity to immigrants makes people love populism.  When native citizens see many immigrants arriving, especially immigrants very different from them, this activates an authoritarian threat response. Immigration makes traditionalists and nationalists a little bonkers. They become willing to support authoritarian strongmen and restrictions on individual liberty in the name of shoring up traditional values.

Rightly or wrongly, a significant fraction of citizens are allergic to mass immigration. And that’s the problem. If humans were better than they in fact are, then open borders would be a no-brainer. We’re not though. And, to placate our unreasonable compatriots, we need restrictions on immigration. Only this will head off the destabilizing response from populists. Populism is a kind of moral blackmail—but sometimes you should pay off your blackmailer.

Sure, more immigration in the short-term would have big benefits. But, as effective altruists counsel us, if you want to do good, the long-term swamps any short-term benefits. If much more immigration raises the probability of destabilizing liberal democracies by just a hair, then it might make sense to forgo the local benefits for the long term gains. The upshot: we need to trample on the rights of foreigners now to safeguard the future for liberal democracy.