Less Immigration But Pro-Immigrant: An Interview with Mark Krikorian

Digital Editor of The Dartmouth Review Lintaro Donovan (TDR) interviewed Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and National Review contributor Mark Krikorian (MK) in person on October 20, 2022. Krikorian has authored multiple books, including The New Case Against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal and Open Immigration: Yea & Nay. Mr. Krikorian studied at Georgetown University, Tufts University, and Yerevan State University (in then-Soviet Armenia). His organization, CIS, espouses a “pro-immigrant, low-immigration” policy ethos that has attracted significant support from the Right and been steadfastly criticized by the Left, especially the Southern Poverty Law Center.

TDR: How has America’s relationship with immigration changed over time and since the 1965 Immigration Act, specifically? 

MK: What’s different about immigration now than in earlier eras is that it’s not the immigrants so much, it’s America itself that has changed. We have got a post-industrial, knowledge-based economy. We have a welfare state. Communications and transportation technology have shrunk the world in a way that simply wasn’t the case before. That makes immigration today fundamentally different from what it was, say, a century ago. What’s changed over the past half-century is that a new immigration wave was initiated by the 1965 Act, and it was a complete accident.

The law was seen as a civil rights measure, almost more than an immigration measure, because the point was not to increase immigration. It was to get rid of the national origins quotas that were left over from the 1920s that said Ireland has this many visas and Italy gets this many visas and so on. It was a ridiculous way to run an immigration system, and—because of civil rights concerns—it was seen as discriminatory. As a consequence, the Soviets used our immigration laws as an example in the Third World of how hypocritical we were.

For both these civil rights and national security reasons, they [the sponsors] wanted to clean up immigration law, and what they ended up doing was kicking off a whole new wave of immigration that really picked up by 1970. The interesting thing, of course, is that in the 50 years before 1965, from roughly 1920 to 1970, we had very low immigration. Before that, we had about 80 years of very high immigration. And before that, we had 70 or 80 years of pretty low immigration. So immigration has come in waves. It’s cyclical. The thing about the current wave is that it’s not just going to end on its own. In the past, Congress had to enact new policies to moderate immigration levels. Congress today can do the same thing, if they get off their butts and legislate.

The thing about the current wave is that it’s not just going to end on its own. In the past, Congress had to enact new policies to moderate immigration levels. Congress today can do the same thing, if they get off their butts and legislate.

TDR: What have been the impacts of the latest, post-1965 wave of immigration?

MK: First of all, the size of this wave has been enormous. At this point, we have about 47 million foreign-born people. Some are citizens, some are green card holders, some are illegal aliens—all of them put together is about 47 million people. The number is bigger than in the past because our whole population is bigger, so that’s no surprise. But the percentage of immigrants in our population—literally next year, maybe even before—is going to break the historical record.

The recent wave has also been characterized by large-scale low-skilled immigration. That doesn’t mean that we have a lot of people without work because the immigrants work. They [immigrants] work at about the same rates as the native-born do. But what the recent wave has done is distort certain industries where there’s lots of immigrants, especially low-skilled immigrants, and retard the process of technological development.

A lot of agricultural labor-saving technology is coming out of Europe, not here. Our farmers have to buy stuff made in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Europe is the locus of innovation in that area because American farmers wonder why they should spend money on trying to replace labor when they’ve got 17 people fighting for each job.

The fact is that immigration has had an effect on the labor market and clearly has contributed to a decrease in the share of Americans in it—in other words, people who are either working or looking for work. The labor force participation rate is at the lowest level it’s been, and it’s been going down pretty steadily for several decades now.

Immigration isn’t the only cause for that decline, but it has exacerbated it clearly. Part of that is that teenagers are decreasingly likely to work. We see the trend in all states, but in states with more immigration, it’s more pronounced. Teenagers aren’t mowing lawns because it’s become professionalized and taken over by adult workers.

Some of this would be happening anyway, even in places with no immigrants. It is a cultural phenomenon that I think is a problem, but immigration is exacerbating it. The issue with immigration is that usually it’s not the cause of a problem but a contributor. It contributes to and exacerbates a number of preexisting problems.

TDR: CIS has described itself as having a “pro-immigrant, low-immigration” vision. In practice, what does that look like?

MK: The low-immigration part is obvious. We [CIS] don’t really have a magic party line on what immigration should be, but my take on it is that we need zero-based budgeting in immigration, not zero immigration. A continental nation with a third-of-a-billion people that invented the modern world doesn’t actually need any immigration. But there are certain categories of people whose admission is very compelling, and we should let them in. 

Husbands, wives, and little kids of US citizens. That’s a fair number of people. That’s 350,000, 400,000 people a year today, out of the million a year that we take. And then a handful of genuine Einsteins. And a handful of refugees who really can’t stay one second longer where they are and can’t be helped in any other way. You put those together, it’s not that many people, but it’s still maybe 400,000 people a year as a yardstick. That’s less than half of what we take now, but it’s still more regular immigration than any other country in the world. 

On the pro-immigrant part, people don’t generally hate foreigners. Everybody has some, especially in the cities, interaction with immigrants. Some of it’s negative, some of it’s positive. People are people. But the fact is, how do we embrace those newcomers? 

If, in the future, we let in fewer newcomers, that would translate into things like spending more money and more effort on teaching the English language and citizenship education, which we don’t really do at all. I mean, we have a test for people who want to become citizens, but it could probably be done better than it is.

Being pro-immigrant would also mean getting rid of welfare bans for legal immigrants. A lot of people want to build a wall around the welfare state, not around the country. I think that’s a mistake if we’re going to let people in for the purpose of becoming Americans. In other words, if we let in somebody and give him a green card, he’s not an American yet, but he’s like an associate member of the American people. 

Another thing [being pro-immigrant would mean] is letting anybody we do let in be a free worker who can go get a job anywhere. There should be no guest-worker programs. They are inherently anti-immigrant. 

TDR: As recently as the 2000s, there were many prominent Democrats who supported building a barrier on the southern border and opposed amnesty, including Joe Biden and Kirsten Gillibrand. Today, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to abolish ICE. What led to such a massive shift?

MK: The Left in this country has transformed from an economic left to a cultural left.

In other words, Democrats in the past were a more labor-union-oriented, worker-oriented, class-based party. They were trying to defend the interests of ordinary workers, and labor unions did that as well. What’s happened is that as Americans have drifted away from the labor movement and the share of Americans in unions has shrunk over time, the labor movement has given up on Americans and sees immigrants as the only way they’re going to survive. This is combined with a move toward cultural leftism, an anti-American leftism rather than a pro-American, New-Deal type of approach.

The Left in general has just completely given up on the immigration issue. Every organization, every interest on the Left would sacrifice the interests that they ostensibly represent if they conflict with open borders. From labor unions to black organizations and black leaders in Congress, they’re all for open borders, regardless of the impact on their ostensible constituents. Even the environmentalists used to have significant numbers of immigration restrictionists because immigration grew the population faster.

The Left in general has just completely given up on the immigration issue. Every organization, every interest on the Left would sacrifice the interests that they ostensibly represent if they conflict with open borders. From labor unions to black organizations and black leaders in Congress, they’re all for open borders, regardless of the impact on their ostensible constituents.

TDR: Oftentimes, contrary to the will of rank-and-file Republican voters, GOP legislators have supported immigration expansionism, such as through amnesty for DACA enrollees or the growth of visa programs. Why is there such a disconnect between the Republican base and Republican leadership?

MK: Part of the reason is that immigration is less of a right-left issue and more of an up-down issue. Now, it’s not that there’s no right-left element, but immigration policy really does have a strong class element to it. Our leadership classes in both parties are for two reasons permissive on immigration.

One, there’s a financial interest in it, and I don’t even mean just financial, but a concrete interest. They [the leadership classes] are the ones who want to hire cheap maids. They’re the ones who want to hire cheap landscapers. 

The other thing is more a matter of principle. The issue of worldview is that our elites, as you’re seeing in Europe as well, have become increasingly post-American, post-national. This is less so among Republicans because the Republican Party is the more patriotic, the more national, the more American party. But even among Republicans, you have this kind of post-national development. They think that what goes on in Davos is more important than the grubby interests of their smelly constituents. Because of Trump, there’s less of that in the Republican Party than there used to be. Trump himself is responsible for it, but even more Trump rode a wave and that wave is washing away a lot of these squishy Republicans on immigration.

The issue of worldview is that our elites, as you’re seeing in Europe as well, have become increasingly post-American, post-national. This is less so among Republicans because the Republican Party is the more patriotic, the more national, the more American party. But even among Republicans, you have this kind of post-national development. They think that what goes on in Davos is more important than the grubby interests of their smelly constituents.

These Republicans are forthright in wanting more immigration. What they do is gesticulate on border control. Biden basically helps them because they get to say, “Biden’s terrible, we need better border control.” Republican voters respond, but then they push for 150,000 more guest workers. They hope that voters will be conned by the border. That used to work in the old days. It happened a lot. But it’s less and less effective now because Republican voters have become increasingly sophisticated about immigration messaging. People who just talk about the wall but say, “Oh, we also need a whole lot more immigration,” have a much more difficult time getting away with it than they used to.

TDR: A recent poll shows that 59% of Americans consider immigration to be a “very important issue” in the current midterms. Why has this issue captured so much public attention since 2015?

MK: The big reason is that Republican voters have felt betrayed by their own party. [In 2013], there was the Gang of Eight legislation—a bipartisan effort, with the Obama Administration’s cooperation, to get a huge amnesty and dramatic increases in future legal immigration passed. It ultimately failed because Republican voters vomited it up. It passed the Senate, but it was never even brought up for a vote in the House. 

More recently, the reason that immigration has become an important issue is because the Biden crowd, in reaction to Trump, has basically undone everything that he did to create stability at the border. With Trump, there was still a lot to do, but he, at least, stabilized the border. Biden broke that, and we now have an unprecedented wave of illegal immigration. It’s not just unprecedented in its size—the Biden Administration has actually released almost half the illegal immigrants who’ve come across the border into the United States. This administration is the first administration ever, including earlier Democratic administrations, to explicitly reject the idea that deterring illegal crossings is its job. On television, they have said that their job is to process people who come across the border.

This administration is the first administration ever, including earlier Democratic administrations, to explicitly reject the idea that deterring illegal crossings is its job. On television, they have said that their job is to process people who come across the border.

TDR: To what extent is demography still destiny, especially when it comes to electoral politics?

MK: The idea that demography is destiny is exaggerated. There are people on the restrictionist side who I think exaggerate it too.

What the short phrase sums up is the idea that if there’s more Hispanics and Asians in the United States, the Democrats are going to win. It hasn’t worked out that way. There’s a whole bunch of voters who were not part of Obama’s “Coalition of the Ascendant” and who just weren’t voting. Now, they are. That was Trump’s magic card in 2016: to get those people out to vote. His downfall in 2020 was that a lot of those people didn’t come out to vote. 

It’s still true that immigrants tend to vote Democrat. That’s just a fact. It’s always been that way. The Democratic Party has always been the party of those marginal to the American story, whereas the Republicans have been the party of the mainstream. But what you’re seeing now among a lot of Hispanics is a move toward the Republican party.

It’s not that demography’s nothing, but it’s not everything.

TDR: If you could pass and implement any immigration policy, what would you do?

MK: Start at zero and then decide which categories we really should let in. Husbands, wives, and little kids of Americans: everybody agrees with that. That’s a lot of people—350, 400 thousand people. 

I would then eliminate all the skilled immigration categories, both temporary and permanent, and have a simpler yardstick for letting in the top talents in the world.

One idea that I have sort of played with, I’m not sure if it would work, is having people take an IQ test in English and if they score higher than 140, just letting them in. Some of them will end up failing. Some of them will just end up going to Vermont and making guitars or something, but they’re brain power. I would set that bar pretty high.

As far as the third element of any immigration policy, which is humanitarian immigration, is concerned, I would restrict that pretty tightly.

Asylum is the same thing as refugees, people who fear persecution, but it’s ones who actually got here and basically said, “You can’t make me go back because I have a humanitarian claim.” In other words, they’re essentially demanding that they be allowed to stay contrary to the rest of immigration law. But all of these people have passed through Mexico to get here. Mexico is a signatory to the Refugee Convention. Mexico has a whole asylum system of its own.

If you were genuinely fleeing persecution, you would apply for safety in the first place you got to, not pass through six, seven, eight, or nine different countries before you get to the United States and say, “Oh, actually now I remember I’m being persecuted.” No one who gets to the southern border or who comes to an airport from a European, Japanese, or Korean airport should be allowed to apply for asylum because they should have done it somewhere else. 

If you were genuinely fleeing persecution, you would apply for safety in the first place you got to, not pass through six, seven, eight, or nine different countries before you get to the United States and say, “Oh, actually now I remember I’m being persecuted.”

Refugees are like asylum seekers, but they’re people whom we affirmatively go abroad for, select, and bring here. Refugee policy is not a sovereignty issue. My concern here though is that large-scale refugee resettlement is inherently immoral. It costs a lot of money to deal with a refugee, not just to bring them here, but to support the person while they’re here. The amount of money it takes to support a refugee from the Middle East in the United States is equivalent to the amount that the UN spends on 12 refugees in the Middle East. What refugee resettlement represents is 12 people floundering in the water and instead of throwing out 12 life preservers that will keep them alive, we send out a yacht for one person and leave the rest to flounder. It’s wrong. It’s pure virtue-signaling. 

What refugee resettlement represents is 12 people floundering in the water and instead of throwing out 12 life preservers that will keep them alive, we send out a yacht for one person and leave the rest to flounder. It’s wrong. It’s pure virtue-signaling. 

When you add all these reforms up, it’s like 400,000 people entering per year, a 60% cut from what we have now. My lower level of immigration is still higher than any other country in the world, so it’s not that we should have no immigration but that we need to turn the dial down. That would allow us breathing room to knit together our newcomers with existing Americans and to allow our less-skilled and marginal workers—whether they’re ex-cons, recovering addicts, or what have you—an opportunity to have more bargaining power.