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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy ignited a firestorm of controversy over certain recent pro-immigration comments (funny enough, comments which echo those of incoming President Donald Trump).
This article is not an attempt to comment on the specifics of US immigration law, or enforcement thereof, but to drill down to the core ideas expressed by Musk and team.
Is America the "A-team" of the world where it should actively recruit the best and brightest from around the globe? Or should immigration of even the best the world has to offer be restricted for some reason? What about other countries? How should they deal with their immigration problems?
Most of the confusion, anger, and controversy comes from one simple mistake: not defining a country and its purpose in the first place!
So let's do that.
What Kind of Country Do You Want?
The first question you have to ask is, what is the purpose of the country? What is it supposed to do?
Broadly speaking there's two main purposes of a country. The first is to uphold certain laws, values, traditions, and systems. An example of this would be a liberal democratic society like the North American countries, or a religious state where adherence to a particular belief system is the dominant concern.
The second type is to serve a certain group of people, or an ethnostate. This is a country based around giving a home for, and serving the interests of, a certain race or type of person. A good example of this might be Israel, which explicitly gives a home for the Jewish people and prioritizes their needs.
There can exist hybrid models, and the Israeli example might be a good one of this, since it's set up as a free democratic country with lots of non-Jews living and participating, but also explicitly serves the Jewish people. It's arguable that European nations are also hybrids in that they are liberal democracies with no explicit rules surrounding who is and isn't French, German, etc., yet there is much friction around the shifting culture and ethnic qualities of their populations.
The most important thing to do is to clearly define what kind of country you're in. Nearly all the friction surrounding immigration comes from a poorly-defined system, or a poorly-enforced system (of often both).
Who Gets to Participate?
Once you've decided what kind of country you are, the questions start getting easier. Now the immigration question is pretty straightforward. If you're an ethnostate, then the country's immigration policy (if it even allows any immigrants at all) can be restricted to the kind of people the state was designed for. It can also let in temporary or permanent workers who don't qualify, but who support the primary population. This is a tricky prospect because you risk creating a permanent, unhappy underclass of residents, which can cause lasting issues.
A systems-based country has a little more work to do in defining its immigration policy, but it should be relatively straightforward still: which people will uphold the values and systems you have in place the best? Let those people in. A religious state would let in the most worthy converts, and a culture state would let in those who are the most natural fit for the values and traditions defined by the state. Similarly, a free market meritocracy would let in anyone who could reasonably participate and succeed in the system. The case could be made that anyone without explicit criminality would qualify.
Of course, immigration isn't a binary yes/no equation. Once you solve the "who" question, the next is "how many". When you decide that number, then you need to figure out which members of the applicant pool to let in first. You could do this at random, or pick the highest-qualifying ones first, and go down the list from there.
Systems-based countries will always have populations trying to push it towards an ethnostate!
This is because the native population is selected by birth, not by how good of a fit they are for the country's values and priorities. Yes, they do tend to adhere more to the values of their environment, but not perfectly. Immigrants, on the other hand, have a dual selection process: they self-select by desiring to immigrate to such a country, and the country itself selects which immigrants are allowed in. By definition, this makes them, statistically, a better match for the values of a country than the native-born population, if the system is well-designed and enforced!
Also, 100% of potential immigrants want to join the country (by definition), while a much lower percentage of the dissatisfied/bad fit native-born population would seek to emigrate.
Yes, this means that immigrants have a tendency to out-compete native-born populations under pure merit-based criteria. This is why you see strong nativist anti-immigrant sentiment, even against letting in only the very best, smartest, most-qualified immigrants.
This phenomenon is apparent in my own life too: I moved to New Hampshire for the Free State Project over 11 years ago because I loved the Live Free or Die values and traditions of this state. Free Staters such as myself are significantly over-represented in politics and other institutions where they can secure the Live Free or Die way for this very reason.
I also love the cold and don't complain about it, since I chose to live in this climate rather than being subjected to it because of my birth.
Who Decides All This?
This one is pretty easy: the people currently participating in whatever system are the ones who get to decide what it looks like.
In democratic systems, the current population decides if they want it to continue to be democratic or not. In aristocracies, monarchies, and so on, it's different, but the common thread is the same: people who are already there decide what the country does.
Ultimately, the immigration policy, and all other policies, are determined by non-immigrants (or prior immigrants), by definition. And yes, even a pure systems-based meritocracy with a generous immigration policy can legitimately cease to be so if the native population determines it wants to shut off immigration completely. It's not a good idea in my personal opinion, but it's still their choice.
Hope this clears some things up. Please refer to the note at the beginning of the article before commenting, thank you!
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