Reason Versus National Review: Is Mass Immigration Good for America?

Katherine Mangu-Ward and Alex Nowrasteh squared off against Rich Lowry and Steven Camarota to debate immigration.

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Reason Versus National Review: Is Mass Immigration Good for America?

Reason and the Cato Institute go head-to-head with our friends at the National Review and the Center for Immigration Studies in a thought-provoking debate on one of America's most divisive issues: immigration.

Resolution: Mass Immigration Is Good for America

Affirmative: Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward and Cato's Alex Nowrasteh

Negative: National Review's Rich Lowry and Center for Immigration Studies' Steven Camarota

Moderator: Peter Suderman

Reason Versus is a debate series where Reason journalists and policy experts face off against pundits and strategists who challenge their ideas—no talking points, no shouting, just sharp arguments and real discussion.

• Producer: Natalie Dowzicky
• Audio Production: Ian Keyser
• Camera: Cody Huff
• Camera: Justin Zuckerman
• Camera: César Báez
• Camera: Jim Epstein
• Video editor: Chris Sowick

Comments

[Chumby]

Not illegal alien rapefugees. But you already knew that.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

I can read faster than I can listen, and without a transcript I can't tell what the debate covers. But if it doesn't acknowledge the difference between "open borders" and "open boarders", it's useless.

* Pre-1920 immigrants came of their own free will and knew they had to depend on themselves, family, and friends to succeed.

* Current immigrants know they get welfare, room and board, cash, health care, and waiver of all crimes past and future. Some are "refugees" who hate America, are sent to communities which have no room for them and which the refugees don't like.

They are night and day different. Refusal to acknowledge that difference is akin to fraud.

[Rick James]

I wonder if Reason took up Milton Friedman's argument?

[Rick James]

* Current immigrants know they get welfare, room and board, cash, health care, and waiver of all crimes past and future. Some are "refugees" who hate America, are sent to communities which have no room for them and which the refugees don't like.

And Reason literally celebrated that. So this is going to be a very interesting debate. I suspect that if our "friends" at National Review even are able to push that issue, KMW's position will be, "aaaand?"

[Chumby]

Kamala Mangu-Ward

[Rick James]

This pushback against wokeness (what even is that, man?) is the New McCarthyism!

[Rick James]

Moderator: Peter Suderman

Debate: Are trans people being genocided if we don't allow a dude in women's changing rooms and bathrooms!

Moderator: Nina Totenberg

[Social Justice is neither]

Alex and KMW routinely ignore the costs in the cost benefit analysis and then lie about the timing and magnitude of the benefits as they erase any distinction between legal and illegal immigration. May as well debate a parrot for all the intellectual honesty in those two.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Part of being an ignorant globalist is arguing based on non credible models by activists while ignoring actual data.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Was this before or after the melt down by Alex this weekend? The proud globalist elitist.

[MasterThief]

He had another one?

[Leo Kovalensky II]

National Review position is pro-central planning, even though their answer to that question was something like, "no this isn't cenral planning because borders."

My favorite position is that immigrants are simultaneously taking good jobs from Americans while also being deadbeats on welfare.

[JesseAz (RIP CK)]

Both are true. The latter more than the former. Because like cato you ignore legal vs illegal as youre an ignorant person.

It still confuses you as to why basing immigration on needs instead of blindly is a better policy. Because I again point to your ignorance.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Needs of who? The Cato position is literally let the market determine the needs. If someone wants to hire a willing employee, the government has no place in that. It's literally the argument that KMW and Alex posit multiple times in the debate.

The legal vs illegal is a non sequitur. The whole point is that after passing a criminal background check and a health screening, immigration should be legal. But your side can't get it through your head that govt. bureaucrats planning who and how many can participate in the labor market is Marxist central planning. I noticed that you didn't address my point about you being pro-central planning.

[Mother's Lament]

"The Cato position is literally let the market determine the needs."

This is only true in a scenario where the market is unregulated. Right now regulations make it impossible for new competitors to enter many of the markets. Cato knows this, but wants to pretend otherwise for their corporatist paymaster.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

So your argument is if we don't have a perfectly free market then we can't have this freedom either? Which other economic freedoms should we sacrifice due to regulations?

[damikesc]

The market supported slavery.

Weird to see people supporting slavery these days.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Slavery infringes on people's rights. Contrary to popular belief, me going to a food truck or hiring an immigrant doesn't infringe on any rights. See the difference?

[Michael Ejercito]

Ask the victims if the Cologne Sex Attacks

[damikesc]

Alex? That demented clown? Why would I waste my time watching this nonsense?

[AT]

Resolution: Mass Immigration Is Good for America

Legal immigration. Which isn't being advocated.

Not illegal immigration. Which is constantly being rationalized by dirtbags like you KMW.

Also, you lost all credibility when you dyed your hair purple. Now you're a trope and a stereotype.

OK, correction, you've always been a trope and a stereotype. But now you're openly advertising it.

[Longtobefree]

"Is Mass Immigration Good for America?"

Good old Reason:
What number constitutes "mass"
Legal immigration?
Illegal border crossing?
Never let facts get in the way of generating clicks, right?

[Mother's Lament]

KMW and Nowrasteh are being disingenuous in outlining the libertarian view on open borders.

Libertarian open borders work wonderfully when it's between two equals, two welfare states or two states with no state welfare. The Schengen Area is a great example of this that makes all the countries in it wealthier and better off. A wonderful example of libertarian principles.

But when they are between an advanced welfare state and a third-world hellhole all you do is bring the welfare state down to the level of the authoritarian third-world hellhole and beggar its taxpayers. This is not libertarian.

The correct libertarian stance would be to focus on eliminating the welfare state, and THEN, and only then, can you open the borders.

And, as usual, there's some purposefully deceitful conflation of illegal with legal immigration.

[Chumby]

Applying the NAP to borders.

[Dillinger]

is Mumia free yet? asking for a friend.

[Marshal]

Another disappointing "debate". Pre-debate they claim they will accept no talking points but instead focus on reasoned argument. But then the "debate" immediately devolves into assertions anyone not for open borders is racist. Their evidence is not that opponents say or do racist things, but instead because other long-dead people said and did racist things.

Actual libertarians reject the premise that you can be proven racist because other people are. From there it's a constant battle to shake this characterization by people who favor a brand of immigration used in Canada and other European countries, but somehow when advocated by Americans this becomes racist.

There's another libertarian failure as well. Both Reasoners seem to think America is richer and more powerful if it is bigger, but "America" is a collectivist concept. We should think of all countries as pass through entities consisting of their citizens. So we shouldn't be focused on the abstract America but instead on the group of citizens. So while America would be richer if it has twice the citizen population [even a $1 increase to total GDP would prove that] would the individual citizens be richer? The median would almost certainly be lower since an official policy of mass immigration would bring in so many of the world's poor and require us to subsidize them as well.

Typical.

[AT]

It's not even racism. Saying, "I don't want any filthy awful Somalis in this country and I don't want any of them around my kids" isn't a racist sentiment. It's a condemnation of their social values; ones, I might add, that are 100% inconsistent with American social values. And it's an appropriate one, because Somali "culture" is godawful. By American standards. Which, in America, are the only ones that matter.

Racism is a hatred of people for something they can't help - in particular, their skin color. You can help being a filthy awful Somali - and if you do, America, in particular, welcomes you to a better way of living. But if you want in, then kick all that Somali garbage you grew up with to the curb before you come in the door.

There is not one iota of racism whatsoever to any of that.