What the Ideologues Don’t Want You to Know about Immigration
In the Netherlands, a newly-elected government just collapsed because of internal disagreements over how to handle immigration. In Greece, officials are under fire after a boat transporting over 750 migrants, including 300 Pakistanis, capsized and sank while under Coast Guard control. France, Japan, and the European Union’s parliament are struggling to develop compromise immigration policies which seem to satisfy nobody and outrage most. That’s just a few current examples of how immigration has become a global political controversy, and it doesn’t even mention the on-going debates in the United States, Poland, Australia, Brazil, Sweden, or pretty much any developed country. How could immigration have become so controversial?
By far, the country with the most immigrants in the world is, unsurprisingly, the United States. With over 50 million foreign-born residents, the nation that welcomed “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” with its Statue of Liberty absolutely dwarfs the number two nation, Germany, which has just under 16 million immigrants. Interestingly, the number three destination for immigrants is actually Saudi Arabia, but that’s another story.
The rankings change when we consider the percentage of a nation’s population that is…
