My Right-Wing Reactionary Case for Shutting the Border

The New Center: A Wednesday Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

On Thursday, I took part in a debate on immigration organized by The Free Press at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas. The formal motion was “The United States should shut its borders.” Ann Coulter and I were for the motion. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Reason’s Nick Gillespie represented the open-borders side. Bari Weiss moderated. Here’s my opening statement—

I’ll tell you two things about myself that are relevant to this important debate. The first is that I’m a legal immigrant to the United States and a proud American by choice. And the second: I believe that the national interest demands that we shut down the border to the mass movement of millions of low-wage economic migrants masquerading as asylum-seekers.

Why do I take this position? It’s because years ago, I started reading right-wing reactionary pundits and thinkers. I’m talking about people like, well, Ann Coulter here. In one of her books years ago, Ann wrote, “Many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration,” especially immigration from Latin America. Because such newcomers “have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans.” Ann also pointed out that “low-skill immigrants threaten to unravel [our] safety net.”

Oh wait, actually, it wasn’t Ann Coulter who penned these words. It was the progressive economist Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times in 2006.