Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“After Leave won the Brexit vote in 2016, lots of thinkers who accepted the economic case for high immigration started flirting with a political case against high immigration. While the details of this political case were often vague, one word was painted on its banner: BACKLASH. The central insinuation was that staunch support for high immigration is what philosophers call ‘self-defeating’: When immigration gets too high, voters reliably shift their support to right-wing populists, who in turn reliably slash immigration. I’ve long maintained that the rhetoric of ‘immigration backlash’ is classic motte-and-bailey. If ‘backlash’ merely means ‘More immigration leads to more complaining about immigration’ then the claim is almost surely true, but also trivial.” (02/10/26)