Immigration and National Security

Yglesias is right--attacks on immigration are not really about national security, they are about culture. Not that most anti-immigrant fanatics see a difference between the two. When one brown person is the same as the other, it becomes real easy to assume that Mexican migrants are terrorists. For the Republican party, national security is just a convenient excuse to cover up that what they really are is the White Man's Party. Yglesias is responding to Ryan Avent and Avent is not wrong. We can make the argument that a more open immigration policy can reduce the possibility of terrorism through the regularization of immigration.

But no matter how how sensible that argument is, a large percentage of people will oppose immigration because it makes the nation less white.