Not Mad, Just Disappointed

 When I saw an opinion piece a couple weeks ago from a certain New York Times columnist who has made a career for himself as a supposed human rights activist—a piece, specifically, in which he calls on the president to effectively terminate the U.S. asylum program—I was surprised by how little appetite I had to publicly rant about it on Twitter. It wasn't fun in the way it is to denounce the latest horrific statement from J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio, say. Rather, this one pained me. 

I could see all the points I'd want to criticize in the column. There was the rank hypocrisy of someone who had made a career calling for refugee rights abroad suddenly reversing course as soon as his own country and his own favored presidential candidate are facing the same dilemma at their borders. There is the fact that Kristof would certainly castigate Turkey, say, for shutting out Syrian refugees—yet, when humanitarian migration is happening at our border, he suddenly sings a different tune. 

Then there was the manifest weakness of some of his arguments. Kristof contends, for instance, that many asylum claims are meritless. But how can he know that in advance? The whole point of an asylum hearing is to determine whether an individual claim has merit or not—rather than prejudge these cases and deny people their due process en masse. Then, having made this case—and perhaps in partial recognition of its thinness—he pivots in the column's final paragraph to a quite different line of argument. 

At last, Kristof essentially resorts to an argument from futility. The political tide has turned against asylum, he declares. The next president—whoever that may be—is almost certainly going to scale back on humanitarian migration. Would we rather this be done by Trump, who will crack down on asylum with a level of militarized brutality that will endanger our representative institutions? Or, would we rather the same thing be accomplished, but "in an orderly way by reasonable people" (i.e., by Team Biden)?

Can I choose neither, please? After all, this is surely the essence of a false dilemma. Governments are not bound a priori to eviscerate asylum rights. I admit that the outlook for humanitarian migration right now is grim. But this is no doubt largely due to the fact that no politician is actively making the case for the benefits of migration—despite how obvious and well-documented these have become. As a result, no voters are really hearing either the moral or the prudential case for asylum. 

I suspect this has more to do with the current structure of our center-left and right political coalitions in the developed West, than it does with any reasoned policy. The newly-elected Keir Starmer administration in the UK is reportedly promising to "reduce immigration"—just as the ousted Conservatives pledged to do. Yet, this promise comes even as the UK faces a demographic, fiscal, and cost of living crisis that could only possibly be resolved by the in-migration of more working-age adults. 

Why are the UK's Labour government and the U.S.'s Democratic president seemingly no more capable than right-wing governments of making the case for the necessity and social utility of immigration? Answer: it is not because these benefits do not exist—but rather because their political coalitions will not tolerate such arguments. Center-left governments have a bias on moral grounds toward allowing humanitarian migration, but a skepticism on economic ones toward widening the labor pool. 

Right-wing governments, of course, have the same problem in reverse. Elements of their coalition oppose immigration on racist, nationalist, xenophobic, or—more generously—"cultural" grounds. They have a "moral" opposition to immigration (to use that word in its neutral sense). Yet, they have an economic bias toward increasing the supply of labor. Thus, they are every bit as incapable of forming a coherent platform on this issue as the center-left—so neither side ever does. 

The problem, then, is that immigration remains genuinely unpopular with large sections of the public in ways that cut across partisan lines. This public hostility to immigration persists even as the evidence for its benefits mounts (multiple economists and Federal Reserve officials in the U.S. have attributed the country's soft-landing from the recent inflation and higher interest rates, for instance,—in which price rises have cooled without increasing unemployment—to the economic benefits of immigration). 

I suspect this strange inconsistency is due to the fact that the benefits of immigration are widely diffused and thus largely invisible to people—whereas its costs are concentrated and highly-visible. 

Asylum seekers in the U.S. who are condemned to live for six months without a work permit can be seen in homeless shelters in most major northern cities. Their unemployment and reliance on public shelters is due entirely to the government's own perversity in denying them work authorization. They would love to work and support themselves if they were allowed to do so. But the impression the public comes away with is of a desperate and dependent population that our country cannot afford to support. 

The father of modern public relations theory, Edward Bernays, always spoke of the need to create a "spectacle" to drive home a PR message. By sending asylum-seekers to northern cities, denying them work permits, and forcing them to live for months at the mercy of public charities, immigration restrictionists have managed to create a "spectacle" every day that leads ordinary U.S. voters to think that "the country is full—we have too many immigrants."

By contrast, it is very hard to think of a "spectacle" that would make ordinary Americans realize the value of immigration. The economic benefits of more people entering the country show up incrementally in easing price pressures, reduced tax burdens, and greater fiscal sustainability of public programs. These benefits are real, and far outweigh the costs of temporarily housing people without work permits. But they are spread out too far, and thus are largely invisible to people. 

Kristof may be right, then, that the political tendencies of our time will always be toward reducing immigration, evidence be damned. We may say, with Vachel Lindsay, that "so [mankind] will be, though law be clear as crystal." No matter how much evidence accumulates of the benefits of immigration, or how strong the moral and legal arguments are for retaining the asylum program—so that people may not be deported to persecution and death—many people will still oppose these things. 

But even if this were true—that is no reason to stop fighting. Since when was the task of the human rights advocate to pitch his tent on the side of the wrong-but-popular opinion? It is always unpopular and disfavored minorities who face the greatest threat of human rights violations. Asylum seekers are just the latest such group. The human rights advocate doesn't need to make the task of the persecuting majority easier by saying "welp, I guess we have no choice but to go along."

I could make all these arguments against Kristof's column, as I say—and I suppose I am belatedly doing so here. But at the time I first read the piece, I had little appetite to do so. It hurt too much. 

It was far worse than if some right-winger had made the same case. This one was painful, because it went against type. I was witnessing a kind of moral self-humiliation. Someone who plainly knew better—who was familiar with all the humanitarian arguments in favor of asylum—was nonetheless choosing to turn his back on a vulnerable population—a group of people who have done nothing wrong; whose only request is to work and pay taxes, while avoiding deportation to the hands of their persecutors. 

For years on the blog, whenever I have wished to accuse some writer or elected official of being a political turncoat, I have made reference to two poems on that theme: John Greenleaf Whittier's "Ichabod" (about Daniel Webster's betrayal of the anti-slavery cause), and Robert Browning's "The Lost Leader" (generally understood to be about Wordsworth's betrayal of the liberal cause—or, possibly, the similar ideological defection of Wordsworth's contemporary, Robert Southey). 

Thinking about this post, however, I noticed something about these poems I had not taken all that seriously before. Both, I now realized, contain versions of the same sentiment: both urge their readers not to crow about the downfall of the former icons; both urge us to mourn and show respect for someone who once seemed destined for higher things, only to disappoint themselves and all of us. Both seem, in short, to be saying something to the effect of: "I'm not mad; just disappointed." 

I had always regarded this as a mere trope on their part: something like the ancient rhetorical device of claiming not to condescend to make a point while in the very act of making it (such as: "I won't waste your time by pointing out that my opponent has repeatedly...."). But, when faced with the Kristof column, it occurred to me that both Browning (who imagines the Lost Leader redeemed, in the closing lines) and Whittier (who urges us to mourn, rather than despise, him) may have actually meant it. 

In other words, it may have caused them genuine pain to see their one-time idols betray them. And thus, they may truly have taken no pride or pleasure in the thought of denouncing them now. Had social media existed in their era, they might not have rushed to vent their fury on Twitter or Threads either. They would have said: "don't cancel them." "Revile him not," writes Whittier: "the Tempter hath/A snare for all;/ And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,/Befit his fall!" 

And so it should be with Kristof. We should not greet his column with scorn and wrath. We should not cancel him. Rather, we should reflect and mourn. There but for the grace of God go us all. We all could yet live to betray our own ideals and best selves—to succumb to political pressures to which we once felt immune. It could happen to me too. The tempter hath a snare for all. And so, I will not triumph over his downfall—but rather will sing a dirge, for the sight of "one task more declined" (Browning). 

And so too, with respect to Kristof, we can say and actually mean it—with Browning: 

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!