A common theme in liberal discourse is North America and Europe is that the low, below replacement, birthrates of states in those regions can be offset by migration. This in turn, will help to enrich people born in poorer parts of the Earth. Thus, migration is a net benefit to all.

I find this logical falls apart fairly quickly just looking at the actual scale of the problem of poverty. Bangladesh alone can supply 80,000,000 souls who, by European standards would be impoverished. Few people would accept that the USA or EU could absorb 80,000,000 migrants in a decade.

Yet the disparities today will become increasingly acute. Sub-Saharan Africa just eclipsed a billion people in the mid 2010s. By 2100, it will have more people than all of Asia. Half of all children will live within its borders, even with models allowing for massive outward migration to the scale of well over one hundred million.

Thus, the migration of people from poorer nations, to richer ones, represents a solution that will at best help 1-5% of the population in poorer nations. Indeed, the 5% rate immediately seems ridiculous when you realize it would equate to 200,000,000 given a global population of just 10 billion (assuming a full 20% qualify as rich, which is a long shot).

This of course, ignores the fact that adding more people to rich nations, and the lifestyles they have, only increases the externalities of the pollution, which will especially affect Sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast bulk of population growth will.occur in this century.

In any event, the point is that migration from poor countries to rich ones will only help a small minority of people in poor countries. Remittances, of course, are sizeable. Payments sent back home to poorer countries in by workers in richer countries eclipsed all direct foreign aid by 2015 in some regions. So, there is that to consider.

When I mention pragmatism, I think of the effects of large scale migration on the politics of rich nations. The common threat uniting the rise of Trump, Brexit, and a general widespread tilt to the far right by both the West and rich Asian nations has clearly been driven by "mass migration.,"

Some people will reject the term, but I think it's fair. On a continental scale, replacement, based on broad phenotypical definitions, i.e. races, is occuring in Europe at a more rapid rate that in North America after the arrival of Europeans. I in no way want to make the two situations analogous. Europeans replaced indigenous Americans due to massive epidemics and violent conquest. Europeans have embraced large scale migration intentionally as a way of keeping wages low and property values increasing. However, the scale of change is similar. France, the UK, and Germany will all be minority European by around 2080. That represents a titanic demographic and cultural shift.

On top of this shift, is the fact that migrants appear to impose congestion costs on each other. That is, the same way each additional drive imposed costs on others by slowing travel times, a higher proportion of migrants in a geographical area increases the time, and social costs, of assimilation to the new culture. This is obviously particularly acute in Europe, with high levels of racism and segregation. Radical Islam has found fertile ground in European ghettos- homogeneousness islands of deprivation.

This is a lot of build up, I know. My point with all this is that I fear there may be large scale costs for people in poor countries, due to unrestrained migration from poor countries to rich ones. This migration is encouraged by elites in wealthy nations. Let us not forget, US Republicans held the White House, both chambers of Congress, and the Courts for 24 months. They did not hold one (1) vote on migration. Not even token reforms to expedite the expulsion of criminals. It's because migration benefits those with wealth directly by supressing wages in the short term, and increasing demand for real property and other assets in the long term.

However, the incompetence, and virulent racism of Trumpism, and far-right ideologies in Europe, are, to my mind, only possible due to mass migration. Migration is the common theme linking all far right Western movements. A fear of cultural shifts. Anger against inequality. They are not totally wrong here. Migration is an absolutely massive driver of inequality. Millions of people enter the US and EU each year with almost no assets and little education, and also face a language barrier. The cumulative effect necessarily, mathematically causes inequality to soar.

My fear is that this trend, the growing inequality and cultural fracture, has gotten so great, it is causing serious dysfunction in rich nations. I present Trump as evidence. The Capitol Coup. Only 1-3% of people in poor nations can benefit from migration to rich ones. The other 97% can suffer from an international system that is torn asunder due to dysfunction in their political systems.

That is, migrants to rich nations are imposing costs back on people in poor nations by destabilizing rich nations.

Of course, "liberal" discourse in the West denies this. If you watch John Oliver or read the NYT op ed section, immigration only brings economic growth. This is frankly unture. A oft cited New Jersey study showing migrants use less welfare actually shows that they use less "all else being equal," and do indeed have a net negative affect on local accounts. National level analysis often counts their tax input into Social Security and Medicare in the US, but explicitly pretends they will not use the benefits. This is disingenuous, and frankly, "fucked up." People paying into Social Security deserve it, and a liberal trend towards this sort of accounting represents degenerate gamesmanship in national debate.

So to sum up, migration is destabilizing rich nations. This will actually hurt people in poor nations the most (e.g. nations with antimigrant right wing governments won't do shit about global warming).