Earlier this month, the Cato Institute, a prominent think tank that advocates for open borders, published a study claiming that since 1994, immigration has produced a $14.5 trillion surplus in tax revenue beyond government spending.
Critics quickly pointed out that the study utilizes questionable criteria to evaluate immigration policy. For instance, while it acknowledges that immigration increases housing demand, leading to higher prices, it still regards the resulting property tax revenue as a positive outcome.
More fundamentally, the study’s interpretation of immigration-related spending raises eyebrows. It categorizes the costs of education and healthcare for U.S.-born children of immigrants as spending on citizens, not immigrants. This is reminiscent of how the COVID-19 statistics were sometimes misrepresented, attributing illness spikes to unvaccinated individuals rather than those who had received one vaccine dose.
Besides these issues, studies like this provoke deeper inquiries about the safety, happiness, and freedom the U.S. government is meant to ensure. The answer, perhaps, is found in the preamble of the 1787 Constitution:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, and to secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.
When I recently mentioned the preamble, a liberal economist remarked that it isn’t legally binding. While that might be true, its essence underlines the ultimate aims of our laws.
Questions regarding who constitutes the “American people” evolve, whether you’re considering 1776, 1787, or even 2026. That’s a rather controversial topic, but one that continues to demand attention.
When John Rawls, a notable political philosopher, discussed how rational individuals should design societal institutions, he suggested that civilization isn’t merely an assembly of solitary people. His concept known as the “original position” prompts us to envision ourselves as not just individuals but as “continuing people”—family members or guardians of ongoing lineages.
This idea of a continuing people, albeit clumsy, mirrors Governor Morris’s more poetic notion of “ourselves and our descendants.” It doesn’t seem unreasonable or discriminatory to consider immigration policy from the viewpoints of current citizens and their descendants. In fact, historical Rawls advocated for this perspective, often surprising his students when he approached immigration issues this way.
Online, there are frequent claims about a so-called Great Replacement—that elites are replacing indigenous populations with more manageable alternatives. Open border advocates maintain that increased immigration doesn’t necessitate displacing anyone.
But, of course, we all ultimately leave. Someday, we’ll reunite with our parents, and our legacy will be our descendants—children, grandchildren, and beyond—who inhabit the country we built for them.
Additionally, mass immigration not only heightens housing demand but also tends to depress wage expectations, particularly for lower-income native-born workers. Rising housing costs and diminishing long-term wages are eroding the economic bases required for family life, making marriage options scarcer for native-born men.
This, in turn, affects fertility rates among natives. While there’s an uptick in births to unmarried mothers, very few of these mothers have more than one child, mostly due to the challenges of single parenting. Governments cite studies like Cato’s to rationalize inviting immigrants to support aging native demographics that struggle to produce sufficient descendants for economic sustainability.
As Charles de Gaulle noted, graveyards are filled with irreplaceable individuals. I believe that if we want our descendants to tend our graves and cherish our legacies, we must advocate for immigration policies that prioritize their well-being, safety, and freedom.
Those who continue the work of the Founding Fathers, forging and maintaining the stronger and more united connections they envisioned, may not necessarily share blood relations but can rightfully be viewed as their spiritual heirs.
