A Scholarly Appeal.

• Author: Brannon, Ike

The Immigrant Superpower: How Brains, Brawn, and Bravery Make America Stronger

By Tim Kane

304 pp.; Oxford University

Press, 2022

There are few politicians making an argument in favor of liberalized immigration in any form these days. The right continues its lurch toward nativism, and the progressive left has become increasingly ambivalent about new immigrants. The partisan fight over the legal status of the Dreamers obscures the fact that even people on the left have embraced the mistaken notion that immigrants take jobs away from hard-working Americans.

While it's hard to see this popular view changing anytime soon, that doesn't mean liberal scholars should stop trying to persuade the public. To that end, Tim Kane's recent book, The Immigrant Superpower, takes direct aim at the hardened assumptions of right-wing restrictionists and nativists. Kane, an economist with stops at the Joint Economic Committee, the Kauffman Foundation, and the Hoover Institution, effectively dismantles nativist shibboleths about foreigners taking our jobs or trying to change our culture. His book's effectiveness goes beyond just tearing down hackneyed objections to foreign workers.

Patriotic immigrants/ The Immigrant Superpower isn't the first book that attempts to dissuade Americans of these fallacies, but it may be one of the best. Kane marshals a wealth of evidence to expand upon the immense benefits that immigrants bring to U.S. citizens and society writ large.

One of his most non-intuitive findings--at least to nativists--is that foreign-born Americans are more patriotic than the native-born. That undercuts the nativist subtext that immigrants will degrade our culture. He commissioned a survey (performed by YouGov) of U.S. citizens born in the country and immigrants who had recently become U.S. citizens that asked about their reverence for the Constitution and the value they place on basic rights. By a significant margin, immigrants declared themselves to be more committed to what we would construe as core constitutional values.

The political implications of this are obvious and have been uttered by a few others (most notably progressive-leaning political scientist Ruy Texiera, who paid a price for saying it): The idea that an influx of new immigrants to such places as Texas and Florida will soon turn them into purple states ready to support a progressive agenda is wishful thinking by Democrats. Few people come to America with the desire to radically change...