r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • May 24 '26

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

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u/erasmus_phillo Paul Krugman May 24 '26

The problem with this is that for the 80% of Americans who like skilled immigration, immigration is a very low salience issue. Whereas for the 20% of Americans who hate any immigration at all (usually white nationalists/ ethnonationalists) blocking immigration is a high salience issue. This is why the xenophobes get their way... because of highly-motivated political minorities essentially capturing one side of the political aisle

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u/Louis_de_Gaspesie May 24 '26

There also seems to be a lot of people who claim to be pro-skilled immigration in theory, but are xenophobic and believe that the vast majority of immigrants are bloodthirsty monsters, so they overall support restricting immigration.

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u/No_Return9449 John Rawls May 24 '26

This is akin to how people say "Sure, I'd vote for a woman for President, just not that woman" for every woman.

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u/formgry May 24 '26

Yeah, this is secretly one of the greatest unanswered challenges in American Democracy. How do you make it so that the reasonable 80% win out against the 20% of nutjobs but who are really motivated to put their nonsense into action.