Why I Distrust Social Trust Rationales for Immigration Restrictions

In a recent post, co-blogger David Bernstein discusses the “social trust” rationale for immigration restrictions: the idea that the increased ethnic and cultural diversity caused by immigration reduces social trust, which in turn leads to various bad outcomes. This is one of the more sophisticated justifications for immigration restrictions. But it deserves to be rejected, nonetheless. For the main reasons, why see  this excellent analysis by my Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh, my discussion of his piece, and the relevant section of Chapter 6 of my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.

To briefly summarize, shows that 1) the link between trust and various beneficial social outcomes is  highly questionable, 2) the evidence that immigration reduces trust is also weak, and 3) even if trust is beneficial and immigration reduces it, institutional incentives are often an effective substitute for it. Nowrasteh delves into the trust issue in greater detail in two social science articles (see here and here). His book Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (coauthored with Ben Powell), also has lots of relevant material.

My own view, summarized in my previous post on this topic, is that some minimum threshold of social trust is essential, but it doesn’t follow that higher trust is necessarily better:

[E]ven if social trust is desirable (and it’s hard to deny that societies need at least some minimal level of trust), it doesn’t follow that more is always better. It could be that once you achieve a relatively modest level of trust (e.g. – we generally trust strangers not to assault or swindle us, and the like), further increases have few benefits. At some point, increased trust could even be harmful. For example, excessive trust in commercial transactions make us vulnerable to exploitation by conmen. Excessive trust in government officials might enable them to get away with corruption and harmful and unjust policies, and so on. If so, declining trust – whether driven by immigration or other factors – may not be a problem unless and until it gets a society below that bare minimum.

In fairness, David Bernstein doesn’t actually endorse the social trust rationale for immigration restrictions. He just uses this argument to counter a specific libertarian response to a different rationale for immigration restrictions: claims that unconstrained immigration would overburden the welfare state. One response to that claim is that immigration actually reduces natives’ support for welfare benefits because the latter dislike seeing welfare payments going to immigrants (particularly ones from significantly different racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds). This is backed by evidence indicating that ethnically diverse societies, on average, have less welfare-state redistribution.

Pro-immigration libertarians need not rely on this point in countering the welfare-state rationale for restrictionism. We have several other strong responses, as well. But this one is also valid, despite David’s concerns. It is important to remember that opposition to redistribution to a given group isn’t the same thing as declining social trust, generally. People can and often do oppose coercive redistribution to those whom they nonetheless trust when it comes to a variety of commercial and social transactions. That happens all the time! I trust all sorts of people whom I not willing to pay higher taxes to give extra welfare benefits to. You likely feel the same way.  Moreover, as noted above, declining trust isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless it falls below minimally acceptable levels.

Even if increased diversity caused by immigration does somehow reduce trust to a degree that causes real harm, that has to be weighed against the enormous damage caused by immigration restrictions themselves, including that inflicted on receiving-country natives. Immigration restrictions reduce the economic liberty and prosperity of natives more than any other government policy enacted by Western democracies. It would require a truly enormous increase in social beneficial trust to even come close to offsetting that.

And if immigration simultaneously reduces both social trust welfare-state spending, it may well be that the benefits of the latter outweigh any harm caused by the former, even aside from other beneficial effects of free migration. That’s especially likely to be true from a libertarian perspective, which holds that excessive government spending is a great menace.

Finally, as David points out, libertarians believe (rightly) that welfare state spending itself has a negative effect on social cohesion because “government tends to be corrosive of community and pits people who might otherwise get along against each other in a scramble for political rents.” If so, the net effect of immigration on trust may actually be positive! It may initially reduce trust by increasing diversity; but then there is a countervailing increase caused by cuts in government spending.

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