Welfare and Nationalists

Since Trump’s first term, a driving force among nationalist conservatives is a desire to limit immigration. The whole movement has an aura of survivalism about it. Conservatives feel that they are being replaced by people with a different culture than themselves. They are afraid that through democracy, their country will be taken away from them, and their resources will be distributed to others. They feel a deep sense of betrayal because they worry that their hard work will be siphoned off to those who did not work for it. While at first glance, this skepticism of immigration might seem to be inherent to right wing nationalism, it may actually be more of a result of the welfare state. Welfare creates an incentive for people of all kinds to migrate to America. Welfare also increases the deficit while increasing the need for taxation. Nationalistic right wingers cannot articulate this, but their primary concern about immigration is often most fundamentally the abuse of our welfare system and government expenditure. If the welfare system became much more limited, there would be far less of a financial incentive to limit immigration. The unique gifts of immigrants could help grow the strength of the nation in a way compatible with both a free market, national stability, and a culture of trust.

The current welfare system was not structured to account for the rates of dependence we currently see among US citizens, or the massive influx of immigrants with historically high dependence rates. The welfare system was still not affordable even in a much less dependent society, yet in our society, with a declining base of earners and an ever-growing base of dependents, it is becoming a worse financial proposition every year. Many welfare programs allow perfectly healthy people to avoid work, and even actively incentivizes them to avoid working. Poor mothers will sometimes tell their sons to avoid getting a job in order to make sure that they can stay on welfare. The welfare system is able to be taken advantage of because it was built not assuming that we would have a society so fond of welfare. The reputational and moral barriers to taking out welfare have eroded, and now it is often seen as a preferable option to working. Whether immigrant or American born, the welfare system has poor incentives and often makes poor people poorer over the long-term by letting them trade their long-term success for short-term benefit benefits.

When immigrants hear about the welfare system, it is mere human nature that draws them to America. The upside of high-paying jobs and safety with ample welfare creates an environment that would appeal to anyone but the most established foreign first world citizens. Immigrants would still be drawn to America even if we didn’t have such a generous welfare system, but the welfare system brings some immigrants who would not be interested in coming if the only thing America had to offer was the job market. This greatly angers nationalist as they see it as their hard-earned dollars going to support people they view as not adding anything to society. Immigration is a problem that they feel particularly upset about because they feel as though the resources they gave to the government to be used for the good of the nation are being used for the good of people they do not consider to be within the nation. 

If welfare was dramatically reduced to only be a safety net for the disabled, those under the threat of starvation, or some other framework less inclusive than today, the immigrants that would self-select into America would be more likely to seek out gainful employment, and nationalist thinkers would not be so hostile to the concept of immigration itself. If every immigrant that came to America worked hard and took the jobs that natives would not be interested in, the case of the far right against immigration would have lost its teeth. We put immigrants in a bad position by promising them benefits that our country cannot afford that also make future immigration an uncertain thing. The future of immigration depends on the attitude of Americans towards it. If a large minority of immigrants are dependent on welfare, the political popularity of immigration is extremely unlikely to persist. If immigrants intend to live in America long-term, taking American resources only means that their new country will be weaker and bring it closer to the country that they immigrated from. While immigration can be good, the incentives that draw people to immigrate are what determines whether it keeps dividing the nation or multiplies America’s productive capacity.