If we were judging open immigration and outsourcing not as economic policies but as U.S. aid programs for the world’s poor, we might consider them successes. But we are not. The cultural change, the race-based constitutional demotion of natives relative to newcomers, the weakening democratic grip of the public on its government as power disappeared into back rooms and courtrooms, the staggeringly large redistributions of wealth—all these things ensured that immigration would poison American politics right down until the presidential election of 2016.
