The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite

by Michael Lind

In the US, attitudes toward immigration are chiefly determined by class; less-skilled workers are more likely to favor immigration restriction than more-educated workers.23 At the same time, there is broad cross-class support in the US and other Western countries in favor of skilled rather than unskilled immigration.24 In the US there has been no significant backlash against East Asian and South Asian immigrants, who tend to be college-educated professionals, comparable to the backlash against less-skilled and disproportionately poor Latin American immigrants, even though Asian immigrants are nonwhite as well. In Britain, working-class populists have complained about “Polish plumbers” and other lower-income immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who are white. As split labor market theory would predict, the native working-class backlash has been greatest against particular groups of immigrants, nonwhite or white, who are viewed as competitors for jobs or welfare and public services.