The political consequences of these massive shifts of people are impossible to overstate. Here in the US, unfounded fears of brown people invading the country and stealing jobs and committing crimes are disguised as a policy debate about immigration. Fear of outsiders also fuels the rise of extreme right-wing politics in Europe and Australia. (“If you want to understand Australian politics,” one Australian entrepreneur told me during my visit to Melbourne, “the first thing you have to understand is our fear of yellow hordes from the north.”) Migration is driven by many factors, but a lack of
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