One of the best arguments against immigration is that, if you allow people to move to your country, even as non-citizen guest workers, they will eventually demand political rights in your country using their physical presence in a democracy as a moral justification. In other words, the only way to keep foreigners from influencing the laws and norms you live under is to physically bar them from your polity entirely.
>One of the best arguments against immigration is that, if you allow people to move to your country, even as non-citizen guest workers, they will eventually demand political rights in your country using their physical presence in a democracy as a moral justification
That could just as easily be an argument against democracy. The Gulf monarchies have large numbers of non-citizen guest workers, in the case of the UAE over 80% of the population, but they don't have any of the problems western countries have with migrants, because migrants have no political power and aren't eligible for welfare.
Yes, it is an argument against democracy. Or, more radically, an argument against the entire system of Westphalian states that control swaths of territory on the Earth's surface and that human beings are legal citizens of, as the way that human political organization is done.
> The Gulf monarchies have large numbers of non-citizen guest workers, in the case of the UAE over 80% of the population, but they don't have any of the problems western countries have with migrants, because migrants have no political power and aren't eligible for welfare.
Sometimes pro-immigration economic liberals cite the Gulf experience with immigrants as an argument for why western democracies should have open borders or at least much more liberalized immigration policy. The pro-open-borders libertarian economist Bryan Caplan has made this specific argument for instance. Setting aside the fact that these countries are not democracies even for their own citizens, if 80% of the human beings physically resident within your borders are non-citizen guest workers, I would be worried about the possibility of formally-illegal violent uprising.
That's only a good argument if you think they're bound to be a detriment in those "demands", or that basic dignity is too much to ask for hard labor in return for crap wages and no job security.
Putting that aside even if you do accept the premise that people working and living in your country are a risk rather than an opportunity, it's a poor argument in favor of something that's necessitated by demographic change in the West (and places like Japan).
