Limit Migration to Save Migration

On the podcast: Reihan Salam takes on the immigration debate.

By , a deputy editor at Foreign Policy.
Naturalization candidates attend a ceremony for new U.S. citizens at the National Archives in Washington on Dec. 15, 2015. (Martin H. Simon/Pool/Getty Images)
Naturalization candidates attend a ceremony for new U.S. citizens at the National Archives in Washington on Dec. 15, 2015. (Martin H. Simon/Pool/Getty Images)
Naturalization candidates attend a ceremony for new U.S. citizens at the National Archives in Washington on Dec. 15, 2015. (Martin H. Simon/Pool/Getty Images)

In Reihan Salam’s new bookMelting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, he argues U.S. immigration policies need to become more restrictive—but not, as one might think, for the sake of already advantaged Americans, but instead for the sake of the migrants themselves and their descendants. Salam—the executive editor of National Review, a conservative magazine—is himself a second-generation American.

In Reihan Salam’s new bookMelting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, he argues U.S. immigration policies need to become more restrictive—but not, as one might think, for the sake of already advantaged Americans, but instead for the sake of the migrants themselves and their descendants. Salam—the executive editor of National Review, a conservative magazine—is himself a second-generation American.

In his book, and on today’s podcast, he argues that migrants have a much better chance of assimilating, economically and culturally, to mainstream American life if the size of their ethnic group doesn’t continually grow. He also offers a potential compromise on immigration policy that he hopes will bring the two sides of the country’s bitter debate back together.

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