The Persistent Myth of Mono Ethnic Economies

Intro

Despite the divisions running through the Western bloc, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union are all converging on the same policy instinct: closing their borders under the banner of sovereignty, social cohesion, and national interest.

As a matter of fact, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer presented, in June 2024, his ambitious plan to reduce immigration, calling it a key priority to restore trust in Britain’s borders and rebuild “control.” In the U.S., President Donald Trump has gone as far as labelling undocumented immigrants as “poisoning the blood of America”, organizing mass deportations in a total ignorance of any constitutional rights. In France, the term “préférence nationale” has returned to mainstream discourse.

This instinct is not new in the West. It is a return to the atmosphere of the 1930s, a time of economic slowdown, political extremism, and a lavish perception of institutions and governance. It’s an echo of older fears, recycled for new audiences. The desire to “pause” immigration is not only short-sighted economically, but it also risks reviving a darker historical cycle we’ve seen before. Because the numbers speak a different truth that the story we are told in a loop. Since the 1970s, immigration and economic growth have risen together in G7 countries, while unemployment has trended downward.

Still, the myth holds. Because when fear spreads, masses seek clarity, and the simplicity it brings is seductive: immigrants are blamed for stagnation, joblessness, and cultural erosion. “Un million de chômeurs = un million d’immigrés de trop” proned the French far right in the 1970s.

This article is not a plea for open borders. It’s an invitation to confront the economic fallacies and political myths that cloud our ability to assess immigration as part of a broader societal equilibrium.

Dissecting the Myth: A Simplification for the Masses

To foster a more rational debate, we must breakdown the thesis at the very core of the anti-immigration rhetoric and examine how can it align with the economy’s unmittelbare Realität; its immediate, unmediated reality.

At the core of anti-immigration rhetoric lies a flawed economic assumption: that the labor market operates as a zero-sum game, and thus tax contributors should be served, last and first, in the quest for economic occupation. This economic claim is wrapped into an ideologic that echoes he “clash of civilisations” thesis: insiders vs. outsiders, autochthones vs. barbarians, “us” vs “them”. The implacable logic, derived from this linear thinking, flows into what Fox News headlined on September 2024: “The U.S. job market is booming — but only if you’re here illegally”. Or was it suggested by the Los Angeles Times, in… 1931?

Because the idea of “one-to-one” job matches fails to reflect the mechanics of modern economies, this vision of reality, although brought up by common sense, is yet contradicted by the economic data. By entering the labor force, immigrants do increase the supply of labor, as well as the aggregate demand. And here lies the nuance: new residents consume goods and services, rent homes, start businesses, and pay taxes. In sectors such as construction, care work, agriculture, and hospitality, immigration helps fill labor shortages (often at wage levels or conditions native workers reject).

Immigrants are not only workers. They are consumers, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers. Their integration into the economy typically results in a net increase in GDP and productivity. Multiple studies, including OECD and IMF working papers, have shown that immigration, even of low-skilled workers, does not depress wages in the long run and often complements rather than substitutes native labor.

At this point, we must acknowledge that immigration doesn’t solve all economic problems, nor should it be romanticized. Integration matters, as do cultural cohesion, legal frameworks, and fiscal capacity. Besides, not all effects are uniformly distributed. In specific localities or industries, sudden inflows or outflows can stress infrastructure, depress wages temporarily, or intensify perceptions of job competition. The fundamental message here, is that immigration flows, just like any other socio-economic phenomenon, are to be appreciated beyond the intellectual framework that catchy political slogans pretend to offer.

Economist Paul Krugman called this a fallacy of composition: what may be true in isolation (one immigrant working a job) is not necessarily true at scale (fewer immigrants do not lead to proportionally more jobs for nationals). Labor markets are not static inventories but dynamic systems, where inputs generate feedback loops and downstream effects.

Because like a living organism, the economy seeks equilibrium through constant renewal and the optimal allocation of resources. It manages scarcity not through isolation, but through systems of trade-offs: exchanging freedom for security, efficiency for equity - what might be called a Hobbesian pact. They are interdependent systems, that mirror broader social dynamics, or else called the socio-economic structure.

President Hoover’s “Big Beautiful” Plan

Restricting immigration on the assumption that it automatically improves labour market outcomes for nationals is both economically short-sighted and empirically unproven. Time and again, data show that immigration contributes to growth and productivity, while blanket restrictions risk undermining sectors already strained by labour shortages.

But to remain intellectually rigorous and politically neutral, we must take the zero-immigration premise seriously, project it forward, apply reasonable assumptions, and examine its potential outcomes. The economy is best understood backwards, and fortunately, history has already run this experiment. Under President Hoover in the early 1930s, the U.S. government enacted a large-scale campaign of Mexican repatriation, providing a powerful case study. A 2023 NBER study by Abramitzky, Boustan, Jacome, and Pérez offers a compelling retrospective on the economic consequences of that policy. 

In the early 1930s, amid the depths of the Great Depression, the U.S. government embarked on a large-scale campaign to repatriate Mexican immigrants. This campaign, motivated by economic despair and nationalist pressure, led to the forcible and voluntary removal of approximately 400,000 to 500,000 Mexicans, including many U.S.-born citizens of Mexican descent.

The rationale behind the President Hoover’s policy was clear and simplistic: free up jobs for native-born Americans by removing "foreign" labor, since fewer immigrants would mechanically mean less competition and lower unemployment for U.S. citizens.

Yet, the outcome did not match the intent. Using newly compiled county-level data and exploiting variation in repatriation intensity across regions, the authors found no measurable improvement in employment for native-born workers in areas where Mexican repatriation was more intense.

In fact:

• Employment rates for native workers did not rise in counties with high levels of repatriation.

• Wage levels remained stagnant, undermining the claim that reduced immigration would push wages up.

• Local economic output declined, suggesting that Mexican workers were not simply job competitors — they were also contributors to local productivity and demand.

The study reveals that Mexican immigrants in the 1930s were deeply integrated into local economies (particularly in agriculture, mining, and construction) and their forced removal disrupted labor markets, reduced consumption, and created labor shortages.

Why did the policy backfire? Because as the study shows, the zero-sum thinking behind restrictive migration policies is a fallacy, given the following intrinsic parameters:

• Labor is not easily substitutable: Immigrant workers often hold roles with specific skills, experience, or wage expectations that are not readily replaced.

• Demand follows labor: By removing consumers from the economy, repatriations reduced demand for goods and services.

• The informal and communal roles of migrants as family members, community builders, and caregivers were overlooked, leaving social gaps in their wake.

“It’s the Economy, Stupid”

One could rightfully argue that this was a century ago, that both the case-study and its teachings are “caduque”, relics of a bygone era unfit for our post-industrial, hyper-globalized economies. Could that be true?

Just like Hoover in the 1930s, Meloni was elected on the promise of immigration repatriation and national sovereignty, to free up the job market, better recapture and redistribute the source of wealth to nationals. In a country where birth rate hardly establishes at 1.2 child per woman, in a country that faces a labour shortage of more than half million workers, the far-right elected government chose economic pragmatism, issuing 500 000 working visas for 2026–2028, after pledging to silence migrant arrivals. It is a political about-face that mirrors Hoover’s repatriations: when theory meets structural need, reality prevails.

From Trump’s mass deportation pledges to Farage’s "Take Back Control" campaign, from Bruno Retailleau’s warnings of a "cultural suicide," to Viktor Orbán’s crusade for natality over migration, and VOX and AfD’s nativist surge, the message remains the same: “They are taking our country”. But this myth avoids confronting the true structural causes, the roots of economic distress: capital concentration, wage stagnation, and weakened labor power.

Since 1971 in most Western economies, a growing share of national income flows not to labor but to capital. Even when employment numbers rise, wealth remains locked in the hands of asset owners. Cutting immigration doesn’t alter this: if anything, it shrinks the fiscal base, deepens inequalities, and fuels further precarity. Immigration, in this sense, is not a crisis. It is a logical consequence of globalized capitalism. It is as simple as that.

In a world where production chains are globalized, labor inevitably follows capital. The illusion of la mondialisation heureuse (a harmonious and win-win globalization) obscures the reality: our global value chains are strategically optimized extensions of former colonial empires. Goods are globalized. Finance is globalized. Labor, too, is a resource that flows where capital dictates. Blocking that flow creates friction not because it's unnatural, but because it's inevitable.

But beyond these direct effects, lies a deeper question: who owns what?

The structure of capital ownership is often left out of the debate. Wealth (and thus power) remains concentrated. Job competition among the working class does not create precarity; it is the result of political and economic systems that have allowed, thanks to Pr. Nixon and the suspension of Bretton Woods, productivity gains to bypass wages, and profits to be hoarded by a global elite.

Internally, this exposes a deeper cleavage between elites and the masses. The current economic model is upheld by those who benefit from it; elites with little incentive to challenge their own privileges. Reforming the vertical social contract — between rulers and ruled — is far harder than tweaking the horizontal one — between citizens, residents. As French philosopher and essayist Julien Benda (1867–1956) warned in La Trahison des Clercs (1927), intellectuals and elites too often betray truth and justice to preserve their status. The real betrayal today is the refusal to confront the system's structural failings.

And so what remains? Fear.

Fear replaces reform. As Italian political scientist, novelist, and former advisor to Matteo Renzi Giuliano da Empoli writes in Le Mage du Kremlin, fear is not a by-product of authoritarianism — it is its very instrument. His fictional Kremlin strategist notes: “La seule arme qu’a un pauvre pour conserver sa dignité est d’instiller la peur”. In modern democracies, immigration becomes that vector: a mirror for anxieties, a screen for unspoken fears. Thus, the myth persists, not because it’s true, but because it’s useful. Useful for avoiding reform. Useful for redirecting anger. Useful for preserving power. Everything must change so that nothing changes.

Conclusion

The 1930s case of Mexican repatriation is a powerful example of how short-term populist measures rooted in economic fear can backfire economically and morally. It serves as a cautionary tale: if a society suffers from wage stagnation and inequality, closing borders won’t fix it, simply because immigration is not the cause. By blaming immigrants for economic discontent, societies turn away from the real causes: globalization without guardrails, automation without redistribution, financialization without oversight, and deregulation without accountability.

The true symptom of a crisis originates when democracies begin to adopt the tools and rhetoric of authoritarian regimes: mass deportation, fear, mass manipulation, abuse of law.

Yet here lies the paradox: a healthy democracy is not one that avoids crisis, but one that confronts it. Democracies are built to endure turbulence. Through institutions, counter-powers, and the rule of law, they possess the mechanisms for self-correction and regeneration. It is no coincidence that the U.S. Constitution begins with “We, the People,” just as the Roman Republic stood under SPQR (the Senate and the People of Rome). Both remind us that legitimacy flows from the people, but is enacted through institutions, entrusted (not gifted) to those in power. Elites are not sovereigns, but custodians, accountable to the collective will and guided by a shared destiny.

Crises, in this light, are not signs of failure, but the constatation of how mature our system of governance is: a moment to rethink the social contract, perhaps even at global level.