Can the United States come up with an immigration policy that will prove sustainable? Two writers whom I respect and take delight in reading, despite their widely differing views, Tyler Cowen, who favors more immigration, and Christopher Caldwell, who favors less, have their doubts. Both, incidentally, are writing for the Free Press, Bari Weiss’s eclectic startup.

They are writing at a time when President Donald Trump’s Executive Branch is splashily and aggressively enforcing supposedly unenforceable immigration laws, and Congress still has Trumpish Republican majorities. Illegal immigration has been reduced toward zero, and the political stars seem in alignment, at least theoretically, for reductions in legal immigration as well. 

But that seems unlikely. And not just because of timidity of lawmakers, but because the two writers take too mechanical a view of mass immigration. For people don’t uproot themselves and head for unfamiliar lands for just marginal economic gain. 

In my 2013 book, 

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