>It's a tiny risk because it's a small fraction of an already tiny proportion of the population. Increasing that proportion of the population will lead to a higher level of risk. We've already seen what that looks like in Europe, and that all began to accelerate rather quickly in the last few years. It's very rational to not want that to happen here as well.

You can't compare Europe's problems with assimilating immigrants to ours. But if you keep alienating immigrants, you will make them feel like outsiders, and then you will face more of the kinds of problems Europe has.

>While that makes some amount of sense, it also leads to chain migration and ultimately displaces more of the native population economically AND politically. We can't ignore that the one side that supports increased immigration is the side that will ultimately benefit from having their children as voters.

When the Chinese came to America, they worked jobs people here didn't want, including taking over cotton picking in the South after slavery was banned, and running stores that catered to African Americans under Jim Crow. They did dangerous work on the railroads that white Americans didn't want to do.

You're running a slippery slope argument that justifies a harsh stance now when none is justified. "They could start raping our women if we let a lot more in" We've seen this played out time and time again.

At the same time conservative politics plays the dog whistle game with immigration, claiming immigrants are putting them out of work, they're also opposing efforts to make native born Americans more competitive, like expanded educational opportunity, access to daycare, and other investments in human capital.

Why was "chained immigration" no problem when it was Western Europeans, but all of a sudden, it's a problem if you have yellow or brown skin? And given the immense amount of value that generations of immigrants have brought to this country, why should I fear "chained immigration"?

>For what it's worth, I had no interest in immigration issues at all until I was bombarded with how evil it was to be against any form of immigration. Voters have the right to an opinion on these issues, and "that's racist" isn't going to stop them anymore.

Well, it's bad to be against it when you have fallacious reasons, by ballooning up the dangers of it and buying into nationalist fervor. There's a reason why the middle class got stagnated over the last 40 years, and it has nothing to do with immigration. The same thing happened in Japan which has some of the most protectionist immigration policies you can think of.

People got used to the low hanging fruit of easy GDP growth that can from a rapid switchover from agricultural to industrial society, and now with growth tapering off to ~2% GDP all over the developed world, everyone is looking for something to blame, and dark political forces all over are trying to blame immigrants. Here it's the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Asians. In Britain, it was the Polish. In Germany, it was the Jews (and not the harsh penalties imposed by WWI on Germany).

Find someone to blame, usually a foreigner.

In the meantime, we aren't making the investments we need in infrastructure, in education, in health, in early childhood -- because those require sacrifice.

Instead, take the easy route: sacrifice these other people.