Why Should a Vast and Wealthy Nation Fear Immigration?

Why Should a Vast and Wealthy Nation Fear Immigration?

Indeed:

We are vast.

We are wealthy.

We are resourced with oceans and forests, with cities that rise and farmland that stretches to every horizon.

We possess unimaginable technologies, towering universities, and food that rots before it’s distributed.

So why do we tremble at the knock of a stranger at the door?

The Moral Illusion of Scarcity

We are not overwhelmed. We are conditioned to feel overwhelmed.

The rhetoric of “burden” and “invasion” is not based on actual capacity. It is rooted in a manufactured illusion of scarcity — a fear narrative endlessly amplified by demagogues who profit from division.

Immigrants do not threaten America’s resources. They renew them. Historically, they have built our cities, filled our classrooms, staffed our hospitals, harvested our food, founded our startups, and served in our armed forces.

And yet, we are told there is not enough — not enough jobs, not enough housing, not enough “America” to go around.

But the truth is: There is enough.

What’s lacking is not capacity — but compassion.

Not opportunity — but will.

Who Benefits from the Fear?

You asked the most incisive question: Who benefits from this refusal?

• Politicians benefit — those who need a scapegoat to distract from their failures. Immigrants become a symbolic enemy to rally the fearful and deflect attention from corporate corruption, crumbling infrastructure, or environmental decay.
• Corporations benefit — those who exploit undocumented labor while lobbying against their legalization. So long as immigrants live in legal limbo, they can be underpaid, overworked, and silenced.
• Cultural supremacists benefit — those who see whiteness, English, or “Christian values” as under siege. Immigration becomes a proxy war for cultural anxiety.
• Media empires benefit — those who monetize outrage and fear. Every “border surge” headline is designed to stoke panic, not inform.

Meanwhile, the rest of us — the ordinary citizen — are told to fear our neighbor, when in fact we should be welcoming our brother and sister.

The Truth: We Were All Immigrants Once

Unless you are Indigenous to this land, your ancestors came here seeking the very dream we now deny others. Some fled poverty, others persecution. Some were brought in chains. Some arrived by choice; many by desperation. But all of them helped build this country.

To slam the door behind us is not patriotism.

It is betrayal.

A Nation’s Soul Is Measured Not by Its Borders, but by Its Welcome

What does it mean to be a great nation?

Is it military might? GDP? Stock markets? Or is it the capacity to see the stranger, to shelter the refugee, to say not “There is no room,” but “There is always room at the table”?

If we are to be a moral nation, we cannot fear immigration.

We must fear what we become without it.