Our morally abhorrent, exclusionist immigration regime is grounded — supposedly — in practical considerations. Although they don’t account for much of the xenophobia in play, we do hear them invoked. The presumption is that we live in the equivalent of a foraging economy, like something out of The Walking Dead, where resources are not just scarce, but constantly diminishing. More people means less food for everybody else. Starvation engenders conflict.

The reality is that more people enhance our all-around economic potential. Look at it this way: in 2017 nearly four million new humans came to the US. They arrived bereft of resources or marketable skills, and they will remain an economic burden for years. I’m referring, of course, to the nation’s newborns.

Eventually these toddlers will grow up to be productive workers, as well as consumers. A bunch will be geniuses and win Nobel Prizes. Some will eclipse the artistic achievements of even a Kanye West. Measures of the nation’s income will duly expand to reflect their contributions. Not incidentally, for many now in their forties and fifties, they will also contribute to our pay-as-you-go social insurance system, and in particular to the retirement incomes of today’s Gen-whatever. It has ever been thus.