What if the real problem with immigration has nothing to do with what most people think, not "third worldism," not cultural change, not any of the usual explanations? What if it's something far more basic, and far more fixable: economics?
That is the case made, decades ago, by the world-renowned free-market economist Milton Friedman. Friedman's argument wasn't that immigration itself was the problem. It was that immigration and the welfare state cannot coexist, for when they do, immigration stops being a source of mutual benefit and becomes a fight over a fixed economic pie.
“If people immigrate under circumstances where they are all promised a prorated share of the pot, then free immigration would mean a reduction of everybody to the same uniform level.”
— The Redheaded libertarian (@TRHLofficial) August 19, 2025
-Milton Friedman on why you cannot have free immigration in a welfare state pic.twitter.com/V1qfxB7IU7
"I've always been amused by a kind of a paradox," Friedman said during his 1978 speech, "What is America?" "Suppose you go around and ask people, the United States, as you know, before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores, and if he landed on Ellis Island, he was an immigrant. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? You will find hardly a soul who will say it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. But then I suppose I say to the same people, but now what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration? Oh, no, they'll say we couldn't possibly have free immigration today."
While the concerns of the late 20th century centered on economics, today they center on culture. But what if the two were never truly separate? What if they are, in fact, intrinsically linked?
There may be an influx of "third-world" immigrants arriving in the United States with no real love for this country, but they are drawn not by what the U.S. represents to them but by the benefits it can provide. Had there been no welfare programs, no government benefits for them to access, many might never have made the journey in the first place.
As Friedman explained, the immigrants who crossed an ocean in the early 20th century did so because they believed they could work hard and succeed on their own merit; nothing was guaranteed to them, so only those willing to bet on themselves came at all. That is no longer the case today, as many now arrive not to chase an American Dream built on effort, but to collect entitlements. Strip away those government services, and a great many if not all of those same people would simply stop coming.
"If you have free immigration in the way in which we had it before 1914, everybody benefited," Friedman said. "The people who were here benefited, the people who came benefited, because nobody would come unless he or his family thought he would do better here than he would elsewhere. And the new immigrants provided additional resources, provided additional possibilities for the people already here, so everybody could mutually benefit."
"But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rate, a share of the pot, to take the extreme example, or even to a low level of the pot, then the effect of that situation is that free immigration would mean a reduction of everybody to the same uniform level."
Friedman might have understood what much of today's immigration debate misses. The argument was never really about who is arriving at our doorstep; it was about what we've placed on the other side of it. It's a reframe most of today's debate never quite reaches.
Perhaps the better question was the one Friedman was already asking half a century ago: not who should be let in, but what happens to a nation once arrival requires nothing of the people who arrive. Cut off the programs that distort who chooses to walk through it, and the "immigration problem" will start to solve itself. Not through simple restriction, but through the free market doing what it has always done best: rewarding merit and effort.