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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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The only way to change it would be to replace it with people who are America First i.e. don't care about the U.N. or Western Europe or NGO's opinions.

American voters, left or right, do not give two shits about what any of those think. What is important is how American voters regard themselves. Your average middle-class suburban conservative doesn't like immigrants, but they also won't like hearing stories about abusive migrant detention centers or, say, migrants killed up by mines as I've seen advocated for here and elsewhere. You have some hardcore anti-immigrant types who fantasize about CBP shooting asylum seekers, but they're a small minority compared to people who just hope a symbolic middle finger to would-be immigrants will overcome the overwhelming economic incentives and aren't prepared to resort to the inhumane measures or extraordinary costs required for effective immigration enforcement.

The global elites are more or less in agreement on this issue of immigration too and I think actually truly believe it, so they aren't going to change.

This is probably true, but not in the way nativists think. Western countries all share a similarity in that they have a highly educated, aging population that demand standards of living, social security, etc... be maintained (and actually increase) despite declining labor force participation, retirees that are living longer than ever, and a workforce with a disproportionate aversion to manual/menial labor.

The only country of note that has bitten the bullet on avoiding immigration despite the factors above is Japan, and they've paid for it with economic stagnation. Political elites have to try to square the circle, and they've calculated (almost certainly correctly) that even if they're nominally anti-immigrant that they can't afford the political and economic costs of actually cutting off immigration. Again, there might be a minority who is happy with that outcome, but your average voter isn't going to be swayed when the politicians tell them this is what they asked for. So instead you get the status quo - capricious, half-assed enforcement which gets more capricious or more half-assed depending on whether the party in power is notionally against or for immigration.