Public opinion polls indicate that many Americans think we have a serious immigration problem. Immigrants, especially illegal ones, are thought to be stealing our jobs, degrading our culture, adding to our tax burdens, and refusing to assimilate. What we should do to solve that problem usually entails further regulating the flow of people into the country and especially restricting immigration only to those who have the high-level job skills that the American economy is said to need. Secure the border and keep out the undesirable, low-skill masses.

Those notions encapsulate the conventional wisdom about immigration, but Global Crossings by Independent Institute senior fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa shows that they are badly mistaken. The author, a journalist who was born in Peru and who has worked on three continents, makes a compelling case that immigration is a natural economic phenomenon toward which laissez-faire is the best policy.

The book’s key insight is that the movement of people across political boundaries is no different from the movement of natural resources or finished products. When the demand for labor is stronger in another country, some people will weigh the costs against the expected benefits and migrate from their native land if doing so seems likely to improve their standard of living. Those who make that calculation are rarely driven to leave by desperate poverty, but instead are motivated by a “get ahead” outlook. And if the advantages of working in the foreign country decline, those people often migrate back. We’ve seen that in recent years, as the strong flow of migrants from Mexico and Central America that prevailed for much of the last two decades has slowed to a trickle as the U.S. economy has gone stagnant.

Like other government interferences with economic phenomena, regulations that restrict or prevent the movement of people create far more problems than they solve—if they solve any problems at all. After reading this book, the arguments that immigration is creating economic and social problems for America seem to amount to nothing more than narrow-minded griping.

Xenophobia / To dispel the idea that there is anything unique about America’s current squabbles, the first part of the book focuses on the history of immigration. “Migration has been happening,” Vargas Llosa writes, “in varying forms, for millennia, but it still elicits primal fear and distrust, and not just on the part of the ‘receiving’ country; communities from which people migrate often disapprove … and consider it treacherous.” But immigrants, he shows, have almost always enriched the nation to which they move, through work, cultural infusions, and especially entrepreneurship. That is true even when the immigrants come from nations with similar cultural roots—for example, the influence that cooks from Peru and taxi drivers from Ecuador have in Spain. The book abounds with interesting tidbits from the author’s extensive travels.

It is also true that throughout history, immigrants have usually aroused distrust and hatred. In ancient Greece, outsiders were permitted to live in Athens, pay taxes, and (if need be) fight for it—but they could not become citizens. In modern times, some European nations, especially France, have struggled with the influx of unpopular, culturally different people from former colonies and other nations. Although many natives despise these newcomers for the cultural damage they will supposedly do, the immigrants nevertheless work, produce, and gradually fit in.

Immigrant contributions / Knowing that most of his readers will be Americans, Vargas Llosa devotes much of his effort to responding to the arguments that immigration opponents are making here. According to the opponents’ narrative, in the 19th century U.S. immigrants were hard-working people who strove to assimilate into society. Today’s immigrants, however, are more interested in collecting government benefits than working (but when they do work, they have the temerity to take “our” jobs) and are not much interested in assimilating. Accordingly, immigration opponents conclude, U.S. policy must change so that we admit only immigrants who have skills that are in short supply—engineers for example. Such people will add to the U.S. economy rather than impose costs, and they will readily assimilate.

Vargas Llosa counters those claims by pointing out that today’s immigrants are little different from those of a century or more ago, and argues that the change we should make in our immigration policy is toward much greater freedom. With respect to work and welfare, he shows that very few immigrants do not work and that they are only slightly more of a welfare and public-services burden than “real” Americans are. True, immigrants are more apt to require emergency room medical care and Congress does appropriate around $250 million annually for the states to cover the cost of such treatment. Also, children of immigrants contribute substantially to public education costs, at least in some areas. Hearing about those and other costs associated with immigration, the nativists quickly demand that we secure the border and deport all the illegals.

That’s superficial thinking, Vargas Llosa contends, for three reasons: First, immigrants on the whole contribute more to the nation’s economy than they consume. Second, they save more than natives (“a habit sorely lacking in the country” he writes). Third, immigrants usually arrive in their most productive working years, a benefit for a country with an aging population with great numbers of people on the verge of retirement.

Moreover, immigrants have been and remain a tremendous source of entrepreneurship. They begin and often expand businesses that provide employment for many thousands of workers, most of whom are not immigrants. While many young Americans grow up with an entitlement mentality that makes the difficult work of starting a business from scratch almost unthinkable, that mindset is absent in immigrants. Thus, immigration helps to energize America with fresh injections of people who are creative and ambitious. We need that.

In sum, the case against immigration is based on a fixation with its short-run costs while overlooking both the immediate and long-run benefits.

Fitting in / What about cultural assimilation? Vargas Llosa writes that the “good old days” were not really as good as they are portrayed. Immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century were often slow to learn English, intermarry, and “fit in.” The same complaints we hear today, such as the inconvenience of large pockets where the immigrants’ native language predominates, were voiced in the past. (The inability to speak German was a considerable handicap in many towns and cities in the Midwest until the early 20th century.) More to the point, however, it simply is not true that today’s immigrants are “worse” when it comes to assimilation than were the immigrants of yesteryear. Data show that they learn English and intermarry at about the same rates as in the past.

The case against immigration is based on a fixation with short-run costs while overlooking both the intermediate and long-run benefits.

To the minor extent that present-day immigrants may be slower to assimilate, Vargas Llosa argues that our political obsession with multiculturalism is to blame. Among other statutes and regulations at fault, he particularly criticizes the Bilingual Education Act of 1967, which, he writes, “gave rise to policies that in time would lead many Americans to resent immigrants and view minorities as invasive.” As is so often the case, federal efforts meant to help minority groups have been counterproductive. Assimilation used to be accelerated by employer insistence on using English while on the job, but today that can lead to trouble with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. If the anti-immigration crowd wants to complain, it should complain about our panoply of multicultural policies rather than about immigration.

Opening borders / In the book’s closing chapters, Vargas Llosa sketches an optimistic argument that the ancient tribal fears that many people still harbor today against those who are “different” will give way to open minds, open borders, and a more harmonious world. There may come a time in humankind’s evolution, he writes, “when deeply ingrained ideas about nationhood and the nation state, as well as the instinctive discomfort many people feel towards outsiders, will cede their place to more open, flexible, and globalized ideas of human existence, and less defensive attitudes.” That is a striking vision, but the author does not believe it is mere wishful thinking. International trends, he maintains, are moving in that direction.

We already have substantially free flows of goods across borders and quite a few nations—the United States being an exception—have been moving toward a freer flow of people as well. Perhaps, Vargas Llosa suggests, a consequence of all the global crossing may be the dissolution of national bonds in favor of “bonds of economic involvement, social networks, and cultural identities.” What if, as he puts it, “credo” comes to trump nationality?

If the movement of people across national borders brings that about, we would realize enormous benefits besides improved economic growth. It would dampen the dry kindling of nationalism that so often flares up into violent conflict. Demagogues have long exploited what Vargas Llosa calls “the fortress view of nationhood” to cement their hold on power, even at the cost of war. His optimistic view is that we will see less of that as people move more freely across national borders. Adam Smith famously remarked, “If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.” Our author takes that observation a step further: if goods and people cross borders, soldiers won’t. Let’s hope he’s right.

Global Crossings is, in my view, one of the two best books available on immigration. (The other is Philippe Legrain’s Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.) Read both and you’ll come away with a strong conviction that the free movement of people is just as vital to economic health as is the free movement of resources, ideas, and goods.