The debate around immigration has long centered on its economic costs and benefits. Much of the populist concern has focused on low-skilled immigrants, those who consume more in public services than they contribute in taxes, placing a fiscal burden on the host country. This framing, while not without merit, misses a more consequential and politically thorny dimension of the immigration question: the influence of high-skilled, cognitively capable immigrant groups who, despite their productivity, can reshape the societies that receive them in ways that are not always in the interest of the native population.
Intelligence and organizational capacity are not evenly distributed across immigrant groups. Immigrants from certain non-Western countries, particularly from South and East Asia, tend to bring not only technical skills but something more potent: the ability to build institutions, coordinate collective action, and scale networks of mutual benefit. These are the skills that allow a group to move from individual success to collective power.
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