Zadekpedia

Ask BobAsk a question of every episode, 2009–2023 — answers cite the minute

Alex Nowrasteh

8 min read

Alex Nowrasteh is an immigration policy specialist at the Cato Institute and a frequent guest on The Bob Zadek Show. Across episodes spanning roughly a decade, he and host Bob Zadek discussed the economics of immigration, immigrant criminality, welfare, and the political history of American immigration law. Zadek introduced him in 2019 as an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, noting that Nowrasteh had appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, and the Boston Globe, and had “pushed around Tucker Carlson on Tucker Carlson’s own show” What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). By 2023, Zadek described Nowrasteh as having co-authored the book Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

The economic case

In the 2019 episode, Nowrasteh laid out the economic facts as he saw them. Immigrants, he said, make up about 13.5% of the U.S. population and about 16% of the workforce, so they are more likely to work than native-born Americans, and they boost GDP by somewhere around 12 to 15%. He said no economist, even the most anti-immigrant, disagrees with those points; the only real dispute concerns wage effects on native-born Americans What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

On wages, Nowrasteh cited Harvard University economist George Borjas, whom he called probably the most skeptical economist of the benefits of immigration. Borjas found that from 1990 to 2010, the roughly 30 million immigrants who came to the U.S. lowered wages of native-born high school dropouts by about 1.7%, while raising the wages of every other group of Americans by about 1% or so overall. On the other side, economists Giovanni Peri and Gianmarco Ottaviano found that over the same period immigrants raised the wages of native-born Americans by about six-tenths of 1%. Nowrasteh characterized the differences as very small, with the most negative finding in the peer-reviewed literature being the 1.7% figure for high school dropouts, outweighed by wage benefits to other native-born Americans What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

Crime and terrorism

Nowrasteh argued that the foreign-born population in the United States is, as a percentage of its population, less than half as likely to be incarcerated as native-born Americans. Addressing the counterargument that illegal immigrants are more criminal, he cited Texas as the exception among states in tracking conviction and incarceration rates by immigration status. There, he said, illegal immigrants are about half as likely to be convicted of a crime as native-born Americans, and legal immigrants about 70% less likely. He described the claim that immigrants commit disproportionate crime as a myth, and attributed its persistence partly to media attention on cases such as the murders of Mollie Tibbetts in Iowa and Kate Steinle in San Francisco in 2015 What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

On terrorism, Nowrasteh gave the annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil committed by a foreign-born person as 1 in 3.8 million per year from 1975 through the end of 2017, compared with an annual chance of being murdered in a homicide of about 1 in 14,000 per year over that period. He advised listeners to calm down about the risk and view it as very small What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

Keyhole solutions

Nowrasteh described targeted fixes for the downsides of more open immigration as “keyhole solutions,” by analogy to keyhole surgery: less invasive, less likely to lead to death, and a lower-cost way of achieving a good outcome. He said many of his conservative friends accept such arguments on other issues, such as gun control, where they propose restrictions on violent felons or the mentally ill rather than banning all firearms, and he wanted them to embrace the same approach on immigration What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

Zadek framed the same idea as building a wall around welfare rather than a wall around the country, and argued that even if open borders had some negative consequences, those could be addressed through legislation and compassion rather than by closing the border. He said that only after exhausting the skill to fix the problems of open borders should the borders be closed, and that the country is nowhere near that point What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).

The legalism fallacy and the history of immigration law

In the 2023 episode, Zadek introduced the “legalism fallacy” as the subject, and the two discussed the historical roots of American immigration law, including naturalization, the U.S. Constitution, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Zadek described the current regulatory system as having evolved from racial animosity into a complex, restrictive system that differs fundamentally from other areas of American law American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

Zadek also recounted a personal history with Nowrasteh: at his first visit to a Cato retreat, at the Thursday night opening dinner, Cato seated him next to Nowrasteh, and the two had been friends and colleagues since. Nowrasteh said he was glad the planners of that event sat them next to each other American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

The “illegal” versus “immigration” question

A recurring frame across episodes is Zadek’s question of which part of the phrase “illegal immigration” opponents actually oppose. In 2016 he posed it as a follow-up to try with friends: if the United States passed a law putting immigration back to the 1880s, so that there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant, would opponents then be done with the issue? He said the answer is invariably “not quite,” suggesting the opposition is far more to the immigrant part than the illegal part Alex Nowrasteh: How Prop. 187 Turned California Blue (2016). In 2019 he repeated the framing, saying he hates illegal immigration and that most Americans polled oppose it, but that if all or almost all immigration were made legal, he feared opponents would not be placated What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019). In 2023 he opened the conversation the same way, saying that irrespective of one’s position on immigration everyone seems opposed to illegal immigration, and that the real conversation starts with whether a person would be content if all immigration were legal American anxiety about immigration is unwarranted. Here’s why. (2023).

Across episodes: the assimilation argument

The 2013 episode “Let Them All In” touches the topic of assimilation and American exceptionalism. Zadek argued that the United States invented the product of peaceful assimilation and that a policy that lets them all in is the only policy that makes sense, and he rejected the argument that immigrants destroy American culture on the grounds that American culture is an accumulation of cultures, with no purely American culture ever existing. Nowrasteh began to list the main arguments of opponents of open borders, saying some argue immigrants will destroy our culture and another argument is that they are going to—at which point Zadek paused him to take the arguments one at a time before a break, and the excerpt ends there Let Them All In (2013). The later episodes do not return to the assimilation question in the excerpts provided; the 2016, 2019, and 2023 episodes instead take up the “illegal” versus “immigration” framing, the economics, crime, and the legalism fallacy. The excerpts show no development of the assimilation argument between 2013 and the later episodes.

What the sources do not cover

The excerpts do not state Nowrasteh’s educational background, the date he joined the Cato Institute, or his title at any time other than as given by Zadek in each episode. They do not describe the contents or holdings of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Proposition 187, or any court case, beyond Zadek’s characterization of the legalism fallacy and the historical roots of immigration law. They do not give the outcome of the 2013 discussion of assimilation arguments, which breaks off mid-sentence. No excerpt states where Nowrasteh was born, where he lives, or what he did before his work at Cato.

Episodes

8 appearances, 2013–2023.

Backlinks