Lea Ypi and I share a conviction that immigration should be free. We are bothered by the demonization of immigrants and the eagerness of governments everywhere to make it harder for people to move—and by their readiness to detain, deport, control, and generally harass people when they are guilty of little more than trying to make a better life for themselves. We agree that the normalizing of the hostility to immigration, both in policy and in public discourse, is something to be deplored. We are both skeptical about the distinction between legal and “illegal” immigration. And we agree that the ideal of membership is greatly overrated—a view I have defended at length elsewhere. Where we diverge is on the question of the sources of hostility to immigration. I will focus here on our differences rather than our agreements since these are more interesting and, perhaps, more important.

These differences are substantial. Ypi believes that responsibility for anti-immigration sentiment today is best explained by a combination of philosophical error, unjust political and economic institutions, and (for want of a better term) ideological domination. The error was to turn away from Enlightenment universalism; the failed institutions are capitalism and liberal democracy; and the ideological culprit appears in the form of “the right,” which has tricked or frightened “the left” into adopting its anti-immigration stance and its anti-immigrant rhetoric. All these views are mistaken. Ypi also believes that the problem that lies at the heart of all this is not cultural but class conflict. Here, I think she is only half wrong, but wrong all the same.

On the thesis that there has been a turning away from Enlightenment universalism, which means above all a commitment to freedom and equality, I would say that that ideal has only ever had limited appeal and been imperfectly realized. It is an ideal to which I subscribe but I also reckon it to be a minority view globally, even as the idea itself has worked its way into most global institutions, from the United Nations to international regimes (such as the Refugee Convention) to rights declarations of all kinds, to agreements on commerce, cultural exchange and indeed, the movement of people. We live in a liberal international order within which we also find illiberal regimes as well as liberal regimes that behave, from time to time, in highly illiberal ways. The problem is not the abandoning of Enlightenment ideals but their all too frequent dereliction in practice under the pressure of events and the activism of particular individuals and interests. It never hurts to be reminded of the importance of freedom and equality, and looking to strengthen our commitment to these values is only to be welcomed. But for the reasons why anti-immigrant sentiment is riding high we must look elsewhere.

One all-purpose culprit that can always be (and frequently is) trotted out is capitalism. And so Ypi drags the poor fellow out of hiding once again and lines him up before judge and jury like, well, an immigrant, ready to be condemned before the defense has had a chance to gather its papers. The problem with this particular culprit, however, is that his identity is always a mystery. His enemies attribute to him every sin imaginable while his most earnest defenders protest that he is an angel. There is no agreement on who or what he is. But perhaps on this much we can agree: if he is everywhere, and so much can be explained by appeal to this overarching set of economic arrangements that has persisted over, say, 250 years, it is not much use pointing to this as an explanation for anything. It’s like explaining a plane crash by pointing to the insidious (not to say, nefarious) workings of gravity. Guilty as charged—but so what? Can we not do better?

Yet if we are to do better, surely, we need a counterfactual. What is the type of economic system, or epoch, that supplies a helpful point of comparison—ideally, an example that exists outside the imagination? We wait for an answer with bated breath, like an asylum-seeker hoping his number will be called, but anticipating disappointment. We can debate the merits of reforms proposed under the Washington Consensus—which were, after all, advanced to deal with real economic crises in developing countries whose fiscal and monetary policies were the sources of their problems—but even if these policies “often” had deleterious effects, as Ypi says, this is not enough to suggest that capitalism is the problem. Over the years, capitalist regimes have welcomed immigrants with open arms and open borders, confined them in place and refused to allow them to leave until the end of the harvest, or erected fences and walls to keep them out. As has every other kind of economic system we know of. And besides, people try to migrate for many reasons, not just because of poverty.

Dismissing the usual (and now, weary) suspect till next he’s needed, we should consider the liberal democratic state, which Ypi rightly says has never lived up to its promise. Democracy, she believes, should be “a political space of contestation, argument, and collective deliberation in which all . . . are given a voice.” Thus conceived, she avers, it “historically . . . went hand in hand with an expansive understanding of citizenship,” understood as “an active process through which oppressed agents struggled for ever-greater political representation.” There is some truth in the idea that this was an expectation shared by many. Unfortunately, it is one among many expectations destined always to be disappointed. It would be best if such expectations were lowered. The world is run by elites, and democracy sometimes supplies a useful check on them when circumstances permit and counter-elites are determined and canny. But democracy is rarely a friend to the immigrant, who will often be better off relying less on the prejudices of the majority than on the self-interest of rulers, who will happily re-present the preferences of the general public as and when it suits them.

Here the ideological stripe of the elite does not much matter, but Ypi takes the view that the anti-immigrant stance is a creation of “the right,” while “the left” have simply taken a leaf out of their opponents’ book in a misguided attempt to win power. But history tells a very different story. The left, whether in the United States, Britain, Europe, or Australia, has at best an indifferent record. Some of the harshest anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy can be found on the American left in the Progressive Era, when racist and eugenic theories were combined with economic grumbles to try to keep people out. The British Labour Party’s record was no better in the early twentieth century or in the late 1960s when, while in office, it passed legislation to control immigration from newly independent colonies—over the objections of many MPs, including members of the Conservative Party. What drives policy is not ideology but fear of electoral failure.

There are also other forces at work that drive these fears. The economic and humanitarian disaster that is the outcome of Venezuela’s socialist experiment under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, for example, has seen outward migration further facilitated by agents of Vladimir Putin’s state, which has also been actively weaponizing immigration to Europe from Syria and several countries in Africa in a deliberate effort to destabilize Western governments. By spreading misinformation on social media about crimes allegedly committed by immigrants, the Russian regime has moreover worked to encourage a fear of foreigners, abetting the efforts of domestic anti-immigrant activists.

Ypi is right to say that hostility to immigrants and immigration is not a reflection of deep cultural conflicts. This is not to suggest that differences matter not. Communities can be wary of people moving in from the next county or state, whether it is because they look and sound different or because they disrupt the normal course of life. People in rural Idaho and Montana have been grumbling about wealthy Californians coming over and pushing up property prices, as have villagers in parts of the UK complained about Londoners buying second homes. But sooner or later, such differences are usually resolved—even cultural differences, unless poor policy works against it.

But class conflict does not have any role to play in an explanation of immigration policy or sentiment. Or at least, a plausible story about it has yet to be advanced. Perhaps this is because the idea of class solidarity—and particularly of international class solidarity—is simply a bit of romantic fiction. If “native workers now see more common cause with their managers than with foreign workers laboring under similar conditions,” as Ypi observes, does that fact not suggest precisely this?

So let us agree to work to make our borders more open and immigrants more welcome. Let us remind our fellow citizens about the importance of liberal equality and freedom. And leave it at that.