One other point that’s important to make here. It is incumbent on conservatives, both morally and politically, to express our solidarity with our less fortunate compatriots, whoever they might be: the less-educated, those who simply aren’t smart enough to make the kind of careers enjoyed by the elite, as well as ex-cons, recovering addicts, the handicapped, single mothers, et al. The Left beats us over the head with this, but offers as a solution their usual menu of socialist cowflop, like government-mandated minimum wages and government-run health care. Our responses are often sensible — welfare reform to focus on the working poor, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on, intended to encourage enterprise rather than dependence on the state. But we undo this when we flood the job markets of poor Americans with strangers from abroad, thus putting the government’s thumb on the scale on the side of employers. The social consequences of this are dire — low-skilled Americans see their wages drop, they are increasingly crowded out of the labor market altogether, and more of them end up in jail.

A tight immigration policy must be a central part of the Right’s expression of solidarity with poor Americans. It would be silly to assert that this would solve “all our problems,” but mass immigration is a significant contributor to the problems of the poor, and it’s something we actually know how to fix.