Robotaxis have become a potent symbol of the rise of artificial intelligence. To techno-optimists, robotaxis are an unalloyed good, a harbinger of a more productive and prosperous future. To anti-capitalists, they represent the supposed hubris of Silicon Valley technologists, who are said to be indifferent to the labor-displacing impact of automation. Less discussed is what they might mean for the politics of immigration.
Consider the protests against ICE immigration raids that broke out earlier this month in Los Angeles. In the midst of the civil violence that ensued, violent radicals vandalized and torched Waymos, the driverless for-hire vehicles that have become a familiar presence in L.A. and a number of other Sunbelt cities. Images of burning autonomous vehicles soon spread across social media. It’s easy to see why these images have proven so resonant, especially on the left.
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To Donald Trump’s critics, mass deportations aren’t just a threat to migrants and their families—they damage the civic and economic fabric of Los Angeles and other urban centers, where unauthorized workers have long played a substantial role in the labor market, not least as for-hire drivers and deliveristas.
But robotaxis point to a future where many of the strenuous, repetitive, and even dangerous low-wage jobs now done by low-skill workers could instead be done by intelligent machines. These robots won’t need subsidized medical care, housing, or public assistance, and they won’t go on strike for higher wages or protest ICE immigration raids.
By burning Waymos, the L.A. vandals raised a discomfiting question: If the classic case for openness to low-skill immigration is that newcomers do the jobs that Americans won’t do, what happens when robots can do them instead?
In 2018, I wrote a short book on the immigration wars that proved too restrictionist for the open-borders partisans and too pro-immigration for hardcore restrictionists. Rather than argue that immigration necessarily lowers native wages—I don’t believe that’s true—I pointed out that employers adapt to the workforce they have at hand. If labor market regulations are stringent, minimum wages are high, and low-skilled labor is scarce, employers will be desperate for driverless trucks, self-checkout kiosks, and other forms of labor-saving automation. If low-skilled labor is abundant and labor standards are lax, by contrast, you can expect labor-intensive business models to flourish as employers embrace capital-saving innovation.
Most modern market societies land somewhere between these extremes, and it’s not obvious that there is a universally applicable formula. The choice between hermetically sealing borders and recruiting vast armies of guestworkers is less about GDP than it is about values and sensibilities. Denmark and Singapore, for example, have very different approaches to immigrant admissions, which is exactly what you’d expect from such different societies. Tell me the kind of country you want—inclusive or exclusive, competitive or egalitarian—and I’ll tell you the kind of immigration system that follows.
The real case for low-skill immigration in the age of Waymo isn’t economic, as there is more than one way to build a prosperous modern economy. Rather, it is the cosmopolitan conviction that borders are morally arbitrary.
Partisans of settler colonial theory, for example, have rallied around the notion that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” That is, if the entity known as the United States has no legitimate claim to sovereignty over “Turtle Island,” it has no right to expel those it deems noncitizens. Others on the far left make the dubious claim that U.S. imperialism is responsible for poverty in the Global South and that we therefore have a moral obligation to open our borders to economic migrants as a form of reparations.
Not all cosmopolitan arguments are grounded in radical anti-capitalism. Lant Pritchett, a renowned development economist, has made the subtler argument that labor-saving innovation in the world’s rich market societies is morally obtuse. The reason Silicon Valley invests so heavily in technologies that automate low-skill tasks, according to Pritchett, is that immigration restrictions in the world’s rich market democracies keep out millions of willing workers from the Global South. Yet these workers would be much better off as low-wage workers in Cincinnati than they’d be in Senegal.
The challenge for the cosmopolitans, however, is that most Cincinnatians see things differently. Even if we were to stipulate that a large influx of Senegalese would leave Cincinnatians no worse off when it comes to wages and wealth attainment, people care about other things as well: congestion, strain on social services, the built environment, and the cultural character of their neighborhoods. To the arch-cosmopolitan, this instinctive aversion to change is a moral failing. To the rest of us, it is a natural impulse that deserves a modicum of respect.
Immigration has greatly enriched American life, and skilled immigration in particular has been an enormous economic boon to the U.S. In addition to fueling innovation, skilled immigrants tend to pay much more in taxes than they receive in public benefits, especially when they arrive in the U.S. when they’re young. I’m convinced that the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce skilled inflows will exact a heavy toll on our ability to grow.
But the case for low-skilled immigration is more ambiguous. Though there is considerable evidence that low-skilled immigrant workers complement their native counterparts, this is a much easier case to make for, say, childcare workers, than for those taking on more easily automatable tasks.
Moreover, it is important to remember that immigrants are more than just workers. They’re human beings with wants and needs, identities and allegiances, standards and expectations, all of which change over time. Young newcomers who are content living without health insurance in illegal basement dwellings, provided they can send remittances back home, often become part of the older population that needs Medicaid, SNAP, and subsidized housing to make ends meet.
Last week, Waymo announced that it was hoping to bring its robotaxi service to New York City. Having successfully tested driverless for-hire service in a number of Sunbelt cities, the company seems confident that its robotaxis can take on the daunting technical challenge of operating in the five boroughs.
Waymo’s more formidable challenge, however, will be convincing state lawmakers to lift their requirement that robotaxis operate with a safety driver at the wheel—a rule that effectively precludes the company’s business model. Will Waymo and its allies be able to pull this off? Not if the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and other organizations that claim to speak for tens of thousands of immigrant drivers have any say in the matter.
In the end, I suspect that Waymo and its many robotaxi competitors will win out and that labor markets will eventually adjust. But getting there will likely prove a long and painful journey, and I fear that we’ll see more riots along the way.
Photo by Nick Ut/Getty Images
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