> That certainly might be the case for the first couple of generations.
But in that couple of generations, they’ve already massively changed the country, e.g., with Italian immigration to the US in the 20th century. Mass immigration completely changed northern Virginia where I grew up. Maybe 100 years from now those people will mix and form a new amalgam. But the place I liked doesn’t exist anymore, and the place it is now I don’t like so much—just as a matter of cultural preference. Why isn’t that a perfectly reasonable basis for opposing immigration?
> Entropy presupposes no external input of energy or information, doesn't it? Immigration can provide both.
If the energy input is used to organize rather than disorganize, sure. But immigration is like applying heat to an ice sculpture. Taking something organized and subjecting it to random forces.
> But the place I liked doesn’t exist anymore, and the place it is now I don’t like so much—just as a matter of cultural preference. Why isn’t that a perfectly reasonable basis for opposing immigration?
Each of us certainly has our cultural preferences. Your own preference — in essence, your value-weighting of the various factors in play – is by no means irrational. But we can question whether you've realistically assessed the likely cost and effort required to restrict global migration in today's world. (That's why in a previous comment I cited Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest about the well-intentioned but, ultimately, catastrophically-naïve policy decisions that got the U.S. into Vietnam in the 1960s.)
If King Canute were alive today, he'd likely smile knowingly at our conundrum; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide. "The episode is frequently alluded to in contexts where the futility of 'trying to stop the tide' of an inexorable event is pointed out, but usually misrepresenting Canute as believing he had supernatural powers, when Huntingdon's story in fact relates the opposite."
But in that couple of generations, they’ve already massively changed the country, e.g., with Italian immigration to the US in the 20th century. Mass immigration completely changed northern Virginia where I grew up. Maybe 100 years from now those people will mix and form a new amalgam. But the place I liked doesn’t exist anymore, and the place it is now I don’t like so much—just as a matter of cultural preference. Why isn’t that a perfectly reasonable basis for opposing immigration?
> Entropy presupposes no external input of energy or information, doesn't it? Immigration can provide both.
If the energy input is used to organize rather than disorganize, sure. But immigration is like applying heat to an ice sculpture. Taking something organized and subjecting it to random forces.