In their thoughtful and original analysis of the immigration problem, Jules Coleman and Sarah Harding (Chapter 2, this volume) fail to take sufficient notice of the very deep emotions on the dark underside of immigration policy. One would not know from reading their account that the problem is politically situated in a world increasingly dominated by huge increases in population, rapidly dwindling resources, and ethnic hatred. The politics of immigration are driven by fear and selfishness, by prejudice and desperation.

A satisfactory analysis of the immigration problem must be grounded in this politics. It must incorporate political reality in two separate ways. First, it must evaluate the moral status of the racial, ethnic, and cultural antipathy that animates the immigration debate. Second, even if this antipathy is not morally defensible, the analysis must nonetheless take the fact of its existence into account in formulating a real-world, second-best solution to the immigration problem.