The Canadian Soccer Team Argument For Open Borders

My brother emailed me recently and said I should look at the roster of the Canadian men’s national soccer team, which will head to the World Cup this fall. It was, he said, an argument for Canada’s immigration policy. And so it is. Take a look. I’ve highlighted everyone who was either born somewhere else or whose parents were born somewhere else:

I mean, this is ridiculous. There are maybe six players whose families have been in Canada more than one generation. I say “maybe,” because it was hard to get background information on Kamal Miller and Tajon Buchanan—and I wouldn’t be surprised if either of those players were of, say, West Indian ancestry. So that number could be even lower!

I have to say, this list fills me with delight—and not just because I’m someone who thinks that western countries like Canada and the United States should take lots and lots of immigrants. It’s because this list proves a very simple and powerful point about what immigration does.

Herewith a short primer on the Canadian soccer team theory of open borders.

Canada is not historically a soccer power. Good Canadian athletes play hockey. In 2014, Canada’s soccer team was ranked 122nd in the world, ahead of Guinea-Bissau and behind the Central African Republic. To put it bluntly, we sucked. (Yes, we. Have you forgotten I’m Canadian?) But during the 1970s and 1980s, Canada let in lots of immigrants, many of whom happened to be from countries that care a lot about soccer. Those immigrants made sure that their children played lots of soccer growing up. Those children have now grown up. Some of them turned out to be really good soccer players, and—voila—Canada is now ranked among the top 40 teams in the world. In 2022, Canada will play in the World Cup for only the second time ever.

What’s the lesson? The great fear among many people who are against immigration is that letting in lots of newcomers is a zero-sum game: Immigrants will take jobs and opportunities from existing citizens. But the athletes who make up the suddenly formidable Canadian national team did not choose to play hockey, and take hockey jobs from hardworking farmers’ sons from rural Manitoba. They chose to exploit an opportunity that Canada had—up until that point—neglected.

I have given you one example. But I could easily give you many more. Immigrants tend to do new things. The Jewish immigrants who came from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century did not move to the Midwest and put the fourth-generation dairy farmers of Wisconsin out of business. They brought with them experience in the garment trades. And they used that experience to create what was by the early 20th century one of the most important industries in the United States.

The logic of this is straightforward: if you move somewhere new, where you don’t have any resources or connections to the existing power structure, of course you look to do something that no one else is doing. The anti-immigration fear is based on the notion that immigrants will invade the status quo and chase away the incumbents. But the reality of what immigration usually does is totally different. They don’t colonize the status quo. They change it. They take a land that had never thought about soccer before and turn it into a soccer powerbase.

I suppose there are people who don’t like this kind of change either, who want their country to remain frozen in amber—who want Canada to always be a country about hockey and not a country that is also about soccer. Fine. But we should at least be clear that these two fears—the fear of being replaced and the fear of change—are very different. And the second fear—that immigrants will disorder our existing hierarchy of institutions and preferences—is a lot easier to accommodate than the first fear, which is existential. Over time, I suspect, the hockey-firsters will start watching a few soccer games. And if Canada wins a few games at the World Cup, they might feel a twinge of pride. And before long, when they realize the hockey jobs are safe, they may grudgingly concede that the million new things immigrants have brought to Canada over the past two generations have made our country an infinitely more interesting place.

By the way, what team did Canada soundly defeat in the final round of the World Cup qualifiers in January? The United States! By a score of 2-0, on goals by Sam Adekugbe and Cyle Larin. Check out the roster. Adekugbe was born in England, of Nigerian descent, and Cyle Larin is of Jamaican descent. Actually, I take that back. Don’t check out the roster. Where either of them are from is irrelevant. They are Canadians now.

[Photo: GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images]