Antje Ellermann: What Drives a Country’s Openness to Immigration

“Interest group pressure typically opens up immigration.”

As the United States Congress grapples with immigration issues again, as though the word again need no longer be added, a scholar on immigration recently published a comparison of four countries that looked at why immigration debates are vastly different in four seemingly similar countries—the United States, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland.

As an immigrant herself, Dr. Antje Ellermann was the person to reach out to in an attempt to come to some understanding on this subject. She is an associate professor of political science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is the director of the school’s Centre for Migration Studies.

I sat down with her, and what began as a serious policy discussion turned almost casually and accidentally into perhaps the true heart of the matter—the personal question: Where do we, or more accurately, where do I belong?

The answers were both revealing and disturbing.

Ellermann now lives in Canada, but “I come from Germany’s Texas,” she said as we began.