There's a narrative in the US/UK that low-skilled immigrants are important because they do the jobs locals don't want to do (cleaning, taxi-driver, barista, food-serving, lawn-mowing, etc). As a second generation immigrant (my parents both independently moved to the UK in their teens/20’s), I always found this an awkward, transactional framing, rooted only in economic utility rather in any consideration of broader socio-cultural factors. It’s also short-termist (my parents went on to successfully start several businesses and employee many people). In any case - what happens when robots and AI begin automating these roles over the next 10-20 years? A world where autonomous vehicles replace drivers, humanoid robots clean homes and serve food, landscaping bots trim lawns with precision, drones/delivery bots replace the UPS/Fedex army, etc. Here, the economic case for low-skilled immigration dissolves, opening space for a deeper set of questions like: “why let people in at all?” I think this gives credence for nationalists to become more protective of borders - they can easily claim robots don’t commit crime, affect culture, or burden welfare systems. There’s also an alternative world, which is perhaps the more utopia/optimistic, and likely in my view: that automation erodes the idea of labor-based human value, and we begin to find new meaning in life and perhaps start relating to each other differently. Here, borders become less about controlling who works and more about building societies with shared values and enduring peace, i.e we see immigration less as a threat to jobs and more as a national/demographic lever to rebalance aging populations, to cultivate/seed culture, and to build resilient societies. This is obviously less about immigration at this point and more about how societies assign value to human beings in a post-labor world. My favorite books/reads exploring this is (now relatively old) Kai-Fu Lee’s AI Superpowers and AI 2041. They pose the questions: what’s the future (human-human) social contract when machines outperform us in most economically relevant tasks? What does a government owe its citizens when their productivity becomes irrelevant? And what replaces “work” as the central axis of identity, contribution, and dignity? This is where the puck is going. Not just toward robots taking jobs, but toward an entire redefinition of what it means to matter. I think the tension between nationalism and globalism intensifies: some countries double down on exclusion, while others embrace a new kind of globalism that places all humans on equal footing. So, as we look ahead, the real question isn’t what jobs do AI/robots replace, it’s: “what values will remain?” and “can we build a future where people are welcomed not for what they do, but for who they are?”