Back in the mid-2000s, the Sand States — California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida — were booming, especially in areas with many immigrants and descendants of recent immigrants, such as California’s Inland Empire. Powerful figures such as George W. Bush and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide had repeatedly and explicitly framed the expansive mortgage lending of the mid-2000s as a bet on the credit-worthiness of minorities, especially Hispanics. Only bigots would be skeptical. 

The booming economies in heavily immigrant areas were promoted by pro-immigrationists as proving that only racists had doubts.

The Sand State mortgage catastrophes of 2007-2008 led to a change of tack among immigrationist intellectuals. Rather than reassess their policy recommendations following the huge blow to their empirical case, they shifted sharply toward a moralistic argument for more immigration. Instead of saying massive immigration was good for Americans, economists began saying more vociferously: It’s evil to care about your fellow Americans. So what about the empirical questions, the important one is ethical. We must let in more poor Third Worlders because caring about your fellow citizens is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Of course, this sacralization of disloyalty as the highest morality hasn't stopped economists from aspiring to salaried positions of influence in federal and state government.