Disturbed by a seeming flood of foreigners entering his community, a private citizen wrote to his local newspaper to offer a warning: Unless government stops the invasion, “there will certainly be an increase in pollution and crime.” Public services will be overloaded and taxes will soar. And worst of all, native citizens’ long-cherished way of life will be lost.

He was hardly alone in those fears. For months, the paper’s opinion pages had been filled with letters and op-eds warning that the immigrants will overwhelm housing and natural resources; introduce alien values, ideologies and speech; malignantly isolate themselves from the community instead of integrating and adopting local ways; and steal longtime residents’ jobs and incomes. Government must stanch the flow across its borders or else lose its sovereignty.

Political leaders responded by offering plans to control and reduce immigration, as did wealthy businessmen. The newspaper’s own writers joined in: editorials (representing the official view of the paper) and in-house columnists warned that natives had nothing to gain and much to lose from the newcomers, and dismissed anyone who said otherwise as a greedy sell-out and enemy of the community.

Is this some Trump-loving newspaper in the Deep South? A print version of Breitbart or Newsmax? Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative magazine?

No. It’s the Herald-Mail newspaper from just over a decade ago. The foreign invasion was the influx of new residents into Washington County, coming mainly from metropolitan areas to the east.

It’s striking how much those letters, op-eds and columns echo in today’s immigration fight. The biggest difference is that the mid-2000s anti-migration movement was led mainly by the political left and largely opposed on the right, whereas today’s is led mainly by the right and largely opposed on the left.

The biggest similarity is the weaknesses of the anti-immigrant arguments. A decade ago, high-skilled D.C.-area commuters were supposed to increase crime, take locals’ jobs and homes, supplant traditional values with foreign ones and syphon off tax money. Yet that parade of horribles has proved invisible in government data. Despite the intervening Great Recession, the county’s employment rate increased between 2000 and the period 2012–2016 (the latest data available) while inflation-adjusted household income has held roughly steady.[1] County violent and property crime rates have slightly declined from 2000 to 2015 (again, the last year data are available).[2]

Today’s concerns are about foreigners from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East, who want to escape the plight of their homelands so they can work and provide better lives for their families. And so far, their parade of horribles has also proven invisible in the data. Research indicates that immigrants are less likely to commit violent and property crimes than native-born Americans,[3] are at least as likely to be employed,[4] are more likely to start businesses,[5] and are less likely to use government services.[6]

It’s thus tempting to dismiss both last decade’s and today’s immigration opponents as close-minded. But that would be unfair. Humanity is understandably troubled by change, whether it’s the transition of open land into housing tracts or the appearance of people with different languages, customs and beliefs. Loss of what was once familiar and valued is uncomfortable and even painful. Fear of change and foreigners, and preference for one’s own kind and stability, are probably written into our DNA; they certainly would have boosted our ancestors’ odds of survival and propagation.

Yet we do not live solely by our emotions and instincts; we temper them with facts and reason. And facts and reason show that knee-jerk fear and anger at foreigners are ill-placed. Though it may be sensible to moderate and prepare for in-migration, it’s unreasonable—and even cruel and harmful—to rage at and try to block it.

Besides, what unifies native-born Americans and immigrants is much more important than their differences. America is the land of opportunity, and people—whether native- or foreign-born, high-skilled or low—who are here to do honest work and make better lives for themselves also make the nation stronger. The United States’ convoluted immigration laws—which can take a decade or longer for some promising immigrants to navigate—should welcome people who will share in and augment the American dream, not turn them away.

Thomas A. Firey is a senior fellow with the Maryland Public Policy Institute and a Washington County native.