Some opponents of liberal immigration fear that immigrants will cause the US to have a bigger welfare state. This would occur because the immigrants would be more likely to be on government assistance, would bring political attitudes from less libertarian societies, or both.
Libertarian proponents of immigration have several responses to this fear. One such response is that large immigrant populations tend to reduce the size of the welfare state. Immigrants, after all, are different in a variety of ways--appearance, culture, religion, etc-- from the native-born. Given natural in-group preferences, the native-born therefore tend to be suspicious of newcomers.
This suspicion manifests itself as a decline in social trust. A lack of social trust, in turn, makes people less likely to want to vote for big spending programs as a matter of social solidarity. In other words, you are less likely to vote in line with social solidarity if there is less social solidarity, and immigration leads to less social solidarity.
