Opposition to immigration a major factor responsible for Brexit?

Right ho, Britain! Brexit complete! Jolly Good! Cheers! Hip, hip, Hooray!

Tonight we're all British.

So the UK has now joined the increasingly long list of countries determined to commit political and economic suicide over the issue of immigration.

It's pretty clear that this - more than the economy, more than education, more than healthcare, more than any of the usual issues - is THE defining issue of our time. And, as always, I have to ask myself WHY.

Is it racism? Depends on how you define racism, I suppose. The anti-immigration crowd is mostly comprised of disgusting xenophobic bigots, for sure, but their bigotry isn't quite drawn along racial lines. These are the people who love Kanye West and nearly elected Ben Carson, they might not have the most enlightened views on race relations but they're not White supremacists either. They're nationalists, but they aren't ethno-nationalists. In the UK, a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment is directed at White Polish immigrants, while Indians are seen as better assimilated and face less discrimination. Liberals and leftists often joke about how xenophobes are scared of brown people, but in truth, xenophobia tends to be based around culture and nationality much more than skin color.

Still, I don't think bigotry is the only factor. The US has a long history of anti-immigrant panics, each targeting whichever ethnic outgroup was fashionable to hate (Irish, Italians, Slavs, Asians), but the immigration question never dominated the political landscape as it does today. Something else is going on here.

Is it the economy? After all, two of the major concerns about immigrants are that they're taking people's jobs and that they're abusing our social services - both concerns that are fundamentally economic. It's tempting to believe that if times were better, if people weren't struggling so much, they'd be more tolerant. It also provides the economic left with a compelling narrative: xenophobia is a response to the widespread poverty and financial hardships caused by late-stage capitalism, so all we need to do is improve quality of life for the working-class with leftist fiscal policies and all those nasty anti-immigrant sentiments will fade away. A nice, easy, simple solution to a complex problem, right?

Of course, that doesn't really check out either. The current wave of xenophobia - particularly the obsession with securing the Mexican border - started in the 90s and grew during the mid-00s, well before the financial crash of 2008. And while the economy has consistently gotten better since the mid-10s, the problem of xenophobia has gotten exponentially worse.

So if it's not just bigotry, and it's not just the economy, what's the root of the problem? One possible clue: Why is it that xenophobes almost always tend to be extremely conservative on social issues? After all, immigrants often tend to be socially conservative themselves. If you really care about preserving the nuclear family or traditional values or Christian morality, then wouldn't you support an influx of highly devout and highly traditionalist Catholic Latinos?

You can argue that it's because social conservatism and xenophobia are "right-wing" stances, but that's basically a tautology. They're only considered "right-wing" because right-wingers support them. That's not an answer, it's circular logic. And it's not simply political tribalism; almost all xenophobes tend to support economic protectionism and oppose free trade, despite the fact that the mainstream right favored trade and deregulation for decades. What led so many right-wingers to reject Reagan and Thatcher in favor of Trump and Boris Johnson?