Republicans are much more willing to welcome Afghans who helped the U.S. military than to welcome Afghans who didn’t. But even this select group of refugees gets less support from Republicans than from Democrats, by about 15 percentage points. And when Republicans are reminded of our obligations to these Afghans, most are unpersuaded. A Navigator poll in late August asked voters to choose between an anti-immigrant position—“letting in mass numbers of Afghan refugees will only make our country less safe and divide us even more”—and the argument that we had “a moral duty to take in Afghan refugees” because they “risked their lives to help keep us safe.” Only 44 percent of Republicans chose the moral argument. Thirty-five percent chose the anti-immigration argument.

Why do so many Republicans reject Afghan refugees, even if the refugees are vetted and even if they risked their lives to help our armed forces? One reason is that these Republicans don’t think morality should guide our treatment of other peoples or countries. In an Economist/YouGov poll conducted a week ago, Democrats overwhelmingly agreed that “the United States has a special responsibility to provide humanitarian assistance when people in other countries need help.” But Republicans rejected that idea, 47 percent to 35 percent. In a Suffolk/USA Today poll, 30 percent of Republicans, compared to 20 percent of Democrats, said that helping “other countries build democracies” should not be an important goal of American foreign policy.

But a second, more direct explanation is hostility to immigration, particularly nonwhite immigration. In an Economist/YouGov survey taken last month, 57 percent of Republicans said that immigration had made America worse; only 16 percent said it had made America better.