Does Restricting Immigration Reduce Freedom?

Restricting Immigration Reduces Freedom

Don Boudreaux is a libertarian economics professor at George Mason. In fact, Cafe Hayek is a libertarian blog that two like-minded professors maintain there. So I don't get why he doesn't understand how immigration restrictions can go hand in hand with liberty.

The explaination is rather simple. What happens WITHIN the borders of the United States is different from what happens BETWEEN different countries. Let's say, for example that the U.S. government is only allowed to enforce international disputes (ie. there's two sections to the Constitution:

1. The Federal Government shall only be allowed to enforce relations with other countries.
2. All other powers shall be delegated to the people.

Simple enough. So basically, except for immigration, people have free reign in the US. It's a libertarian's wet dream. So how does preventing other people from joining in our reindeer games prevent that from happening. Even more so, people have the ability to LEAVE the country (though not return). None of what I said has any bearing on my freedom, AS LONG AS I STAY IN THE COUNTRY. If I leave, that's my choice and the government can do nothing to prevent me to leave. However, once I leave (and I'm talking permanent, become a citizen of another country, leave), I renounce those freedoms and I'm stuck under the gun of whatever country I choose to live in. Too bad, I made that choice.

Again, this situation does nothing to change the freedom of the citizens living within the country. So now I don't understand where Mr. Boudreaux is coming from.

After reading the article, I do understand where he's coming from. However, he's wrong. He states:

When the U.S. government prevents peaceful foreigners from immigrating to America, it diminishes your and my freedom to associate with people of our choice.

This may have been true 100, 50 or even 15 years ago, but that's even less true today with cheap travel, tourism, and what I like to call, the internet. If I want to associate with these peaceful foreigners, then I can travel to their country, write them a letter, or chat with them on the web. Even if I say that they can't come to my country and settle here (peaceful or not), that doesn't restrict me from communicating or associating with them. What Mr. Boudreaux suggests is that he should be costlessly allowed to associate with whomever he wants, regardless of the costs to other people. In other words, he's a cheapskate. He wants to associate with Mexicans, learn Spanish and hop a $200 flight to Mexico. The English, the same thing. But by proposing open borders, he wants all of the benefits without paying the full costs FOR HIMSELF.

The only way that Mr. Boudreaux is correct is if you're talking about the freedom of ALL people. Basically expanding the realm of freedom to all people in all nations. Under this circumstance (and only this circumstance) does the US forbidding or eliminating immigration create a restriction on freedom. Immigration laws only apply to non-citizens and THEIR freedom.

Now you can take the ultra-libertarian view that if the government has power to control who gets in, then it can control all sorts of things. Normally, I don't have a problem with the slippery slope arguement, but that's not the case if you have enumerated rights and powers. The government can't barge in because it's not allowed to.

So again, I don't see where Mr. Boudreaux comes with his open borders = freedom equation, unless he's talking about non-Americans. For the rest of us, we can keep everyone out and still be free.

One more counter-example. Let's reduce the US to a household. The head of the household says that noone can enter his property unless they're a member of the family. Libertarians wouldn't have a problem with this. So expand it to a town. The town leaders say that noone can enter the town unless they're a resident. Again, that doesn't entrench on the freedom of the town's residents. So what's so different for the nation as a whole. Unless he's including the brotherhood of man to travel and reside whereever he damn well pleases.

But I'm not a brotherhood of man kind of person. I do think that there are inalienable rights bestowed on us by God. But living in my apartment isn't one of them.

However, I do agree with his other article stating that the US can absorb more immigrants. Obviously, we can or otherwise there wouldn't be such high demand for illegal immigration. Of course, that happens because of minimum wage and other labor laws, but that's neither here nor there. Economically, there's less to worry about with illegal immigration than what most people would believe.

The problem is much more social. Illegal immigrants have no incentive to become members of an American society. They do not want to become a part of the civic culture because that would expose their illegal status. Instead, the retain the culture of their previous homeland, and pass that onto their children. Children don't become assimilated because:

1. They learn much more from their parents than from their school.
2. Because their illegal parents don't want to move out of their culture, children are much less exposed to their non-ethnic surroundings.
3. Schools, because of multiculturism, aren't going to assimilate them any further.

The end result is that illegal immigration doesn't work socially because the immigrants themselves want to shield themselves from arrest and deportation. That's where amnesty would work theoretically. Immigrants can openly become a member of society without fear of government action. However, this only works if it's a one-time shot. If you don't enforce immigration laws, then this will only encourage further illegal immigration and the social problems explained above.

And most of all, Pres. Bush's guest worker program is the worst idea of them all. Basically, it codefies non-assimilation by requiring that guest workers return to their country after their usefullness is up. But that's if these workers do not decide to become illegal immigrants. And it's easier for them to hide, once their in the country and use to their surroundings. The Guest Worker Program is just a sop to the agricultural lobby and other users of migrant labor. It's corporate welfare with no social benefit.

I am not opposed to legal immigration. It's how millions of our forefathers arrived and made this country what it is. But open borders, guest worker programs and illegal immigration do nothing to help society except for a select few that use these migrants.