Open Borders Today: Stupid or Sinister
“full libertarian privatisation, deregulation, and then free markets constitute the only really safe and efficient immigration option”
Immigration The process of people entering a country for the purpose of residing there. Here only three possible libertarian approaches to this will be discussed. This cuts through most of the confused and ill-conceived, but especially libertophobic and even woke, authoritarian-biased academic texts on the contemporary effects of immigration.
In all countries there is currently a state (government) owning so-called “public” property (which is really state property) and also often interfering with freedom of association on so-called “private” property (which is thereby partly state-owned). While this is the case, nothing approaching a fully libertarian position on the rules of immigration is possible. To make the situation maximally libertarian for immigration, it is first at least necessary to abolish all discrimination restrictions on private property and give all the state-owned property to the existing citizens by some sufficiently libertarian means (maybe simply by giving people tradeable shares in it all). One reason that the existing citizens are owed the state property is because they have often paid for its creation or maintenance with their taxes in a variety of ways (unless they are net tax-funded, of course). But existing citizens also constitute the general category of people who would otherwise most likely have already owned it or have already benefitted from other citizens having owned it (this ignores counterfactuals at levels of detail that are impossible to estimate for plausible rectification purposes). In the absence of this libertarian correction, the issue naturally arises as to what is the most libertarian immigration policy for the state to pursue. Some possibilities include, A) open borders, B) closed borders, and C) trying to copy what private-property owners and free markets would generally be likely to do if they were to exist.
A) Open borders are advocated by many libertarians. They give some of the following reasons. 1. Open borders are what made the U.S., in particular, as wealthy as it is and there were no serious problems with the policy. 2. State-owned property is illegitimately owned and so should be regarded as available for anyone in the world to “homestead” or at least use. 3. Free markets can soon enough adjust to immigration while raising average living standards as well. 4. There is no known upper limit to how many people a country can economically accommodate. 5. It infringes the liberty of each immigrant to prevent him from entering the country: harming both him and those existing citizens who would gain from his economic productivity. Some brief criticisms follow.
Point 1 overlooks that it was once far more expensive, difficult, and even dangerous to move to another country. Also, other countries did not have such temptingly higher living standards. And even the U.S. has never had fully open immigration. This meant that the number of immigrants arriving was more of a benefit than a cost for a very long time. Today things are very different (see point 4).
Point 2 overlooks that the people who are most likely to have been taxed concerning state property or who would otherwise have owned it, the existing citizens, have suffered the greatest initiated imposition. So, they should have first claim on it as a matter of libertarian rectification.
Point 3 overlooks that there cannot be substantially free markets while the state owns significant amounts of property itself (including roads, airports, parks, buildings, etc.) and also regulates the property of everyone else. Assuming that relatively free markets are sufficient to solve any problems is to grossly underestimate the damage that state interventions cause.
Point 4 overlooks that the absence of a known upper limit to economic population size does not mean that a vast increase is immediately economic. With immediately open borders there is likely to be a deluge of immigrants in a relatively short time. See, for instance, gallup.com on would-be migrants: “Nearly 900 Million Worldwide Wanted to Migrate in 2021”. According to that 2023 publication, “about 160 million adults worldwide … named the U.S. as their desired future residence”. But if the U.S. were the only desirable country to open its borders, then a significantly larger fraction of the 900 million would probably seek to go there: that would still be better than remaining where they are. And there does not seem to be much that would delay most of them for very long. This would inevitably cause the country to soon become as bad as the places that the immigrants are coming from (as perceived by those immigrants). This explanation appears to involve plausible general assumptions and reasoning on a par with those against rent control, which no libertarians advocate. However, it is both criticisable and empirically falsifiable: if a relevant state were to impose fully open borders today, then we should see whether or not a national disaster would soon occur.
Point 5 overlooks the existing citizens’ claim to somehow have control over who may enter. For the state to impose open borders now would appear to be relevantly analogous to having the state as an imposed managing company for all apartment blocks and then suddenly imposing an open-front-door policy. In both cases “immigrants” would be in effect trespassing on the property of the rightful owners. Disaster is entirely predictable.
One inconsistency of some open-border advocates is that they can see that this policy would be a complete disaster for Israel yet can see only overwhelming advantages for all the other advanced countries in the world. This is despite all the well-documented problems that merely much-greater-than-normal immigration has manifestly caused various countries in recent years, including Sweden, Germany, and the UK. In the UK, this has notably included Islamic terrorism and the mass raping of underage girls by gangs of predominantly Pakistani Muslim men.
B) No libertarians appear to be advocating closed borders in the sense of no more immigration ever. However, some do argue for a temporary complete halt while recent influxes can be dealt with. This seems to be no more than a prudent, or so-called “rational”, economic position. It is a straw man to suppose that such libertarians want to stop all immigration forever because they cannot see the benefits it causes or they think that only a severely limited population is economic. To be against immediately unlimited immigration is not to be against immigration as such. Immediately closed borders appears to be far more libertarian than immediately open borders.
C) What would private owners and free markets be likely to do? Some property owners would invite immigration for a variety of reasons but most would probably not. Presumably, there would be various private-property routes through which would-be immigrants could travel as long as they have the right permissions and identification. All owners would, of course, discriminate in a variety of ways as regards the type and quantity of potential immigrants. Such private-property discrimination is the main solution to negative externalities that infringe liberty (it is an ignorant woke dogma that discrimination is a problem). For everyone, there would only be access to specific areas by mutual agreement. All “borders” would really be private rather than around the country.
However, without libertarian private property and free markets we cannot have the dynamically changing circumstances and precision that is efficient. So, if the state wanted to copy this, then the best that it could probably do is try some relatively procrustean, but slightly better than nothing, general rules. Such things might include allowing citizens to bring in genuine spouses, allowing businesses to import specialist workers, allowing guest workers rather than citizens, etc. The list could be permanently revisable in terms of categories and numbers depending on the apparent consequences. But full libertarian privatisation, deregulation, and then free markets constitute the only really safe and efficient immigration option.
How about more open, e.g. Trump's suggestion that every STEM graduate of a US university get a green card?
When in your opinion did America become great through open immigration?
I see protestant sects that were thrifty and literate before the Independence.
In the 19th century, wages were higher than in Europe due to labor shortage. The US was openly racist and was forbidding the immigration of "Negroes, Chinamen, and Hindoos", while illiterate Catholics be they Scott, Irish or Italians were welcome to come and try to integrate.
This influx of low social capital populations from paternalistic societies and their concentration in industrial cities contributed to the advent of the progressive era, and the development of the "Great" welfare state.
The American politician has a choice: 1) should we select immigrants to get adequately skilled, productive, and easy to integrate people, or 2) should we use immigration as a way to buy votes by increasing the number of welfare recipients and create problems that the government will be tasked to solve?