DemocracyThe God That Failed
Page 26
According to proponents of unconditional free immigration, the United States qua high-wage area would invariably benefit from free immigration; hence, it should enact a policy of open borders, regardless of present conditions, i.e., even if the United States were entangled in protectionism and domestic welfare.8 Surely, such a proposal must strike a reasonable person as fantastic. Assume that the United States, or better still Switzerland, declared that there would no longer be any border controls, that anyone who could pay the fare might enter the country, and, as a resident, would then be entitled to every "normal" domestic welfare provision. Is there any doubt about the disastrous outcome of such an experiment in the present world? The United States, and even faster Switzerland, already weakened by protectionism and welfare, would be overrun by millions of third-world immigrants.9 Welfare costs would quickly skyrocket, and the strangled economy would disintegrate and collapse, as the subsistence fund—the stock of capital accumulated in and inherited from the past (fathers and forefathers)—was plundered. Civilization would vanish from the United States and Switzerland, just as it once did from Greece and Rome.10
8Such a position has been advocated repeatedly, for instance, by the editorialpage editors of the highly influential Wall Street Journal led by the neoconservative Robert Bartley. See, for example, Wall Street Journal, July 3,1990, where a constitutional amendment is proposed: "There shall be no borders." Likewise, open border policies have been proposed by Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, Donald Boudreaux of the Foundation for Economic Education, and Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation. While these individuals and institutions typically refer to Julian L. Simon as their patron saint in this regard, Simon in fact does not advocate an open border policy. See his The Economic Consequences of Immigration (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1987), p. 309. Far more modestly, Simon recommends instead "to increase immigration quotas in a series of increments of significant size—perhaps half a percent, or one percent of total population at each step—to check on any unexpected negative consequences" (ibid., p. 348, also p. 310). More importantly, Simon suggests weeding out those potential immigrants who will become a "welfare burden" (p. 319). He recommends discrimination in favor of "educated" immigrants and those who demonstrate proficiency in English (p. 327), he suggests giving "preference to applicants with financial assets" capable of making a "direct investment" in the host country (p. 328), and he is particularly fond of the idea of "selling the right of immigration into the U.S. to the highest bidders" (p. 329, 335). In his last published article, Simon moves still further away from advocating an open-door policy. See Julian L. Simon, "Are there Grounds for Limiting Immigration?" Journal of Libertarian Studies 13, no. 2 (1998).
9Two useful figures may indicate the magnitude of the potential problem. For one, according to surveys conducted during the early 1990s in the former Soviet Union, more than 30 percent of the population, i.e., close to 100 million people, expressed the desire to emigrate. Second, during the 1990s the U.S. held an annual "diversity" lottery, offering visas to persons originating in "countries with low rates of immigration to the United States." The 1997 lottery attracted some 3.4 million applicants for 50,000 available visas.
10A truly remarkable position is staked out by Walter Block, "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration," Journal of Libertarian Studies 13, no. 2 (1998). Block does not deny the above predicted consequences of an "open border policy." To the contrary, he writes,
suppose unlimited immigration is made the order of the day while minimum wages, unions, welfare, and a law code soft on criminals are still in place in the host country. Then, it might well be maintained, the host country would be subjected to increased crime, welfarism, and unemployment. An open-door policy would imply not economic freedom, but forced integration with all the dregs of the world with enough money to reach our shores, (p. 179)
Nonetheless, Block then goes on to advocate an open-door policy, regardless of these predictable consequences, and he claims that such a stand is required by the principles of libertarian political philosophy. Given Block's undeniable credentials as a leading contemporary theoretician of libertarianism, it is worthwhile explaining where his argument goes astray and why libertarianism requires no such thing as an open-door policy. Block's pro-immigration stand is based on an analogy. "Take the case of the bum in the library," he states.
What, if anything, should be done about him? If this is a private library,... the law should allow the owner of the library to forcibly evict such a person, if need be, at his own discretion. . . . But what if it is a public library? ... As such, [libraries] are akin to an unowned good. Any occupant has as much right to them as any other. If we are in a revolutionary state of war, then the first homesteader may seize control. But if not, as at present, then, given "just war" considerations, any reasonable interference with public property would be legitimate. . . . One could "stink up" the library with unwashed body odor, or leave litter around in it, or "liberate" some books, but one could not plant land mines on the premises to blow up innocent library users, (pp. 180-81)
Since unconditional free immigration must be regarded as a prescription for societal suicide, the typical position among free traders is the alternative of conditional free immigration. According to this view, the United States and Switzerland would have to first return to unrestricted free trade and abolish all tax-funded welfare programs, and only then could they open their borders to everyone who wanted to come. In the meantime, while the welfare state is still in place, immigration would be permitted subject to the condition that immigrants are excluded from domestic welfare entitlements.
While the error involved in this view is less obvious and the consequences less dramatic than those associated with the unconditional free immigration position, the view is nonetheless erroneous and harmful. To be sure, the immigration pressure on the United States and Switzerland would be reduced if this proposal were followed, but it would not disappear. Indeed, with foreign and domestic free trade policies, wage rates within the United States and Switzerland might further increase relative to those at other locations (with less enlightened economic policies). Hence, the attraction of both countries might even increase. In any case, some immigration pressure would remain, so some form of immigration policy would have to exist. Do the principles underlying free trade imply that this policy must be one of conditional "free immigration?" No, they do not. There is no analogy between free trade and free immigration, and restricted trade and restricted immigration. The phenomena of trade and immigration are different in one fundamental respect, and the meaning of "free" and "restricted" in conjunction with both terms is categorically different. People can move and migrate; goods and services of themselves cannot.
The fundamental error in this argument, according to which everyone, foreign immigrants no less than domestic bums, has an equal right to domestic public property, is Block's claim that public property "is akin to an unowned good." In fact, there exists a fundamental difference between unowned goods and public property. The latter is de facto owned by the taxpaying members of the domestic public. They have financed this property; hence, they, in accordance with the amount of taxes paid by individual members, must be regarded as its legitimate owners. Neither the bum, who has presumably paid no taxes, nor any foreigner, who has most definitely not paid any domestic taxes, can thus be assumed to have any rights regarding public property whatsoever. See more on this in chap. 6 above, esp. the Postscript.
Put differently, while someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone else wanting him to do so, goods and services cannot be shipped from place to place unless both sender and receiver agree. Trivial as this distinction may appear, it has momentous consequences, for free in conjunction with trade means trade by invitation of private households and firms only; and restricted trade does not mean protection of households and firms from uninvited goods or services, but invasion and abrogation of the right of private households and firms to extend or
deny invitations to their own property. In contrast, free in conjunction with immigration does not mean immigration by invitation of individual households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration; and restricted immigration actually means, or at least can mean, the protection of private households and firms from unwanted invasion and forced integration. Hence, in advocating free trade and restricted immigration, one follows the same principle: of requiring an invitation for people as for goods and services.
The free trade and free market proponent who adopts the conditional free immigration position is involved in intellectual inconsistency. Free trade and markets mean that private property owners may receive or send goods from and to other owners without government interference. The government stays inactive vis-a-vis the process of foreign and domestic trade, because a paying recipient exists for every good or service sent; hence, every locational change, as the outcome of an agreement between sender and receiver, must be deemed mutually beneficial. The government's sole function is that of maintaining the very trading-process by protecting citizen and domestic property. However, with respect to the movement of people, the same government will have to do more to fulfill its protective function than merely permit events to take their own course because people, unlike products, possess a will and can migrate. Accordingly, population movements, unlike product shipments, are not per se mutually beneficial events, because they are not always—necessarily and invariably—the result of an agreement between a specific receiver and sender. There can be shipments (immigrants) without willing domestic recipients. In this case, immigrants are foreign invaders and immigration represents an act of invasion. Surely, a government's basic protective function would include the prevention of foreign invasions and the expulsion of foreign invaders. Just as surely then, in order to do so and subject immigrants to the same requirement as imports (of having to be invited by domestic residents), a government cannot rightfully allow the kind of free immigration advocated by most free traders. Just imagine again that the United States and Switzerland threw their borders open to whoever wanted to come, provided only that immigrants be excluded from all welfare entitlements (which would be reserved for United States and Swiss citizens respectively). Apart from the sociological problem of thereby creating two distinct classes of domestic residents and thus causing severe social tensions, there is little doubt about the outcome of this experiment in the present world.11 The result would be less drastic and less immediate than under the scenario of unconditional free immigration, but it would also amount to a massive foreign invasion and ultimately lead to the destruction of American and Swiss civilization. Even if no welfarehandouts were available to immigrants, this does not mean that they would actually have to work, since even life on and off the public streets and parks in the United States and Switzerland is comfortable as compared to "real" life in many other areas of the world. Thus, in order to fulfill its primary function as the protector of its citizens and their domestic property, a high-wage area government cannot follow an immigration policy of laissez-passer, but must engage in restrictive measures.12
V
From the recognition that proponents of free trade and markets cannot advocate free immigration without being inconsistent and contradicting themselves, and that therefore immigration must logically be restricted, it is but a small step to the further recognition of how it must be restricted. In fact, all high-wage area governments presently restrict immigration in one way or another. Nowhere is immigration "free," unconditionally or conditionally. However, the restrictions imposed on immigration by the United States and by Switzerland, for instance, are quite different. Which restrictions should exist? More precisely, which immigration restrictions is a free trader and free marketeer logically compelled to uphold and promote?
The guiding principle of a high-wage area country's immigration policy follows from the insight that to be free in the same sense as trade is free, immigration must be invited. The details follow from the further elucidation and exemplification of the concepts of invitation versus invasion and forced integration.
nNote, that even if immigrants were excluded from all tax-funded welfare entitlements as well as the democratic "right" to vote, they would still be "protected" and covered by all currently existing antidiscrimination affirmative action laws, which would prevent domestic residents from "arbitrarily" excluding them from employment, housing, and any other form of "public" accommodation.
12For a brilliant literary treatment of the subject of "free" immigration see Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975).
To this end, it is necessary to presuppose, as a conceptual benchmark, the existence of what political philosophers have described as a private property anarchy, anarcho-capitalism, or ordered anarchy." All land is privately owned, including all streets, rivers, airports, and harbors. With respect to some pieces of land, the property title may be unrestricted; that is, the owner is permitted to do whatever he pleases with his property as long as he does not physically damage the property of others. With respect to other territories, the property title may be more or less restricted. As is currently the case in some housing developments, the owner may be bound by contractual limitations on what he can do with his property (restrictive covenants, voluntary zoning), which might include residential rather than commercial use, no buildings more than four stories high, no sale or rent to unmarried couples, smokers, or Germans, for instance.
Clearly, in this kind of society there is no such thing as freedom of immigration or an immigrant's right-of-way. Rather, there exists the freedom of many independent private property owners to admit or exclude others from their own property in accordance with their own restricted or unrestricted property titles. Admission to some territories might be easy, while to others it might be nearly impossible. Moreover, admission to the property of one party does not imply the "freedom to move around," unless other property owners have agreed to such movements. There will be as much immigration or nonimmigration, inclusivity or exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, nondiscrimination or discrimination as individual owners or associations of individual owners desire.14
13On the theory of anarcho-capitalism see Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, 1988); idem, For A New Liberty (New York: Collier, 1978); Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property (Boston: Kluwer, 1993); David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989); Morris and Linda Tannehill, The Market for Liberty (New York: Laissez Faire Books, 1984); Anthony de Jasay, Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy, and Order (London: Routledge, 1997).
14If every piece of land in a country were owned by some person, group, or corporation," elaborates Murray N. Rothbard,
this would mean that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase property. A totally privatized country would be as closed as the particular inhabitants and property owners desire. It seems clear, then, that the regime of open borders that exists de facto in the U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors.... Under total privatization, many local conflicts and externality problems—not merely the immigration problem—would be neatly settled. With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, a true diversity would reign, according to the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortions, while others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or for use of some person's or community's land area. While statists, who have the itch to impose their values on everyone else, would be disappointed, every
group or interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflicts, it would at least provide a "second-best" solution that most people might be willing to live with. ("Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State," Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, no. 1 [1994]: 7)