Sympathy for the Citizenist

And relative to existing alternatives, i.e., borders of other countries, the U.S. border is already virtually open. Disagree? Tell me what annual illegal immigration would be in the U.S. if the U.S. had similar border controls as, say, Bolivia, or Indonesia?

Because US libertarians draw heavily from the educated white male crowd that most despises H1-B visas.

Christianity does not endorse open borders. On what do you base that claim?

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address, for irrelevance, and for rudeness. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring your comment privileges. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

Bryan,

The reason most Americans agree with Sailor’s Citizenism is because the doctrine is sensible, orderly and rational. It provides a framework that allows current citizens control over what their nation will be like in the future. People like to believe they have some control over their future and they don’t have to be angry to feel this way.

The truth is that Americans are very comfortable with individual immigration. They are very welcoming of the new person and even the new family in their neighborhood. What offends the American voter is the claim that everyone else but them gets to decide if America is a swell place to live. If you want to convert voters to your paradigm you need to address this concern.

Imagine tens of thousands of foreigners decide some small US city is perfect for settlement. “Open Borders” ideology says they have that right, even if this imposes economic, religious and cultural changes on the community. What about the right of the current residents to protect the language and culture in which they are invested?

Concerning your opening paragraph: If you were trying to prove that you are rude and disrespectful you succeeded. Since you clearly are not trying to win anyone over to your worldview I suppose one may ask, what is your objective? You voice disdain for those who disagree with you on a policy matter yet you claim you care for everyone in the world. Some may conclude all you are really saying is that the people of this country are not good enough for you.

Why does Bryan keep posting along the same themes of argument. The readers here have told him loud and clear why we and by extension the overwhelming majority of citizens oppose his ideas.

He should address these ideas head on instead of just repeating the same old theme.

To name just one of the more common rebuttals, citizens of US does not give much of a crap about other countries’ people. It is as simple as that. And for the most part, they are willing to lie about it if you try to portray them as racist for it. So, they may not be consistent. But that is the way it is.

So. What do you suggest, Bryan?

Does Caplan favour a “no borders whatsoever” policy?

I doubt it.

Should all U.S borders be abandoned tomorrow?

No.

If not, why not?

Because the point of borders is not to keep other nations’ people out: It’s to keep other nations’ government out. That’s what sovereignty is.

Borders are nothing but where one nation’s laws and jurisdiction ends and another’s begins. Since US laws are for the most part better than other nations’ laws, US borders are good things to keep around.

But none of these positive facts about borders, jurisdiction, or sovereignty provides any rationale for prohibiting goods, services, or people crossing borders.

“Because the point of borders is not to keep other nations’ people out: It’s to keep other nations’ government out. That’s what sovereignty is.

Borders are nothing but where one nation’s laws and jurisdiction ends and another’s begins. Since US laws are for the most part better than other nations’ laws, US borders are good things to keep around.”

The US is a democracy. Its laws derive ultimately from the demos (the citizenry), expressing its will through periodic elections. Change the demos and you will inevitably change the country’s laws too. If a majority of US citizens were Salafi Muslims, for instance, the US would have a radically different politics with radically different laws from what it has today.

You may have heard about the political turmoil in Egypt. Egypt is a country where, according to surveys, two thirds of Egyptians think the state should execute you if change your religion from Sunni Islam. The army and the urban liberal elite have just intervened to suspend democracy, because it looked just too terrifying to continue with, given the demos.

@johnleemk

I invite you & Bryan especially to read up on the “Mormon War” which took place following the Mormon settlement in Missouri in the 1830s.

“Open Borders” ideology says the Mormons had the right to settle western Missouri and through the free market and democratic process take control of that area. That is what the Mormons began to do, with much success. Are your sympathies with the Mormons? If not please explain why in this circumstance you side with the Citizenists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1838_Mormon_War

Smith’s followers, commonly known as Mormons, began to settle in Jackson County in 1831 to “build up” the city of Zion. Tensions built up between the rapidly-growing Mormon community and the earlier settlers for a number of reasons:

–Their economic cohesion allowed the Mormons to dominate local economies.

–Most Mormon immigrants to Missouri came from areas which were sympathetic to abolitionism.

–They tended to vote in blocks.

But how much of a problem is pure misanthropy anyway?

Try to name pure misanthropes who have made an impact (i.e. people who hate _all_ human beings). My list is rather short: Ted Kaczynski and perhaps a few other deep ecologists and people who have run amok.

To have an impact as someone who hates others you will have to cooperate and align with some other people. However, from that point on you have to make a distinction between the in-group who are okay, and the out-group you hate. And that’s then just tribalism by another name. And it is no longer misanthropy if the word means to hate human beings per se.

And no, the examples you would like to give are not counterexamples: the Nazis were not misanthropic, but only hated certain groups of “them”.

And population bombers are not a counterexample either. True, the founders of the ideology had a streak of misanthropy. However, what made the impact was a concern that too much population of “them” will have a negative impact on “us”. To cast it as a general principle makes it more palatable to an egalitarian Zeitgeist. But all concrete measures were and are: let’s reduce “them” (both on a world scale and in the Indian context).

You are right that tribalism in and of itself does not imply hatred for out-groups (not even that there are any because your tribe might be humankind), but then that’s the distinction. Calling hatred for out-groups “misanthropy” is a strange use of the word.

In the body of the post, Bryan wrote,

> Because even though people love the implications of citizenism, they wince at the doctrine itself…

This is an instance where greater specificity would improve clarity. “People” certainly doesn’t include illegal aliens, Democratic politicians, or Republican employers — all of whom stand to benefit from Open Borders. Nor does it include the Hidalgo/Conquistador strata of Mexican society who wish to continue outsourcing their country’s economic and racial underclass to El Norte, rather than enacting painful reforms to deal with their problems directly.

Yet these groups are all comprised of “people.”

Suggested rewrite:

Most American citizens love the implications of citizenism, particularly its effects on supply-and-demand of labor. Citizenism favors wage-earners, especially those among the working poor.

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring this comment. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

“almost everybody is misanthropic, and misanthropes are horrible, angry people,” spake the misanthrope, angrily.

Every orthodox moral theory – utilitarianism, Kantianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, wealth maximization, Rawlsianism, Christianity, and Marxism for starters – straightforwardly endorses open borders, or something close.

Nothing is straightforward about any massive change to human organisation–not even the end of communism. This the main problem with all the open borders arguments.

In particular, the ability of other institutions apart from the U.S.’s federal bureaucracy to control people’s movement and interactions is important. This includes the extent of private property in comparison to public utilities, the law of restrictive contracts, social engineering issues and the centralisation of borders and politics in general.

Most animosity towards immigration exists because once typical Third World migrants become citizens of the U.S., the current state of institutions, law and politics makes them a direct or indirect source of serious coercion for most existing Americans.

Attempts to compare this coercion to other forms need not only consider the short-term material welfare of various parties, but also e.g. the consequences of encouraging American libertarians to view various centralised authorities as moral arbiters who are only accountable to their notion of a global utilitarian calculus.

Rather than join in street protests, or whatever it is Bryan Caplan wants his readers to do, I suggest that the object of libertarians should be to discuss and research forms of organisation and law in which human movement, as well as many other things, would be determined by a more diverse, countervailing and decentralised set of institutions. Of course, the mainstream media wouldn’t be sweet, or even understand Caplan if that were his style of commentary.

Every orthodox moral theory – utilitarianism, Kantianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, wealth maximization, Rawlsianism, Christianity, and Marxism for starters – straightforwardly endorses open borders

As others have pointed out, this is wrong.

Utilitarianism: saying U supports a position is really an empirical claim. But the empirical claim is not straightforward, indeed how could it be. What is being advocated here is *entirely open borders*, where the empirical results over the long term must to some degree be uncertain.

Kantianism: Kant did believe in a right of hospitality. But extrapolating that to the lack of the ability of a sovereign state to exclude migration at some point is debatable.

Egalitarianism: Not all egalitarians place zero value on ‘solidarity,’ community norms, or ability of current insiders to avoid competition. Not all egalitarians support right to work laws, e.g.

Rawls: My understanding was this was a vexed issue in Rawls on classic Ideal/Non-Ideal and “who is in the original position” grounds. Maybe the “Law of Peoples” lays this all out , but based on Theory of Justice Rawls, I don’t think the answer is obvious.

Christianity: Seems like an ignorant comment. Political philosophy in the Xian tradition usually has a concept of powers the sovereign can exercise.

Libertarianism: A lot here will depend on specific property rights definitions and the political system, right? *If* a libertarian state had rules like a condo association, then they can exclude trivially.

Because the point of borders is not to keep other nations’ people out: It’s to keep other nations’ government out. That’s what sovereignty is.

Well said Mike P

Christianity was the religion of most of the people who founded this nation. Even the Deitists were basically Christian in their morality. Yet, the early US had essenially open borders. Most Christians that I know and have discussed this issue with seem to be more concerned with the failure of some immigrants to respect our laws or follow the rules.
I do not think that Christ would have favored placing unreasonable restrictions on poor people who seek to improve their lives by seeking work in another country. To the extent that our government places undue restrictions on people seeking work in our country, we are not observing the Golden Rule.

George Mason University Acceptance Rates, Overall / Out-Of-State (2010):

Undergraduate Freshmen:
51.7% / 40.5%

Law:
24.3% / 23.2%
(only 2.3% of enrolees are Black and Hispanic)

Doctoral:
40.8% / 36.0%
(only 9% of enrolees are Black and Hispanic)

SAT Reading:
Mean: 570, SD: 74
SAT Math:
Mean: 575, SD: 67

Comparing that to the overall SAT distribution among test takers, mean approx. 500, SD approx. 100-110) – George Mason gets almost all of it’s undergraduates from the upper half of the population distribution.

In other words, it’s a pretty selective community. What’s wrong with being selective?

Borders are nothing but where one nation’s laws and jurisdiction ends and another’s begins. Since US laws are for the most part better than other nations’ laws, US borders are good things to keep around.

Ok, but by the same token, other nations’ laws are worse than those of the US, and so they are bad things that oughtn’t be kept around. So time to start conquering, or in other words expanding that good governance. If not, why not?

If many people would benefit by living in the US, well then let’s just bring the US to them.

I always wonder why we can’t start with this modest step: Remove the annual limit on H1B visas.

I propose instead eliminating the H1B visa in favor of a new, unrestricted visa similar to H1B but pertaining to lawyers and college professors.

Johnleemk,

My most serious concern about mass immigration is as follows. Presently, some of the most arbitrary exercises of power in the United States and other Western countries involve race. This includes national witch hunts, extensive interventions in the use of private property and other problems.

I expect that, given a certain constitution in a hypothetical modern polity, open borders could work. However, increased immigration into our real polities, which have less than ideal institutions and legal systems, exacerbates some of their worst politics. I don’t find comparisons to historical polities very useful in estimating this problem, because, e.g., America in the 19th century had very different politics, in addition to other changes such as transport technology.

I believe Bryan Caplan has commented on this to the effect that his readers should campaign for open borders and everything else that would make this desirable. However, my ability to change anything as an activist or protester, let alone America’s obsession with race, equality and democracy, is negligible.

My interest in politics involves research into polycentric law and other abstruse, good institutions that only libertarians and similar people tend to find interesting. I think that this is a more ethical use of one’s free (or professional) time than any form of activism, especially in the long term. How reliably does activism and mass politics produce a desirable outcome?

Handle,
It is reasonable to assume that very few who are selected out of attending GMU are suffering from extreme poverty or in danger of an early death, which would be abated by attending GMU. Plus, US immigration policy is far more restrictive than even GMU’s selection criteria. That is ‘what’s wrong’.

BTW, @Tom West, this is why making a moral case is appropriate, IMO. There are lives at stake, and it’s right to point that out.

The claim that John Rawls supported open borders couldn’t more dishonest and/or ignorant.

Here’s what Rawls has to say in his book The Law of Peoples:

An important role of a people’s government, however arbitrary a society’s boundaries may appear from a historical point of view, is to the representative and effective agent of a people as they take responsibility for their territory and its environmental integrity, as well as for the size of their population.

Indeed Rawls has been criticized in our new “enlightened” age on the matter of open borders for being so utterly focused on nation-states, expressing essentially no interest in discussing, much less promoting, immigration.

See, for example:

link

So can we stop the historical revisionism, please?

> It is reasonable to assume that very few who are
> selected out of attending GMU are suffering from
> extreme poverty or in danger of an early death

Come Guthrie, that’s hyperbole. If that was the moral justification for more open immigration, it wouldn’t apply for immigrants from the Americas, nor Europe, nor much of Asia. Only some small fraction face significant danger at home. Most immigration, especially most Latin American immigration, is for minor economic betterment. This is one of the reasons people scoff at moral arguments on immigration. The problem for the potential immigrant (“stuck in Mexico”) just doesn’t seem that bad.

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address and for ad hominem remarks. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring your comment privileges. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address and for crude language. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to discuss editing your comment. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

> It’s also hyperbole to compare the restrictions on
> freedom of movement to a college admission, which
> is what I was addressing.

In which direction do you think the hyperbole runs?

@Handle
Ignoring the snide-ness, I’ll be direct. Your analogy fails to be helpful for the same reasons comparing the Nation to a house fails.

Please read the following:
http://www.ilw.com/articles/2008,1218-boudreaux.shtm

In short there is not ‘logic’ involved here. Your equation only works if there is complete unanimity in regards to immigration policy in the Nation as a whole. As you can see, the Nation falls far short of that metric. Sorry to burst your bubble.

@Finch
I was adopting your terminology and being off-hand. I do not believe either is necessarily hyperbole. As I’ve stated to Handle here, analogizing a college to the whole country is merely a useless argument. There are people in the world who do suffer, however, as a result of being restricted from coming here. That is not hyperbole.

[Comment removed pending confirmation of email address and for rudeness. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring your comment privileges. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog and EconTalk.–Econlib Ed.]

@guthrie:

“Your equation only works if there is complete unanimity in regards to immigration policy in the Nation as a whole”

This assertion is ridiculous. Few organizations require perfect consensus to make any decision, let alone amendments concerning the rules of admission of new members.

As for ‘comparing a nation to a house’ (usually a criticism reserved for Macroeconomic discussion, and this isn’t one), I am doing nothing of the sort.

I am saying that a nation properly belongs in the set or category of human organizations in general for the purposes of analyzing the propriety or morality of its particular membership criteria.

Libertarians like myself are in broad agreement that, in general, (and especially if they aren’t possessed of ‘coercive power’) organizations have expansive property rights over the real estate they own and a freedom of association which invest the members with a right to choose with whom they will or will not associate or admit to their organizations or property.

Libertarians have no problem when these organizations are colleges (even public ones) or companies or non-profits or personal clubs, or whatever. All of these, in Libertarian thought, regardless of whatever nature or purpose, and of whatever size or authority (save sovereign coercive authority) can legitimately be selective with whom they deal or admit, and can create a decision mechanism, democratic or otherwise, (even unanimity) to make rules regarding such.

In other words, ‘no borders’ Libertarians generally agree with the moral legitimacy of all ‘private borders’ (even the ‘private’ borders of public institutions, like George Mason University, which obtain a good amount of their funding by coercive means from taxpayers without scoffing too much about it) and the right of those organizations to exclude whomever they want.

Maybe you disagree with this and think that any organization should be compelled, for moral reason, to admit any human being on the planet who makes a claim of dire distress if it improves the utilitarian calculus. OK, make that claim then. Other political ideologies certainly do – but it’s not a very Libertarian claim – that’s for sure.

So ‘the logic’ of which I am referring is the logical extension of these private rights and their legitimacy to the population or government of a sovereign state. The ‘moral cliff’ discontinuity of this authority because of ‘sovereignty’ is a non-sequitur.

The right at issue is the right to exclude and regulate behavior on one’s territory, a right capable of being held and enforced by law by individuals, private organizations, and governments alike.

I understand -that- open-borders proponents prefer to draw a line at government, but I haven’t seen any persuasive case as to -why- the right must be morally be invalid there, but nowhere subsidiary. I don’t think there is one, but I’ll keep an open mind.

Also, to all the people saying things like “easy for Bryan to say, he won’t have to live next door to giant families of Mexicans” or words to that effect, I think that’s addressed by his bubble posts. E.g.: http://www.econlib.org/archives/2012/03/my_beautiful_bu.html

Christianity has nothing to say, one way or the other, about open borders. It is a path to personal salvation, not a plan for the organization of secular society or government. Christ said that His kingdom was not of this world. This world, in the Christian view, is a vale of tears, a sinkhole of depravity, and the Prince of This World is Satan.

There are, of course, so-called Christians – many of them even clergymen – who, in the words of Gómez Dávila, search sedulously through textbooks of sociology in an effort to fill what they believe to be lacunae in the Gospels. Whatever such persons profess should not be confused with Christianity.

Our Founders, on the other hand, referred in the Declaration of Independence to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” And what is the law of nature? Wordsworth provides the answer:

“The creatures see of flood and field, And those that travel on the wind!
With them no strife can last; they live In peace, and peace of mind.
“For why?–because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”

Territoriality is part of nature. Two subspecies of the same animal rarely coexist together; one variety prevails in a given habitat. Wherever they find themselves together, there is conflict until one destroys, subjugates, or drives out the other. Thus it is with the races of mankind.

The points made by Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard eighty years ago in favor of immigration restriction have not so much been scientifically disproven as they have been smeared with guilt by association. It is still the case that the argumentum ad Hitleram is no substitute for logical or empirical rebuttal.

[My comment was first blocked and then restored to the wrong one. That was my comment for this post:]

Here is a group of people who would also have to endorse open borders: misanthropes with mainstream views. 😉

They believe that open borders lead to disastrous consequences for a lot of human beings. And that’s a plus for them.

More a reply to your statement that misanthropy is worse than tribalism. However, misanthropy is quite benign if it goes along with certain views.

A tribalist with the same views is pretty dangerous by comparison, exactly when he is not misanthropic, but cares about those in his tribe. And probably, that’s a common type unlike pure misanthropes.

[So sorry, Hansjörg. The error was mine. Thanks for re-posting your comment. I’ve removed the erroneous one I accidentally posted to this thread instead of your intended comment for this thread. The other one is posted in the correct thread. –Econlib Ed.]

“Your equation only works if there is complete unanimity in regards to immigration policy in the Nation as a whole”

This assertion is ridiculous. Few organizations require perfect consensus to make any decision, let alone amendments concerning the rules of admission of new members.

When something is jointly owned, the law says that all owners must agree to a transfer of ownership. Applied to immigration policy, that means that all owners (citizens) must agree to the immigration of any person who is given a share of the territory. There is no need for unanimity in regard to exclusion from part-ownership.

Moreover, you’re ignoring the insights of George Mason University’s greatest economists (Gordon Tullock & James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize while at JMU in 1986) in The Calculus of Consent: democracies — i.e., legitimate polities — do, always, by definition, require unanimity in decisionmaking. To save time and effort, the people can unanimously agree that, for instance, a particular type of decision will be made by majority vote, but the choice of the decisionmaking method must be unanimous in the first place.

Of course, again, the unanimity requirement supports your anti-open-borders position.

Here’s a challenge… to date over 200,000 Hmong people from the highlands of Vietnam and Cambodia live in the US. Many of them – almost 50,000 – live in my state of Wisconsin, and over 10,000 live in the city of Milwaukee. They were allowed to immigrate here starting in 1975.

Given the circumstances of the time and place where they came from, most were destitute. There’s no telling what the average IQ was, but one may reasonably guess that it was likely no higher than what would have been measured here. Most would have suffered had they not been allowed in, and nearly all would have lived with a lower quality of life than the life they were allowed to have here. Many would likely have met untimely ends.

As a citizen of 10 years in this state, I bear witness that there is no discernible cultural shift taking place within the state or city. The most visible aspects of their culture revolve around celebrations and funerals.

There hasn’t been a mass conversion to Shamanism, nor has the state devolved into tribalism. In fact, it’s hard to pinpoint any negative effects the presence of the Hmong has had on the state (short or long-term).

However, we can discern rather obvious benefits to the state due to Hmong influence. For example, Wisconsin is now a leading worldwide producer of Ginseng grown by Hmong farmers. They create jobs, produce goods, generate tax revenue, and benefit many many more people – again worldwide – then they ever would have if they had been stopped at the border.

So tell me dear Restrictionists and Citizenists… how does this story and these facts fit with your theories? How many immigrants is ‘too many’? Is there a number? A percentage? How much time is needed before we begin to see the clearly defined and deleterious effects of relaxed immigration? Are Hmong people unusually extraordinary?

Or is it possible that this is an example of what can happen if we simply allow regular people to exist, move, live, work, and transact as they see fit?

Some fun exercises for the open-border crowd to try their eloquence on:
1) persuade the Arabs of the British Palestinian mandate to support unrestricted immigration of Jews into said mandate;
2) persuade today’s Israeli Jews to support unrestricted immigration of Arabs into Israel. For bonus points, persuade them to support the dissolution of the state of Israel;
3) persuade Native American tribes to support unrestricted immigration of Englishmen into North America;
4) persuade the citizens of Hong Kong to support unrestricted immigration of mainland Chinese into Hong Kong;
5) persuade the citizens of the Dominican Republic to support unrestricted immigration from Haiti into said republic.

@guthrie: I cannot help suspecting that you are being intentionally facetious. Can you say how many grains of sand constitute a mountain? Obviously it is not possible to put down an exact, or even an approximate, number or percentage of immigrants that is ‘too many’, because what is ‘too many’ is to some extent a matter of judgement; besides, immigrants are not fungible and there is the pesky question of territorial distribution (i.e. bubbles). But most reasonable people will agree that 90% is too many, and even you will probably agree that 99.99% is too many.

The same goes for the right to exclude ends at the property line, be it your residence, business, or -if you will- school. Is there really a shining line drawn around your residence’s property boundaries such that you don’t benefit from excluding others from any place beyond it? Pfui. You are merely relying on others to do the disagreeable job of excluding for you. Imagine your residence teleported, shining property lines and all, to Newark, NJ, and furnished with a two-way wormhole connecting your driveway with the road in the original location. Would you enjoy that? Would the value of your residence increase, or decrease? Why? What does this demonstrate about exclusion?

However, you are not merely facetious. It appears you consider citizenist argument an extension of base irrational fears, misanthropy, and racism. You cannot expect such an attitude to be productive of reasonable discussion.

Thanks to the many thoughtful commenters. Particulary hard-boiled Gail, the California teacher. The modesty exhibited by a few Open-Borderists such as johnson85 makes me feel that conversation is sometimes possible.

.
Who gets counted in the moral calculus of immigration policy?

Citizenists like me are explicit: the interests of my fellow U.S. citizens carry much more weight than the interests of foreigners.

Open-Borderists are often vague about which people will accrue the benefits that their proposals are to generate. Considering the bad deal that Open Borders offers to middle-class U.S. voters and their descendants, that ploy is understandable. But not admirable.

@Dan

The point of bringing up Hmong immigration is to address specific objections that Citizenists and Restrictionists have brought up against a more relaxed immigration policy.

One set of arguments boils down to the fear that increased immigration will assault our vaunted institutions and cultural trappings, which – it would seem – are rather fragile and shallow in the minds of the objectors. Some even go so far as to assert that relaxed immigration would result in the dismantling of democracy, usurping of our legal system and foment race/tribal wars. In regards to Wisconsin and the presence of the Hmong, none of these outcomes are evident and it would appear that these fears are not soundly based in this case.

Another set suggests that relaxed immigration will result in the overburdening of the infrastructure and state welfare services. There was indeed State involvement in the immigration of the Hmong. However, one cannot point to the presence of the immigrants as a ’cause’ of ‘overburdening’ Wisconsin’s State services. In fact, one cannot really say the services or infrastructure are ‘overburdened’ at all. Nearly forty years on, there is no such evidence.

Which brings me to this. You said:

In this case the law capped the number at 50,000 a year

So is this your number? How was that number arrived at? Scientifically or arbitrarily? Why this number as opposed to something less (or more)? How do we know if more Hmong were allowed in, we wouldn’t all be better off? It would certainly seem that way given the dearth of the negatives noted above, but I’m willing to listen if you have any insight into the matter.

@Candide III, you wrote:

Obviously it is not possible to put down an exact, or even an approximate, number or percentage of immigrants that is ‘too many’, because what is ‘too many’ is to some extent a matter of judgement

So who has the right to make that judgement? You? Me? You for me?

You are merely relying on others to do the disagreeable job of excluding for you.

Who is doing the excluding and who is being excluded? How am I ‘relying’ on someone for this ‘service’ if I don’t know who I’m relying on and I don’t know who is the object of this exclusion service? And how has that (or your wormhole analogy) got anything to do with what I was expressing here? Namely the Libertarian understanding of the limits upon my right to exclude? Please elucidate.

Question: if I want to marry someone from Mexico, why is your right to exclude this person greater than my right to marry them?

@AMac, you wrote:

Open-Borderists are often vague about which people will accrue the benefits that their proposals are to generate

Wrong. We are very specific. We all benefit. One example: anyone, worldwide, who has ever chosen to consume a product which includes Wisconsin-grown ginseng, has benefited from the immigration of the Hmong to the US.

Citizenists like me are explicit: the interests of my fellow U.S. citizens carry much more weight than the interests of foreigners.

Very well. However your misanthropy is neither particularly understandable nor admirable.

@candid_observer,

I don’t experience myself ‘self-sacrificing’ as a result of ‘today’s level of immigration’. Can you explain what you mean by ‘self-sacrifice’? What are you being asked to sacrifice as a result of immigration?

JSYK, I don’t self identify as a Utilitarian.

guthrie,

You personally might not be experiencing much self-sacrifice from today’s level of immigration.

But I guarantee you that someone who loses a job to an immigrant — such as many tech workers — is sacrificing a great deal. Insofar as immigrants require more in government assistance than they put in, or will do so in the future, others will have to sacrifice. Insofar as immigrants introduce more crime, or contribute further to despoil the environment, they impose sacrifices on citizens.

Now maybe you are willing to deal with whatever sacrifices happen to be demanded upon you (though I have no reason to believe they are above average, rather than below). But who are you to tell others how much they should sacrifice? How does that become your choice, and your choice alone? Why in any case should your comfort zone be the comfort zone of every citizen?

@Handle,

Thanks for that. It’s clear, concise, and it’s what we all suspected. I admire your honesty.

You’re welcome. I forgot ‘xenophobic’. What’s to ‘suspect’? Bryan has plainly stated these assertions in this and previous posts.

restrictionist / selectionist policies would disagree with your defamatory characterization of their reasoning and motives and find your assertion a mere slur.

Perhaps, but it wouldn’t make it any less true. Do you disagree that there might be some laws and policies that are enacted for irrational reasons? Are immigration policies somehow immune to the tendency of this country’s lawmakers to pander to the base fears/desires of their constituents? Or to be captured by powerful interests (such as Unions)? If they are, or even if they might be, isn’t it correct to try to correct this?

Is it possible that while the accusation, while acerbic, is more accurate than a ‘mere slur’?

Imagine – “Open Borders proponents merely base their opinions in irrational hatred for homogenous concentrations of European ancestry.” Yes, that’s the same as what you’re doing.

If you had said ‘Imagine – “Open Borders proponents merely base their opinions in irrational hatred for any reasonable involvement of Government regarding immigration’, I’d have given it to you. As it stands, I would love for more Brits, Franks, Germans, Swedes, to c’mon over. If for nothing else, for the abundance of humor, wine, food, and whatever it is Swedes are known for, these immigrants would likely bring with them. So you really are speaking past me here.

Because, when, at base, you find the conclusions and positions of your opponents evil, wicked, hateful…

No. I find them, by-in-large, silly and baseless. I’ll explain why I find them thus later.

…you are bound to be tribalistic and misanthropic towards them and fail to hear out and dismiss or discount their legitimate concerns.

No, I am challenging incorrect thought. I am addressing concerns which appear, to me at least, illegitimate. I am perfectly happy to allow you your thoughts, but am also perfectly happy to point out that they are wrong, and how wrong they are. In particular when the outcome of those thoughts are policies which limit human freedom.

…since when do Libertarians feel entitled to inquire into the propriety of people’s motives for their preferences when deciding whether to invest them with the right to make choices consistent with their preferences?

When a person’s ‘preferences’ actively limit another person’s freedom to peacefully move, live and transact, why wouldn’t we challenge those preferences and the motivation behind those preferences?

‘Your utility doesn’t matter for the sake of making community rules because it’s based on preferences I find distasteful’

Which precisely describes current immigration policy.

That’s the opposite of a free society.

Agreed.

If transitioning to an Open Borders policy would diminish the utility of a majority of the inhabitants…

That’s a big ‘if’…

…why is it immoral for them to prefer selectionism?

It’s immoral to apply a ‘one size fits all, nobodies allowed in except by limited random lottery which can cause you to wait 70 years for the opportunity to be turned down’, because the loss suffered by those selected out is typically far and away greater than the loss suffered by current residents.

Assume they are estimating the consequences correctly and their preferences arise from morally neutral places.

Very well. If the dire consequences of relaxed immigration are somehow accurately measured, and every current resident would measurably suffer as the result of immigration, then there’s no question we ought to wall off the border immediately and offer no quarter to any who would come. The burden of proof would indeed be with those who would claim some kind of net benefit to some current resident as a result of the migration of one non-citizen.

Luckily, we don’t live in that world. No one on either side has the prophetic powers or numerical gravitas to outright make either case. I am comfortable with my lack of knowledge in this regard. My assertion is that when there’s doubt, err on the side of freedom. Markets work. Let’s let them.

…the notion that it is immoral not to give up the rights, powers, and property in your possession and transfer it to someone who has less is the basis of some pretty awful ideologies and attempts at political organization. Again, places that base their policies on such moral principles are the very opposite of Libertarian.

Oh, how I love it when this gets said. I’m the one advocating freedom of movement, mate. I’m suggesting that peaceful human movement is a human right. There is no ‘transfer’, no giving up of rights, powers, or property. These assertions are – once again – baseless. ‘Slectionists’ and Restrictionists, and Citizenists are the ones advocating for State control over human beings who are doing nothing more than walking from point A to point B, who are peacefully and willingly transacting with other willing and peaceful parties. You may have that preference, but don’t call it ‘Libertarian’.

You see, Handle, I used to be a strict Restrictionist myself. I used to argue the same points that have been argued here and other places in favor of strongly regulated borders. However, upon reflection and examination of the ‘facts’ that I purported, I found my objections specious at best, and racist at worst. So when I speak of xenophobia or misanthropy or racism, I’m speaking from my own experience. When I advance this language, I am doing so from an attitude of humility and assistance. Perhaps it doesn’t always s come across, but sometimes we need a slap in the face. I found, due to similar slaps in my face, that my views on immigration were inconsistent with my passion for freedom. I had to sacrifice one set of ideals for the other. I had to make a choice. So far, I’m convinced I’ve chosen wisely.

Oh, how I love it when this gets said. I’m the one advocating freedom of movement, mate. I’m suggesting that peaceful human movement is a human right.

But you’re not talking about peaceful movement. You’re talking about movement that occurs only because the government coerces the citizens to accept the immigrants who dilute their ownership interest. Immigration is imposed by force.

@WilliamJD,

The problem with Hmong immigration to Wisconsin is the opportunity cost. They take the place of indigenous German/Scandinavian Americans who have a right to this country’s resources (carrying capacity) and who, by the way, produce positive externalities at an astounding rate.

Yet somehow the Hmong have apparently mitigated whatever opportunity cost Wisconsin might have encountered and at this point (again, forty years on), produce just as many positive externalities. I can see no evidence that the resident population suffered in any way, access to and use of resources does not appear to have been diminished by any measurable standard, and it appears that people here have benefited, on net. If you can offer concrete counter information, I’d love to see it.

As Salter would put it, the presence of the Hmong costs European-Americans thousands of “child equivalents”, and it’s bad for YOU because their presence lower per-capita productivity.

Is there a demonstration as to how my life is worse off now, then without the presence of the Hmong here? Far as I can tell, ‘lower per-capita productivity’ means not one whit when I use the money earned at my job to purchase a drink made with Wisconsin (Hmong) grown ginseng. I don’t understand how this argument is practical or practicable or applicable in my world. This world, right here, where the Hmong immigrants are, again I say, a net benefit.

Even from a purely non-biological economic standpoint, this country’s resources would be much more profitably invested in the indigenous Americans of Wisconsin.

Source?

But you’re not talking about peaceful movement. You’re talking about movement that occurs only because the government coerces the citizens to accept the immigrants who dilute their ownership interest. Immigration is imposed by force.

Bizzaro world strikes again. The only coercion here, in regards to today’s immigration policy, is the very real and coercive limits to free movement and free, and voluntary, exchange. When restrictions relax, that means there is less effort being put to coercion of any kind. How is it you can correlate a lack or limit of action as ‘coercion’?

“The only coercion here, in regards to today’s immigration policy, is the very real and coercive limits to free movement and free, and voluntary, exchange.”

Guthrie,

You have repeatedly claimed that immigration restrictions prevent or severely limit free and voluntary exchange. This claim is false. Do you want to hire a Honduran to make widgets for you? Build a factory in Honduras. Do you want an Indian to teach your children? Join an India-based cyberschool. Do you want to chat with Russians? Go on vacation to Moscow. In fact, immigration restrictions do not restrict your ability to make ANY exchange you want with anyone.

What the restrictions do, instead, is to limit WHERE you can make the exchange. But there is nothing wrong with this. You can’t morally or legally restrict Alice from holding a yard sale and selling her stuff to Bob, but you can restrict them from doing it in YOUR yard. Likewise, a government shouldn’t restrict the sale of, say, alcohol, but it seems reasonable to restrict it (and all other commercial transactions) from areas that are zoned residential only. Why? Because homeowners should have the option of living in an area free of excess noise and potentially dangerous traffic. If you don’t like driving an extra mile to buy alcohol, don’t live in that area. And please don’t try to claim that your right of free exchange is being infringed. It’s not.

As far as free exchange goes, immigration restrictions are no different than the above examples.

I have a question for Gail or anyone else who thinks in a similar manner.

If you object to the use of government services by immigrants, why do you not advocate the denial of such services to recent immigrants instead of restricting their arrival completely? Would this not be a better policy, in that “good” immigrants could still do good work and activity while the misuse of government services would still be prevented.

Is it that you think advocating full restriction is a worse policy but more likely to be implemented? Or is it that you feel full restriction is actually a better policy in some way? If it is a better policy, in what way is it better?

Not just untenable politically, it’s been ruled unconstitutional

It’s been ruled unconstitutional for universally available public services — specifically public schools and emergency medical care.

It is not at all unconstitutional for the cavalcade of targeted government support programs that are already restricted behind a litany of prerequisites, qualifications, and waiting periods. Adding one more requirement — that you must be a citizen not born of immigrant parents and have resided in the US for 18 years — should entirely eliminate the worry that immigrants are coming for the welfare.

Aside from the tens of thousands of dollars a year in the free stuff you already mentioned.

Immigrants come for the emergency rooms and awesome public schools.

It’s better than “they come for our women,” but only a little better.

Also why on earth is Guthrie going on and on about the Hmong? By numbers they are the least successful Asian immigrant group. Heck, Clint Eastwood even made a movie about it.

Immigrants come for the emergency rooms and awesome public schools.

It’s better than “they come for our women,” but only a little better.

a rather graceless “yes, I was completely wrong” post.

But, you know, aside from the most expensive and valuable social expenditures, what else is there?

a rather graceless “yes, I was completely wrong” post.

?

My claim is that emergency health care and public schools are not a draw for immigrants. The fact that these may be somewhat expensive in no way disproves that claim.

But, you know, aside from the most expensive and valuable social expenditures, …

These are rather cheap, all things considered. All uncompensated medical care — immigrant and citizen, emergency room and clinic — amounts to less than $60 billion per year. That is a trifle out of the $2 trillion spent on health care in the US.

And schooling, too, is considered an investment in the adults of tomorrow. If it’s not worth paying for the education of immigrants’ children, surely it’s not worth paying for citizens’ children either. Of course, if immigrants raised children in the US and then took them home at age 18, you might have a point!

…what else is there?

That’s a joke, right?

“What else” is the pension, health care, and welfare expenditures of federal and state governments — almost half their total budgets — virtually all untouchable under the rule that immigrants and their children cannot get targeted government services.