HINT: Don’t talk about freedom.
Third, and consequently, freedom is not enough. Appeals grounded in the right to make lifestyle choices and the right to be free of discrimination were mainly persuasive to the audience that least needed persuading. To win, libertarians will need to sound, well, less libertarian. As when marijuana activists foregrounded government regulation and marriage activists foregrounded straight messengers, campaigners need to learn to sideline their own instincts and speak in alien tongues.
This is from an interesting and important article by Jonathan Rauch in the December issue of Reason. It’s titled “Legalizing Marijuana and Gay Marriage Seemed Impossible.” Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
In it, Rauch tells how acceptance of recreational marijuana and gay marriage, both in law and culturally, came about so suddenly. The whole thing is well worth reading.
Near the end, he lays out some lessons for libertarians who want to liberalize immigration laws. What follows are two paragraphs on that issue. First:
That is why research on the net-positive effects of immigration misses the point. As long as the public believes that immigrants are a threat to law and order or undermine the country’s social fabric, ears will be shut. Opening them requires telling moral stories, not reeling off crime statistics. Whatever his shortcomings as a messenger, Jeb Bush was gesturing in the right direction when he said that many illegal immigrants come as an act of love.
Second:
Immigration reform, for instance, has come to seem intractable at the federal level. However, there may be more room to maneuver by delegating authority to the states—for example, with state-sponsored visas, an idea that has the support of elected officials and legislatures in multiple states, some Republican members of Congress, and the Cato Institute. To tamp down political conflict, push it down to lower levels of government.
While those who like to see an argument based on principle will be disappointed by the failure of principle to persuade, Rauch gives one striking fact that suggests that one particular principle did matter, at least to conservatives. He writes:
Public opinion on these issues also displayed an interesting wrinkle. Many people who opposed legalization of marijuana or same-sex marriage nonetheless opposed federal pre-emption of states’ choices, even if the states favored legalization. Conservatives, in particular, wanted the federal government to butt out. Writing in 2013, E.J. Dionne Jr. and William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution noted: “The gap among Republicans between the proportion supporting [marijuana] legalization and the proportion who nonetheless want the federal government to stand down in the face of state legalization decisions is 20 percentage points.” Similarly, many gay-marriage opponents on the right were against a federal constitutional amendment to ban it.
READER COMMENTS
Phil
Nov 24 2018 at 5:03pm
I think the supporters of both legalized marijuana and gay marriage were successful when they managed to change the essence of the discussion from that of morality to that of medical utility and equal rights, respectively. It was not hard for the majority of the nation to resist either on long-standing moral grounds, but the moral argument faded when the framing of the issues was altered.
Immigration is more challenging for two reasons. First, it is a combination of national security, law and order, human rights, nationalism, and economics. Depending on the framing, the arguments dramatically change. Second, immigration is inherently federal in nature, whereas marriage and medical regulations are not. I think Republicans are more comfortable delegating marijuana, marriage, and I might add abortion, to the states. On the other hand, questions of citizenship and borders are federal questions and therefore assertive (i.e., sanctuary) states are seen as interfering in a federal question.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 25 2018 at 6:30am
The US can’t build housing and can’t build infrastructure. Why would we want more immigrants?
Thaomas
Nov 25 2018 at 12:57pm
Excessive costs of housing and infrastructure reduces the optimal number/rate of increase of immigrants (dependent on their characteristics); they do not mean that today’s number is optimum.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 25 2018 at 8:21pm
Given the inability to build either housing or infrastructure, perhaps the number of immigrants to the US should be much lower than today.
Indeed, the libertarian solution infrastructure building appears to be a null set, given libertarian’s emphasis on private property rights.
Contrast that to authoritarian China where there are no property rights and infrastructure building is tremendously rapid and successful.
As an ideology, libertarianism has many attractive features. One might ponder if libertarianism could ever work in real life.
Matthias Goergens
Nov 28 2018 at 9:31am
What you are looking for is geolibertarianism.
Fred in PA
Nov 25 2018 at 10:54pm
If the U.S. is having difficulty building housing and infrastructure, wouldn’t more construction workers help? Isn’t that where an awful lot of these immigrants seek employment?
Kurt Schuler
Nov 25 2018 at 10:07pm
If we are going to talk about “moral stories” here, let’s consider the stories of the thousands of Americans who have been murdered by immigrants. If governments are indeed instituted among men to secure certain rights, surely life is the foremost, because without it is impossible to exercise the rest.
As I noted in a comment to another recent post, by Bryan Caplan, advocates of immigration “reform” (translation: admitting more immigrants than most Americans want) need to specify their cost-benefit analysis here. Are the lives lost worth it because we get more taxi drivers or cheaper ethnic food?
Fred in PA
Nov 25 2018 at 10:50pm
Kurt;
FactCheck.org has a long piece on the debate over higher (or lower) crime rates among illegal immigrants. My conclusion after reading it is that illegal immigrants likely lower a community’s incidence of major crime. That article is here;
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/is-illegal-immigration-linked-to-more-or-less-crime/
Jon Murphy
Nov 25 2018 at 11:10pm
Given far more people are murdered by natives, does this necessarily imply government should then limit births as well?
Hazel Meade
Nov 27 2018 at 12:25pm
This might seem like a crazy idea, but what if we could have like a free trade agreement for immigration? As in, a free migration agreement, but only with certain countrirs, so if americans want to move to (say) canada or the uk yo work or live, they can do so without a visa and vice versa. You could even separate this from citizenship and voting rights.
By pursuing bilateral migration agreement we can harness the interests of people in the us who.want to be able to live and work in other countries agaonst those who want protection from immigrant competition. In the same way that free tradd agreements harness the interests of exporters against conpanies that want to be protected from domestic competition.
Mark Bahner
Nov 28 2018 at 12:06am
I don’t think there’s ever going to be a way to sell illegal immigration. It seems to me the best way to sell more immigration is to switch to merit-based immigration.
Hazel Meade
Nov 28 2018 at 1:02pm
I would be happy to replace the labor certification part of the employment sponsorship with a merit system. Instead of having to prove there is no American who can do the same job, with the complex process of advertising and interviewing people employers have no intention of hiring, you just require certain minimum credentials. Let employers hire whoever they want, above a minimum skill level.
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