Classical Liberal Perspective on the issue of illegal immigration

[LibertyVox]

From the libertarian party homepage.
http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration


Immigration Law Should Reflect Our Dynamic Labor Market


By Daniel T. Griswold

Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.

Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.

The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.

Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs — in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism — that require only short-term, on-the-job training.

At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs — those without a high school diploma — continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.

Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration.

In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.

Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.

Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.

When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.

We've faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.

For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency.

The fatal flaw of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was not that it offered legal status to workers already here but that it made no provision for future workers to enter legally.

Immigration is not the only area of American life where a misguided law has collided with reality. In the 1920s and '30s, Prohibition turned millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans into lawbreakers and spawned an underworld of moon-shining, boot-legging and related criminal activity. (Sound familiar?) We eventually made the right choice to tax and regulate alcohol rather than prohibit it.

In the 19th century, America's frontier was settled largely by illegal squatters. In his influential book on property rights, The Mystery of Capital, economist Hernando de Soto describes how these so-called extralegals began to farm, mine and otherwise improve land to which they did not have strict legal title. After failed attempts by the authorities to destroy their cabins and evict them, federal and state officials finally recognized reality, changed the laws, declared amnesty and issued legal documents conferring title to the land the settlers had improved.

As Mr. de Soto wisely concluded: "The law must be compatible with how people actually arrange their lives." That must be a guiding principle when Congress returns to the important task of fixing our immigration laws.

------
Daniel Griswold the is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. For a copy of the original article, please visit Cato's Web site here.

[LibertyVox]

From Radical Libertarian (Anarcho-voluntaryists) website:
http://radicallibertarians.blogspot.com/2007/06/illegal-immigration-explained.html
Volunteered by Aaron Kinney

I just finished watching the GOP Presidential Debate on CNN, and these candidates are falling all over themselves trying to come off as having anything meaningful or logical to say about illegal immigration and immigration reform. Of course, none of these candidates have any clue as to the cause, effect, and solution to immigration, and it's making me sick. These candidates are all trying to hide their xenophobia by wrapping themselves in the flag and championing crappy immigration laws. So I thought that I could shed some light on the topic. Even though I am an anarchist, for the sake of argument in this essay I will discuss immigration under the assumption that the government is legitimate and here to stay.

First, we must identify what an "illegal immigrant" is in the context of US law: An illegal immigrant is a person who lives in the USA but wasn't born there, and therefore the government says, "you can't be here."

Another important fact to note about “illegal” immigrants is that it is not them who choose to be "illegal." The “illegal” label is applied to them by the government; they do not deliberately apply it to themselves. When immigrants come to the US, they do so out of need and desperation. They do not have the money to spend nor the time to waste for the "legal" US hoop jumping process to obtain citizenship. In most cases, if these immigrants went through the US government process for citizenship, they would never be able to obtain it due to the financial and timeframe obstacles that the government sets in their way.

If the government did not set big financial and timeframe obstacles in the way of immigrants, and if the government did not have an annual cap on the number of immigrants that can come over, then the number of illegal immigrants, of course, would plummet. The immigrants would not be forced to stay in the shadows and live outside the system. Immigrants are more than happy to embrace the system and live above the board if the government would just open its arms.

Do immigrants "steal" jobs? No. They make jobs! Immigrants are overwhelmingly hard workers, and most of them work at a lower pay than their born-in-the-USA counterparts. That translates directly to job creation and lower consumer prices. Immigrants stimulate the economy, and that's a fact. One of the big reasons that the USA has been so economically prosperous is because of these immigrants coming here and working at lower wages.

I should note here that the main reason that the low-skilled immigrants get paid less than low-skilled US natives is directly because of these immigration laws. Without such barriers, these low-skilled immigrants would likely get paid the same as their US counterparts. However, even if the low-skilled immigrants got paid the same as the low-skilled US natives (which in all honesty is the only moral possibility), it would still stimulate the economy because these immigrants would then have just as much spending power as their US native counterparts. This means that the immigrants could spend more money on products and services and therefore stimulate more productivity. It also means that the children of these immigrants would be more likely to achieve a higher education and become high-skilled workers, entrepeneurs, and other leaders and pillars of society.

While most immigrants that come to the US are low-skilled, there are some that come here who are high-skilled. And the only reason that they come here is because of all the US companies trying to hard to recruit them! It is well known (perhaps among US companies more than anybody) that the US is suffering a shortage of high-skilled workers in many sectors. This not only limits the quantity and quality of services available to consumers, but it also raises prices for these services, and therefore hurts the consumer and the economy. These high-skilled immigrants are just as valuable to the US economy as the low-skilled immigrants, if not more so.

The fact of the matter is that there is a worker shortage in the US, both for high-skilled and low-skilled workers. If there wasn't, then there wouldn't be so many immigrants flocking here! The main reason that there are so many immigrants coming to the US year after year, decade after decade, is because there are still so many human resource shortages in the US. Natives of the US may have a worldwide reputation as being lazy, but it simply isn't so, and the proof is in the economic numbers. US workers are so productive, both in quality and quantity of work, that they create more jobs than they can fill! From janitors to nurses, from carpenters to computer programmers, the US is experiencing a worker shortage.

The main reason that illegal immigrants have been coming to the US for so long is because our appetite for workers has still not been satisfied. The obstacles blocking legal immigration, combined with the difficulty of illegally moving here (fences, border patrols, etc), has slowed the flow of workers to where it cannot keep up with the demand. That is why, for example, that Mexicans and South Americans have been coming here for over a decade: they keep finding jobs!

One of the concerns among anti-immigrant groups is the "flood" theory. They worry that open immigration would bring a flood of immigrants to the US. This is true, but only to an extent. An open immigration policy would surely cause a huge influx of immigrants initially, but this flooding would not be sustained for long. This is because an open immigration policy would allow the US worker appetite to be satisfied. Once the jobs in the US became adequately filled, there would no longer be an incentive for more immigrants to come here. Instead, the immigrants would have to look towards other countries for job opportunities. Immigrants don't flock to the US because of our culture, or our welfare system, or anything else. They only come here for our job opportunities.

Anti-immigration advocates also claim that immigrants "take our jobs." As I explained earlier, this is not the case. But at this point I would like to point out an additional refutation: In an open immigration country, as soon as an immigrants moves here, they become a "citizen" in every meaningful sense, and therefore they are no more "taking your job" than a person who was born here.

Oftentimes, the same people who attack immigration are the same people who attack job outsourcing. These anti-immigration/anti-outsourcing advocates complain that both immigration to the US and job outsourcing by US companies take jobs from US citizens. Of course, a quick review of the facts shows that their argument is fatally flawed.

We have already seen that immigration does not "take" US jobs. But what of job outsourcing? It is true that outsourcing takes jobs directly from US citizens. However, this is not the whole story. Outsourcing by US companies also lowers prices for US consumers, which indirectly creates jobs. Also, one must look at outsourcing from a cause and effect perspective. One must ask "why are US jobs being outsourced?" And the answer is that these jobs are overpaid in the US. If a man in India can perform a task just as good as a man in the US but for half the cost, why not give the job to the Indian? While the US citizen may lose his job, an Indian citizen gains a job. Is a human being born in the US really entitled to a job more than a human born in India? And what argument can possibly be mounted to justify "job protectionism" in the form of paying a US citizen more money for work that can be done in India for less? And what of the consumer's interests? Is it more important to protect an overpaid job, or is it more important to reduce an over inflated consumer price?

Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, is famous for paying his employees higher wages than was common at the time, with the rationalization that it would translate to more car sales. Not only was he right, but the same argument applies to outsourcing. For example, US business sell their products and services in China, but they are currently out of financial reach for most Chinese citizens. So what could possibly be more effective at reducing the trade deficit with China than increasing the purchasing power of the Chinese citizen? The products and services sold by US companies are relatively high cost globally, and are therefore out of reach for many global consumers. And as I explained earlier, the main reason that US goods and services are too expensive globally is because it costs so much to pay the US workers that make them. Job outsourcing would do two things to alleviate this problem: first, it would lower the cost of US goods and services, and secondly, it would increase the purchasing power of consumers living outside the US. These two factors would reduce unfavorable trade deficits and broaden the worldwide customer base for US companies.

Anti-immigration advocates fixate their arguments on wages. All they can do is worry about the possibility of jobs being lost and wages declining. Amusingly, they fail to see the flip side: decreased consumer prices. It does not matter that Eddie Punchclock gets paid 25% less if his spending costs drop 35%. The United States is known as a country of consumers, and spending money is a time-honored US tradition, perhaps unmatched by any other society. Us citizens love to buy tons of shit, myself included. But why can we buy so much stuff? Because we get paid so much? Not really, because if it weren’t for foreign products, foreign services, and foreign workers, US consumer prices would be high enough to offset the higher pay that US workers receive. The purchasing power of a consumer does not depend solely on their wages as a worker. What it actually depends on is the gap between consumer prices and employee wages. The bigger the gap, the more purchasing power a consumer has.

Anti-immigration advocates warned us for years about the damage to the US economy that would take place if manufacturing jobs were to evaporate. Well, those jobs have evaporated quite a bit, yet we are still faring quite well as consumers. If you look at the average US home, you will see Japanese electronics, Korean cars, and Chinese furnishings, all in greater quality and quantity than when these products were made in the US. These imported products perform better and cost less, and the average US citizen is better off as a result.

It is clear that anti-immigration advocates are wrong on all counts. They oppose open immigration and job outsourcing to the detriment of both the US company and the US consumer. If we were to stop both immigration and outsourcing, what option is left to the US economy? How is the US company to staff its jobs? How is the US consumer to obtain his goods and services? What possible benefit can economic isolationism provide, other than to pander to the xenophobic fears of its supporters?

The arguments of anti-immigration advocates are, sadly, without merit. Their arguments do not stand up to logical or economic analysis. Immigration is just a phenomenon of economics, and the best thing to do is to just let it happen. The only problem with "illegal immigrants" are the laws themselves that make these immigrants illegal.

[Jace]

Bring on the North American Union!

[LibertyVox]

From a classical liberal website and one to which Dr. RP is a regular contributor

Property Rights, Liberty, and Immigration (long but informative)


Libertarian philosophy is based on the concept of self-ownership. Human beings own themselves. When we rightfully acquire property, either by making first claim to that property (homesteading) or through voluntary transfer with another person or persons, that property becomes part of our lives, and thus we lay claim to ownership of that property as we would our own bodies.

One of the problems that libertarians encounter when discussing various issues is determining ownership, or, in many cases, articulating the nuances of applying property rights to the issue. These problems are compounded when government is thrown into the equation since the same rules about property and ownership that apply to private individuals do not apply to coercive government. The hot-button issue of immigration is a great example, illustrating the complexities involved in applying property rights to an issue.

Ownership means that one not only possess something, but one also controls the thing. In other words, if you truly own something, you must be free to use the thing as you wish so long as doing so does not violate the property of others. You must also be free to transfer the thing to another person so long as the transaction is voluntary and consensual. When it comes to land, property rights, i.e. control over that land, include controlling who enters into the boundaries of the land.

When dealing with the topic of immigration, that is, the movement of individuals across political designations, this is where things get confusing. The State claims not only to be able to control who crosses the land that it owns, but also to control who enters land owned by private individuals. It also claims the authority to prohibit certain individuals from living within its borders, even if these individuals acquired their land rightfully (using the criteria above) by homesteading or through voluntary exchange. Those of us who believe that private property is the basis of a free society must ask: how was this authority engendered?

f we continue along this line of thinking, the logical conclusion must be that the State owned all the land within its borders a priori since it is the government which sets the conditions for how that land may be used, and to whom it may be transferred in the future. The State continues to retain a high degree of control since the government has the ultimate authority to make the rules for all property, even property now in private hands.*

To the libertarian, or anyone who believes in the sanctity of property rights, these conclusions are quite troubling. When it comes to land ownership in America, property rights are not at all secure; they are not really rights at all, but government granted privileges.

While our system of property rights is already imperfect, the current immigration policy leads to even greater infringements on these rights. For example, if one owns property on or near the border, the government may claim the authority to build a fence or a wall on one’s property, and government agents may come and go as they please without the property owner’s permission.

These problems remain even if we move away from the border. For example, if the government suspects that I am employing undocumented workers, it claims the authority to raid my business – to enter my property without my permission – with armed agents.

If one truly owns one’s property, how is it that the government can control who is allowed on this property in opposition to the wishes of the property owner? In other words, why should my friend from Mexico beg for permission to enter the country in order to have dinner with me? Shouldn’t free people be able to associate or not associate with whomever they wish so long as those interactions are voluntary, consensual, and do not harm a third party?

The same is true of economic activities. So long as commercial activities are voluntary, consensual, and do not encroach upon other individuals or their property, what is the justification for the government prohibiting these activities or associations?

In the contemporary world of immigration politics, property rights and the freedom of association are trumped by the omnipotent State. Is the State some sort of god before whom we must plead to recognize us as "official" persons? After all, that is the crux of the immigration question – must the individuals coming to America have the sanction of the State? As the State continues to lose legitimacy in the eyes of so many in the liberty movement, one wonders why many of these same folks still demand that individuals who peacefully come to this country seek the State’s approval above all else. After all, it is the State that determines who is "legal" and "illegal."

Now one may argue that despite all this, illegal immigration is a crime and as such must be punished. The question is, who is the victim of this crime? So long as the immigrant has not harmed another individual or violated another individual’s property, who has suffered injury? Just like so many other "crimes," this activity is a crime against the State, and should fall into the category of victimless crime. While such activity may violate State edicts, it can hardly be considered a crime in the sense that no individual was harmed by the activity.

When dealing with laws restricting the movement of human beings, we should keep in mind Thomas Paine’s prophetic observation: "he that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Demanding that the government "do something" about illegal immigration will result in bigger, more intrusive government and less freedom for all of us.

Already efforts ostensibly aimed at illegal immigration undermine the ability of Americans to travel freely in our own country. In the Southwest, the Border Patrol has built permanent checkpoints well inside the United States, located along major travel routes like I-35. All travelers must exit the freeway and be processed by ICE agents, including questioning and possible searches. Since federal agents operating in this geographic area are not constrained by the probable cause standard of the Fourth Amendment, there is no protection against arbitrary searches and seizures even for American citizens. This fact has prompted the ACLU to declare the areas within 100 miles of America’s borders as "Constitution Free Zones."

In addition, in some of the airports in this area including Laredo, TX and Tucson, AZ, travelers are subject not only to the indignities of TSA searches but also questioning by ICE agents about their citizenship.

To believe that a government program targeting a specific group of people will not affect everyone in general is naïve and contrary to history. If nothing else, the government faces the problem of determining if an individual belongs to the target group. No one, not even a government agent, has the magical ability to determine one’s nationality simply by looking at him. For example, during the 1950s an aunt of mine, a third generation American, was denied service at a restaurant in New Mexico because she was dark complected and, despite her French and German ancestry, it was assumed that she was a Mexican. If someone has dark skin and Hispanic features, are we automatically to assume that he is an illegal alien? Likewise, what about light-skinned folks who may be here illegally? Will they simply fall through the cracks?

For these reasons, the government will demand to know the legal status of everyone. In other words, it will not be up to the government to prove that one is here illegally. It will be up to you to prove otherwise. That is why Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham are proposing a biometric national ID card for all Americans. You see, the government has a compelling need to know who you are, to put your information into another database, and to determine if you are "eligible" to work here. De facto work permits for Americans in America?! Nice. I’m sure it would never cross the mind of any politician to turn off the work permits of his political enemies.

The answer to the immigration debate is the same as it is to all other issues – more freedom, not more government. Instead of asking the government to crack down on immigration, we should recognize that it is government programs and interventions that are the problem and demand that the government cease these activities.

Unfortunately, while recognizing the problems that government causes in so many other areas, many folks, especially conservatives, apply a double-standard when it comes to immigration. For example, while conservatives rightly blasted ObamaCare pointing out that it will result in the nationalization of the health care system, these same people lament how immigrants are destroying "our" hospitals. They are not "our" hospitals; they are, or at least should be, private businesses which should be able to exclude anyone from receiving their services, but are restricted from doing so by government edict. Likewise, we hear that immigrants are overwhelming the public education system, yet conservative icon Ronald Reagan advocated disbanding the Department of Education and, at a federal level anyway, getting the government out of the education business.

Finally, we have social welfare. It is the existence of government welfare programs that are much of the problem, attracting people to this country who wish to live off the labor of others. Eliminate these programs and you eliminate this problem.

When you empower the government to do something, the government often ends up using these powers in ways that you do not foresee or intend. And it may end up using these powers against you. In the preface to her novel Anthem, Ayn Rand lambasted socialists for not recognizing or taking responsibility for the consequences of the policies that they advocated, ‘they expect, when they find themselves in a world of bloody ruins and concentration camps to escape the moral responsibility by wailing: "But I didn’t mean this!"’

As the United States continues its war on immigration, the government is building the infrastructure for a police state – internal checkpoints, national ID cards, work permits. When we wake up in that police state, will the anti-immigration crowd cry: "But I didn’t mean this!"

*Unfortunately, there is much truth to these statements since land titles in the United States are based on a relic of the feudal system, fee simple, meaning that while one can have an "interest" in one’s land, the land is actually owned by the government, i.e. the government has dominium eminens or supreme lordship.

[LibertyVox]

http://www.lewrockwell.com/jacobs/jacobs9.1.1.html

[AuH20]

Noted anarcho-capitalist Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes the case for free trade and restricted immigration:

http://mises.org/journals/jls/13_2/13_2_8.pdf

[Seraphim]

Bring on the North American Union!

It's already here. It just not official. The final step to usher it in is the collapse of the USD. Don't know when it will happen, but it is very likely that it will.