Thanks to unrestricted
immigration, the United States of America went from being an insignificant
colonial backwater in the 18th century to being the largest world
economy in the early 20th century. Other countries such as
Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Argentina, Chile, and Canada were places where
economic success was, in part, due to large scale immigration attracted by a
relatively high degree of freedom. Conversely, the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain in the late 15th century did the Spanish economy no favours at
all. However, these are empirical, economic arguments in favour of open borders
and free immigration. Many sound economic arguments have been made in favour of
open borders, and many dubious economic arguments have been made against them. What
this short article specifically seeks to examine are a few of the most
important moral, non-economic arguments for and against open borders.
This
article argues that only open borders and free immigration is consistent with
libertarian philosophy and respect for the individual. However, I hope that
even the non-libertarian reader will find reason to reconsider his or her
stance on immigration after having read it.
To start with
the basic premises, consider the following two assertions:
A) No person
should be punished if that person has done nothing wrong, and
B) People
should be free to voluntarily interact with whomever they please.
Anyone who
can subscribe to these two principles must logically agree that migration
across national borders must be free and unrestricted. I will seek to explain
why this is so in the following.
Should a
person be stopped by the state from crossing a national border, principles A)
and B) will immediately be violated in the following ways:
Re. A): With
immigration restrictions, people who have broken no law in the country they
wish to enter are punished by being stopped at the border. Whatever their
purpose of crossing the border – a business trip, a holiday, long-term
settlement, or escape from persecution – being stopped at the border means that
their quest to live a better and more fulfilling life is curtailed to a lesser
or greater extent. The vast majority of prospective immigrants are decent individuals who have
committed no crime – neither technically nor morally - and they are not the
tide of subhuman, criminal scum that opponents of open borders make them out to
be. Most of them have not violated any rights of others prior to entering the
country of their destination and having a law forbidding their entry into the
country is therefore unjust. Not only because most of them are law-abiding but
also because of that.
Re. B): The
rights of the people in the destination country who would like to employ, socialise
with, or do business with the prospective immigrant are also violated. Employers
are denied the best candidates for the positions they wish to fill. Friends or
family within the country who wish to see the immigrant in question are prevented
from doing so. Taxi drivers, hotel owners, and shopkeepers, etc, who would like
to sell their products and services to the immigrant, are equally prevented
from doing so.
So if one
does not agree with the notion that national borders should be open (or, even
better, abolished), it must follow that one accepts that the rights of innocent
individuals wishing to enter a country are violated, and accepts that the
rights of residents wishing to see the immigrants or do business with or employ
them are also violated.
Now, are
there any moral objections to free immigration that are so substantial that they
justify the violation of the rights of the above individuals on both sides of
the border? There are a few, but as I will try to show in the following these
are not sufficient or even relevant seen from a libertarian point of view.
One objection that
is particularly relevant in the United States where there are many illegal
immigrants is that the illegal immigrants are criminals simply by virtue of having
broken the immigration law. Technically, this is correct. However, obeying
unjust law (such as the one forbidding entry into a country) is not a virtue in
itself. Many laws throughout the ages have been unjust and have deserved to be
broken. The tax law that resulted in the Boston Tea Party, and the US alcohol
prohibition of 1920-33 come to mind. Therefore, in moral terms illegal
immigrants are not criminals and should not be treated as such. On the
contrary, in terms of morality the lawmakers who create the laws that violate
the rights of the prospective immigrants are the real criminals.
The one objection
to immigration that I most often hear in Europe is that the immigrants will be
a drain on public funds (i.e. government or state funds) and that their
presence therefore constitutes a violation of the rights of the taxpayers of the
country in question. At first glance this is a valid objection. But where does
the fault lie? Assuming that the immigrant will indeed be a net drain on the
public funds – which is by no means certain – is the immigrant to blame for legally
benefitting from the system of forced redistribution (i.e. taxation and
government spending) that has been designed by the existing inhabitants? Or
does the fault lie with the system itself and the people who created it and who
continue to support it?
Although
all the voters of the country should not be held collectively responsible for
the actions of the political majority that created and continue to maintain a
system of forced redistribution, the chances that any one inhabitant carries
some responsibility for the existence of the system are definitely higher than
the chances that the prospective immigrant has any responsibility for the
existence of the system, since the latter chances are zero (as prospective
immigrants have had no right to vote in the country that they have yet to enter).
Therefore, it would seem less unfair (less unfair, although still not fair) to
punish the inhabitants for the existence of the system of forced redistribution
than it would be to punish prospective immigrants who carry no responsibility
whatsoever for the creation of that system. Not punishing anyone unjustly is,
unfortunately, not an option as long as a system of forced redistribution such
as a welfare state is in place. But at least one should not punish those who
one can be certain bear no responsibility for the creation and continued
existence of the system.
The moral
absurdity of banning someone from immigrating just because they may one day
become a drain on the public finances can be illustrated by a few parallels:
Can it be morally justified to make pre-emptive arrests of people who may sometime
in the future try to evade taxes? Or to ban women from giving birth because the
child may one day grow up to become a net recipient of public funds? As this
shows, there is clearly no sane moral argument for stopping immigrants at the
border solely on the grounds that they may at some time in the future become a
financial liability to the taxpayer.
So why do
we see ideological inconsistency among some people who call themselves
libertarian but who show by their stance on the issue of immigration that they
are not? The only obvious explanation – an explanation, not an excuse – is that
many people harbour an instinctive and all-too-human aversion against
foreigners and people who are different. What distinguishes academics in the
social sciences and moral philosophers from ordinary people in this regard is
merely that the former two try to justify their gut-feelings by using more
complex and supposedly “objective” reasoning. But sorry xenophobes who have no
scruples in legitimising national borders by empowering the state to keep
foreigners away from them, can never and should never be described as
libertarians.
Thanks are due to Prof. Ken Schoolland, Prof.
Walter E. Block, Prof. David D. Friedmann, and Mr. Anthony Gregory for their
crucial contributions to the libertarian debate on immigration. Thanks are
definitely NOT due to Prof. Hans-Hermann Hoppe for almost single-handedly
having led a large number of budding libertarians to mistakenly believe that it
is possible to be against open borders and be libertarians at the same time.