In discussing immigration, I got this response. “But why do you support open borders? Don’t you see this border crisis we have? We can’t support more illegal immigration! It has to be legal! There are not enough jobs here as it is! And what about the welfare costs? We don’t have a country if we don’t have a border! It’s called national sovereignty! Plus, immigrants are stealing our jobs!”
Those are all important issues.
There IS a border crisis principally because we don’t have easy, open, rational immigration policies. Restrictive policies on immigration are the chief cause of this current crisis, and they are based on the premise that it is the government that should manage the makeup of who can come to America to pursue their dreams. Hence to solve the border crisis, one must first challenge that underlying premise and replace it with a life-serving moral premise. Then create rational policies that support it.
The current underlying premise, that it’s ok for the government to deny immigration because a person is born in a certain country, is another variation of collectivism, wherein decisions are made based on a person’s place of birth, or race, or gender, all of which are not in a person’s control, and all of which have nothing to do with the “content of their character.”2
This premise and subsequent policies together are the root cause of the tragedies that have become political fodder and sensationalism in the news.
An Immigrant’s Story
Here is a video describing some of the effects of the current immigration system. The Immorality of the U.S. Immigration System. It’s hard to imagine the irrationality of it all.
Bad Morality Begets Bad Policy
The immigration policies of this country are totally unjust, and have been for decades, and not just under recent Presidents. Congress could fix it, but they have refused to do so because they agree that the government should manage the make-up of the country’s population, deciding how many from what countries are allowed in and how many with different skills are allowed in.
There are so many tragic consequences of the resulting irrational immigration policies, but here are three examples that continue to be in the headlines. Details of these examples are in each of the links.
1. The horrors at the Southern border with children being separated from their parents (under both Obama and Trump).
2. Labor shortages of agriculture workers.
3. Labor shortages of technical workers.
Based on the underlying premise, we have a government policy that doesn’t make sense and the government continues to tinker and “manage” who is admitted to America. Further, due to its nature, the subsequent non-objective policies that follow from the premise engenders biases against or for certain countries, ethnicities, skills, etc.
One of the stated principles of the current immigration policies is “… admitting immigrants with skills that are valuable to the U.S. economy …” A result is that there are ceilings of various skill categories. How on earth can the government decide what skills are valuable? If a company makes an offer to a potential employee, then de facto, the skill the person has is valuable and contributes to the economy. End of story.
This convolution is not recent. A prejudicial reaction against immigrants called “nativism” has reared its ugly head throughout American history. For example, a mid-19th century common feature of newspaper want-ads for jobs ended with “Irish Need Not Apply.” In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning Chinese laborers from immigrating, in effect excluding an entire ethnic group from America. Fortunately, the Act has since been repealed.
It is NOT the government’s job to manage the economy by selecting favored skills or to manage the ethnic make-up of the country’s population by selecting favored countries. It IS the government’s job to protect our rights – through the police to protect us from criminals, through the armed forces to protect us from foreign invaders, and through the courts to adjudicate conflicts.
Those who say “why don’t they do it legally” are ignorant of the actual situation, including severe limitations and quotas. And yes, unfortunately, some may object to “illegality” when what they really object to are people different from themselves.
It now takes years and thousands of dollars to become a legal resident and citizen of the United States. In the early 20th century, it took a few hours to process immigrants. Before that there were no restrictions on immigration.
There are two major related moral issues involved: the right to travel and the right to enter into a voluntary relationship with an employer.
Free Mobility
Free mobility is a birthright of all humans. This doesn’t mean that someone must furnish travel to them. It also doesn’t mean you are free to trespass on private property without permission.
Rather it does mean that people should be free to go wherever and whenever they wish, without governmental coercion to prevent travel. Just as one should be free to go from Texas to Oklahoma without government restrictions, so should one be free to go from Ireland or Mexico to America without restrictive quotas and burdensome requirements.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness require mobility. The right to life means your right to take the actions which your survival requires, free from coercion and interference by other people, respecting others’ right to do the same. The right to liberty means the right to think and to act on your own judgment. The right to the pursuit of happiness means the right to live for your own sake and to choose and to work for your own personal goals.1 These rights apply to all humans due to their nature, and not just to Americans.
Being able to freely travel to achieve your goals is a necessary requirement and a direct derivative of all these fundamental rights.
Denying freedom to other human beings to pursue their own happiness just because they were born on the other side of a man-made boundary is morally wrong.
Immigrants and Jobs
Some say that immigrants “steal” jobs and we that should have restrictions to “protect American workers.” But jobs belong only to those who offer them. You can’t have a job stolen from you if you don’t own it.
“There is no such thing as ‘a right to a job’ – there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him.”1
What is the difference between someone wanting to move from Oklahoma to Texas to become a citizen of Texas and pursue their employment dreams there, and someone wanting to move from Ireland or Guatemala or Ethiopia to America to become a citizen of the United States of America and pursue their employment dreams here? Absolutely none!
If a company and a potential employee agree on the terms and conditions of a work relationship, does it matter where the person lives or where the person comes from? It doesn’t! To deny or restrict such a relationship violates the rights of both the potential employee and the company to enter into a voluntary agreement. Any relationship between consenting adults that does not involve force or fraud is strictly their business and no one else’s, including the government. Each of the parties perceives they will benefit and anticipate that it will be a win-win situation.
If there is a job that you want, then go after it and offer your skills and services under terms and conditions that make you the most attractive applicant to an employer. You have to compete for the job, and not ask for protectionist governmental regulations.
If you oppose easy immigration because of the potential problems with welfare and entitlements, you are making an excellent argument against welfare and entitlements for anyone. But that’s a separate matter for another discussion.
Rational Immigration Policies and Open Borders
- “Give me your tired, your poor,
- Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
- The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
- Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
- I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
- … Emma Lazarus, Statue of Liberty
What to do now?
As long as someone does not have a criminal record, is healthy, and can either be self-supportive or have a sponsor, they should be freely admitted, with no quotas of any kind.
Specifically…
- Repeal all laws restricting immigration.
- Do away with all quotas, visas, green-cards, and the like.
- Make open immigration the law of the land.
- Establish an objective screening process at designated points of entry along the U.S. borders that would be based on the following criteria:
- Accept those people …
- who are without a criminal record,
- who are healthy. and
- who are either self-supportive, or have a sponsor (person or organization).
- Turn away (or detain) …
- criminals,
- enemies of America, and
- people with certain kinds of contagious diseases.
- Accept those people …
- Grant unconditional amnesty to all so-called “illegal” immigrants who satisfy the above requirements.
References
- “Man’s Rights,” The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
- Quote from “I have a dream speech” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photo Credits
- Immigrants entering country: The New York Public Library on Unsplash
- Bad morality begets bad policy: John Davis
- Free mobility is a birthright of all humans: John Davis
- Statue of Liberty: Svetlana B from Pexels
- Immigrants becoming citizens: Unknown author licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
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As you are probably aware, many discussions on this topic are sometimes unfriendly and contain logical fallacies. If you decide to leave a comment, or even outside of this post, if you decide to have a discussion, public or private, you might find it helpful to follow the suggestions on my post How to have a successful discussion.