The Libertarian Argument Against Open Immigration
I personally support much more open immigration, as do many other libertarians. When I get push-back from my libertarian friends, it generally is on two fronts:
- You can't combine open immigration with a welfare state -- this leads to financial implosion
- Open immigration allows illiberal, anti-democratic people to take power through the democratic process (a phrase I stole from here, though it is not actually about immigration). In the name of liberty, we let people come in and vote for authoritarian illiberal measures.**
I agree that both of these are real problems. The key for me is to disassociate legal presence in this country from citizenship. It should certainly be possible to have multiple flavors of legal presence in this country. At level 1, anyone can legally be present, seek employment, buy property, and have access to certain services (e.g. emergency services). At level 2, history of working and paying payroll and income taxes gets more access to welfare-state sort of programs. Over time, this may or may not lead to full citizenship and voting rights, but there is no reason we can't still be careful with handing out full citizenship while being relatively free with allowing legal work and habitation.
** I have observed a US internal version of this. People run away from California to places like Arizona and Texas to escape California's dis-functionality But as soon as they arrive in their new home, they start voting for the exact same crap that sank California.
"pure libertarians" means I do understand there are variants but I do not know where the line is crossed where some variants consider national borders as something they agree should keep out other people.
Lot's of good arguments here, but I'm not seeing the elephant in the room. Illegal immigration is primarily from Mexico and points south. Once legalized, these people and their descendants are eligible for all sorts of affirmative action preferences that are closed to me and my descendants. So, amnesty consists of awarding unconstitutional extra rights to people with no concept of classic American values while discriminating directly against my children while sticking them with the bill. I believe some of the words which describe this situation are "colonization" and "invasion". How'd that work out for the Aztecs?
No actually, until you mentioned it I was not aware that foreign nationals were subject to the draft in the US and I know considerably less about conscription rules in other countries. I just wanted to know if you had anything to back your claim about conscription rules in Germany.
Your number 2 is not an immigration problem. It's a problem with enforcing voting requirements. As long as the requirements aren't properly enforced legal immigrants are just as much a problem as illegals.
Citizens living in places like San Francisco that tacitly approve of non-citizen voting should sue on the grounds that this violates their rights.
TL;DR
I posted above from the website of a German state explaining the Policy. Foriegner are not conscripted. German citizens are - but many nowadays do their work at hospitals, and homeless shelters animal rescue ... instead of actually joining the military.
Anyway, here it is again. (english version - nice thing about the Euro Union, they need to do all their stuff in 3 languages)
http://sachsen.de/en/1459.htm
Do you think any group is a homogenous blob?
"The key for me is to disassociate legal presence in this country from citizenship. “
And how have your researches into “metics” proceeded? I’m curious.
No. We're not referring to anarchists, who would assume the orderly process would spontaneously occur somehow. It's pretty basic that people immigrate for work, and that borders represent an artificial barrier to free markets.
This is a great point. By allowing people to escape the deplorable conditions in their homeland we provide a pressure release for the regimes that foster those conditions. By denying entry, those thwarted from leaving might stay and fight to improve their own country. How benevolent is it to encourage people to leave their families and friends to endure those conditions? We should be working harder to influence political and economic policy in Mexico and Central America. We should act while our economy is still preeminent.
The progressive elites have already accomplished this through commandeering public school education. Many immigrants that choose to come here hold a higher opinion of our Constitution then the typical public school graduate. Who is teaching "values" to our youth?
The purpose of immigration reform is to provide retroactive justification for the the people who helped aliens illegally immigrate, illegally receive services from the social safety net intended for citizens, illegally receive educations, and illegally vote. With or without immigration reform, illegal aliens will continue to register to vote and receive services and no one will ever be prosecuted sufficiently to halt it.
Part of the problem with employers hiring illegals is that screening measures get called "racial profiling" and screamed down. Refuse to hire someone because he's highly unlikely to be a US citizen? You racist, you!
really? do you mean an illegal who an employer would refuse to hire would then seek help from the govt to make him hire him/her or get the employer charged with profiling?
something about that seems backward... hmmm...
just tell employers is you hire illegals and we catch you hiring them - we'll fine you more than ObamaCare.. !!!!