A Question for Immigration Restrictionists
The current refugee surge into Europe has caused a lot of my friends who are immigration restrictionists to say this proves that I am naive.
During the Cold War, we (including most Conservatives) considered it immoral that Communist countries would not let their people leave (Berlin Wall, etc.). Now, however, it is argued by many of these same folks that it is imperative that the Western democracies build walls to keep people out.
So here is a question -- not of practical consequences, but of pure morality. Consider this picture of people being prevented from crossing the border.
Explain to me why this scene is immoral if the wall and police forces were put there by the country at the right (the leaving country) but suddenly moral if the same wall with the same police force were put there by the country on the left (the receiving country). Don't they have exactly the same effect? Same wall -- How are they different?
In those examples the migrants didn't recreate their former conditions because they weren't the people who caused them in their original homelands; merely victims of ruling classes who didn't care about them.
I'm willing to believe the same of Christian and Jewish refugees from the Middle East -- but not of Muslims. History shows Muslims do enact Sharia law, which is the cause of their present problems, and will do it again here.
Characterizing would-be border crossers as "invading irregulars" is only valid if they're bearing arms. I see guns in that photo, but the crowd trying to cross doesn't have any of them.
They certainly are fighting for their families and freedom right now, against the bullies on the left!
That depends what you mean by "politically easier". California voters passed Prop 187 (to deny benefits to illegal immigrants) by a 2/3 margin, but the federal courts struck it down. So no US jurisdiction is going to be able to do this unless they first amend the Constitution (or at least appoint some pliable Supreme Court justices).
The proper remedy for Democratic policies stripping us of our rights is to appoint a Supreme Court that will uphold our rights against any vote. But that seems unlikely. A non-Democrat President might appoint good ones, but it will take constitutional change to make it so the Court need not fear packing the next time the Democrats control Congress (which is what forced Chief Justice Roberts to cave on ObamaCare).
Exactly!
Yeah, but we do. Or, at least, we don't actively exclude immigrants from participating in our culture and our country. We don't keep them living here for generations as an underclass of people who can never assimilate, become citizens, etc. So to compare a European immigration experience to an American one is to practice a false analogy.
Is this a joke? You can call it "the government is an owner of all property in the nation" if you want, but yes the government (federal, state and local) gets to limit what you can do on property and how you use it. If you have never heard of this type of thing, please go study up on zoning laws, public nuisance laws, environmental regulation, OSHA, and a host of other laws.
Yes, I agree. The government is acting like it owns all private property and can overrule private decisions.
"The country is like private property and government is the landlord" is an argument some quasi-libertarians make against immigration. But as you explained, this sort of thinking is not libertarian and justifies essentially any government rules and regulations. So the "trespassing" rationale for restricting immigration is anti-libertarian.
OK, at least we are talking the same language here.
I've seen your arguments below saying that the government acting on behalf of all of its citizens and citizens collectively owning certain rights in property is communistic. Maybe so. But do you agree that all property owners take their property subject to all prior burdens or restrictions placed on such property by the prior owner? For example, if you purchase a piece of land and it has an easement on it, you purchase that land subject to that easement (unless you can get the owner of the easement to give it up). So, all property in the USA is subject to the burdens on it that were put in place by prior owners. These prior owners decided to burden their property by granting certain rights to the state government in which the property is located. Those states then entered into a document known as the Constitution of the United States of America. Everything you are arguing against flow from those decisions. And pointing to even earlier owners (i.e. Native Americans) gets you nowhere, as the property has long since be adversely possessed (literally and legally).
Your arguments amount to a request that all citizens agree to release certain rights that they possess (i.e. their right to enforce restrictions on other property). And, so far, they have declined to do so.
Easement is an ownership interest in real property, so I see this as explicit agreement with my argument. And in fact it's a nonpossessory property interest, similar to a landlord or HOA, so it looks a lot like my previous arguments.
This easement is so broad that it empowers governments to make peremptory decisions decades or centuries after the easement came into being (i.e. total blank check obedience to all government authority, which looks less like an easement and more like feudal submission).
Can you provide the vehicle for the creation of the universal
easement, or are you trying to be metaphorical? Normally we need to see the creation of the easement to see its terms. I don't know that it's reasonable to think submission to a government in the 1790s could be expected to include submission to rules and laws centuries later that were entirely unanticipated at the time. Without the creation terms, setting down the breadth and details of the owners' submission, I don't think this is a very helpful way to describe the government's authority.
My argument is that the "private property" analogy is not libertarian because it entails a blank check to government akin to making the government the true owner of all US real property. So frankly, arguing that government is akin to a landlord, a condo association, a homeowners' association, or an easement holder is all the same - it agrees that in regulating immigration, the government is acting as though it owns all private property and can override the decisions of the deed holders.
Not all easements are written and recorded in the property records. I can acquire an easement through adverse possession. Also, the explicit terms of the restrictions are set forth in the Constitution and its interpretation provisions (Article III courts) are also set forth. It does ultimately amount to a blank check (subject to certain restrictions such as the takings clause in the 5th amendment), but those are the terms under which all private property is held in the United States. Well, that and any additional terms set forth in a state constitution. All of the laws spring from those two sources (I will ignore natural law for these purposes).
That is the deal that ALL societies have and will have, everywhere and forever. The deal is - property owners give up some rights to the collective and the collective agrees to protect the remaining property rights from those that which to infringe on the remaining property rights. That is basic libertarian thinking too. Otherwise how do you justify police and the military?
By the way, I think it is more that a little ironic that if libertarians got their way and the US adopted an open borders policy, that in very short order you would end up with a significantly more socialist/communist government in this country. Sometimes it makes sense to lose a battle so you can win the war.
Right, so we agree that immigration law is based on the collective authority of the government, meaning it is not justified through libertarian first principles about individuals defending their individual rights.
A lot of people argue that open borders would result in a country that voted in socialism. Almost nobody who argues this point also argues that we must run rigorous ideological tests of existing citizens and politicians, even though as voters and office-holders this population is far more able to wield political influence. In fact, open socialist Bernie Sanders is more popular among educated white Democrats
and the moderate-progressive Hillary Clinton is far more popular among Hispanic Democrats. I think it's fair to say that this sort of "open borders leads to socialist voters" argument is tossed out as a cheap add-on, only half-formed, by people who are already persuaded by other considerations.
Nobody ever argues that voting and free speech must be curtailed in order to protect freedom, even though these things are much more necessary to voting in socialism than immigration is.
I think immigration law is the expression of popular will as expressed by the elected representatives of the citizens. I find this constant refrain of "the government" that you and others are using here to be interesting. You seem to try to turn the government into something over which you have no input. Do you all reject that we live in a republic?
Also, I don't understand your "curtail freedom to protect freedom" argument. The only necessary precondition to vote in socialism is that more people want it than don't. We may think they are stupid for wanting it, but that's the way it is.
It seems to me that the origin of the right to form a national government is the right of revolution as spelt out (and as limited) in John Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Certainly Jefferson and the other writers of the Declaration of Independence thought so, which is why most of that document is an attempt to prove that the King's usurpations were great enough and systematic enough to meet Locke's conditions for justifying a revolution.
The US Constitution certainly gives one version of what you are calling the "easement", though it was not the first even for this country, and a strong case can be made that the government has failed to keep to the limits set on it by the Constitution, at least since the New Deal, and is therefore no longer legitimate. That is what I believe.
We live in a republic that is so corrupt that "the people" effectively don't matter any more. Most voters have attention spans of one sound bite and vote for whatever their favorite TV pundit is paid to tell them to vote for.
I don't think popularity determines the ethical propriety of an action. Voting is instrumentally good because it includes more decision-makers as a check against bad decisions, but a bad decision doesn't become good as it gets more popular.
The government is its own entity. Governments allow for different levels of public comment and input, but even a popularly elected government is still a separate entity from the people it governs.
Actions are ethical or unethical on their own terms. If the government commits terrible crimes, but the crimes were popularly approved beforehand and popularly ratified in hindsight, they'd still be terrible crimes. You can think voting is a useful check on government without thinking that it ethically sanctifies the actions of a government.
Agreed strongly. A large group is less likely to approve unreasonable
(approximately = "wrong" ) actions than a smaller group or one person, but it can still happen. This is why I believe popular votes on laws are a good idea, but that they should be in addition to legislative approval, not instead of it.
Better yet would be a system where an act is illegal only if a supermajority wants it banned. Not just 50%+1.
It's refreshing to hear from an honest hypocrite once in a while. "Now that I'm in, we can pull up the drawbridge!"
They're different, obviously, because the police are on the opposite side of the wall here whereas on the same side of the wall in the other case. It's not possible that you haven't seen that distinction.
Note that the police forces of the leaving country can't reside on the property of the receiving country, so the comparison is sloppy. Moving the fenceline slightly deeper into the leaving country would just highlight the more apt analogy of the leaving country being a giant prison.
A bigger difference is the topology. A short wall segment is oversimplified: consider instead the entirety of the borders, and of the real world that consists of more than two partitions / countries. The people in the Berlin Wall scenario have nowhere to go; they are fenced in. The people in the US Wall scenario have plenty of places to go that is not the US. Another way to think about the asymmetry is property rights: In the Berlin Wall scenario, the prisoners are told "you can't have ANY other resource X". In the US Wall scenario, the foreigners are told "you can't have OUR resource X".
And of course, there remains the civic duty angle: in the Berlin Wall scenario, the policemen are supposed to be working for the interests of the people of their country, but are betraying that duty by imprisoning them instead. In the US Wall scenario, the US policement are indeed working for the interests of the people of their country. The effect on an individual person-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-wall may be similar, but one involves a betrayal, one does not.
Refugees or migrants don't have automatic privileges to enter another's land. In the case of West vs East Berlin, that didn't even arise as the West welcomed East escapees.
"This assumes that the government owns the entire country,"
No, it doesn't.
"is only valid if they're bearing arms"
Please substantiate this claim. (An elementary counterexample is an invading army that leaves its weapons home, but overwhelms the defenders by sheer volume and takes their weapons.)
Give me your address so that I can come over and see if I like your house better than mine. Be prepared to give one of your bedrooms if I do and to share the rest of your house. I'll be using your car sometimes too. If I like your job, you'll need to find another. Property ownership is completely arbitrary and has no moral weight. The doors, windows and walls should not keep people out if they want to come in. Just like they shouldn't keep people in if they don't want to be in.
Because one involves the rights of a counties citizens, and the other does not, obviously. Now if you're talking about outward immigration, you would once again be talking about a government restricting the movement of its own citizens, which is wrong. But it would be perfectly moral for another country to prohibit that same person from entering their country, since that immigrant is not a citizen of that country. Mexico does not have a right to prevent a Mexican citizen from leaving Mexico. The US does have a right to keep that same Mexican citizen from coming to the US.
It seems to me that we (you) have mixed metaphors into an unholy and toxic brew.
Let us beginning by working out what of these activities involve emigration (note, carefully, the spelling)and which involve invasion.
"why wouldn't it be wrong to lock them in from the outside?"
There is no "locking in from the outside" in the US Wall scenario. The "outside" is much larger than the US.
"Because I don't see why you're concerned about any place that migrants visit with permission."
Given that border & public-space rules are delegated permissions by the population, and function as an overlay (like an implicit boolean AND) to normal civic permissions, your focus on public spaces or permitted-private-spaces is unavailing.
As for a hypothetical functioning society where anyone may come & go, we're apprx. all on board with that dream ... with an emphasis on *functioning*. Go for it - sketch it out, make it happen, we'll help push. But the current welfare/regulatory state is not that. Surely you see that.
Ed: I assume when you use the word "immigrant," you mean that your parents went through the paperwork and legal process of being admitted into this country in accordance with law. The word "immigrant" is being redefined by one of the political parties to mean "achieving physical presence in the United States" and nothing more.
Locking only means enforcing the obstruction. I've yet to here why the location of the enforcer or the size of the areas on each side of the obstruction is ethically relevant, only flat assertions, without elaboration.
Wouldn't be simpler to just assert that both immigration and emigration may be prohibited by force, but that East Germany was wrong for other reasons (such as communist tyranny)?
This doesn't sound different from saying that the US is a de facto owner of US property.
You are re-asserting the proposition. If the question is "why X?" then the answer "because X" is not illuminating. You're just re-stating the conclusion.
Is your argument that countries must obey ethical limits to their own citizens, but have no ethical limits to how they treat non-citizens? That would be an answer, though I think an answer most people would dispute.
By comparing countries to private property, you are saying the US government is a de facto property owner of the whole country (i.e. socialism).
That's not an ethical principle.
Indeed, there is no ethical mandate that entitles a refugee or migrant to refuge or welcome.
"only flat assertions, without elaboration"
Perchance you can state what elaboration you would deem acceptable. There has been aplenty of elaboration already; an infinitely far goalpost is not worth reaching.
"Wouldn't be simpler to just assert that both immigration and emigration may be prohibited by force"
May as in "can be"? That's trivially true and uninteresting. Everyone else has moved on from that level of analysis.
But we're discussing ethics, not the custom or policy.
If you believe it is unethical for a country to build a wall to keep people in, why would it be ethical to build a wall to keep people out? Simply stating that it is policy or flatly asserting that you believe they are different does not identify any principle or ethical maxim that distinguishes. It's not sufficient to simply re-state the conclusion.
"why would it be ethical to build a wall to keep people out?"
This has been answered many times.
"It's not sufficient to simply re-state the conclusion."
That is not what people are doing.
I'll identify an ethical mandate: peaceful people should be free to live and work wherever they please. Under this ethical rule, peaceful people should not be arrested for crossing a border.
You believe this rule should be binding only on one's own government, but not on any others. Why distinguish? Or do you believe foreigners have no rights that a government is bound to respect?
Some principle other than "because." If you aren't interested in contributing, I don't know why you find it interesting to restate the conclusion without further support.
"You believe this rule should be binding only on one's own government"
No, I don't believe that rule phrased as loosely as that, so no "binding only" blah blah.
I posted my responses to them. Why are you arguing if you aren't interested in anything but restating the conclusion? I could just as easily post my counter-assertion, but I don't really see how that gets us anywhere.
So governments presumably have ethical obligations to non-citizens and non-residents, but for some reason you've yet to specify must only recognize freedom of movement for citizens (and maybe non-citizen residents).
"for some reason you've yet to specify"
Please, people have been specifying all week. For example, freedom of movement inward by outsiders, in countries set up like ours are, would adversely affect the interests of the insiders. Obviously.
Yes, and the government of East Germany believed, as many Soviet satellite states did, that emigration weakened the socialist state by depriving it of workers and demographics and by providing spies to the West. The West generally agreed that emigration across the Iron Curtain was bad for communist countries and good for the fleeing refugees. Why do you think East Germany, Cuba and North Korea all restricted emigration, if not because it served some insider interest?
If "insider interests" justify prohibiting immigration, then why don't "insider interests" justify prohibiting emigration?
"and the government of East Germany believed"
Given that it was a dictatorship, I am not prepared to give them benefit of any doubt whatsoever about their ethics - or even their representation of the will of the people as "insider interests".
That's avoiding the ethical question. If hypothetically you had an otherwise virtuous and democratic government that forbade emigration because it is bad for the remaining insiders, would you agree that the restriction of emigration is ethical? If not, why is it bad when restricting immigration is good?
The ethical question you pose is in neverland. In this world, the two restrictions are not even close.
Got it. So you agree with me, you just think that philosophy is irrelevant. Thanks.