Why I am Suspicious of Immigration Restrictionists -- They Have Been Wrong So Many Times in History
From Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era by Thomas C. Leonard (link via Don Boudreaux, I think).
It was a scholarly fashion, circa 1890, to declare the U.S. frontier “closed” and to sound a Malthusian alarm about excess American population growth. But the professional economists who wrote on immigration increasingly emphasized not the quantity of immigrants, but their quality. “If we could leave out of account the question of race and eugenics,” Irving Fisher (1921, pp. 226–227) said in his presidential address to the Eugenics Research Association, “I should, as an economist, be inclined to the view that unrestricted immigration . . . is economically advantageous to the country as a whole . . . .” But, cautioned Fisher, “the core of the problem of immigration is . . . one of race and eugenics,” the problem of the Anglo-Saxon racial stock being overwhelmed by racially inferior “defectives, delinquents and dependents.”
Fear and dislike of immigrants certainly were not new in the Progressive Era. But leading professional economists were among the first to provide scientific respectability for immigration restriction on racial grounds.2 They justified racebased immigration restriction as a remedy for “race suicide,” a Progressive Era term for the process by which racially superior stock (“natives”) is outbred by a more prolific, but racially inferior stock (immigrants).
Note that the authors of the time were not using race as we do -- by "other races" whose immigration into the US was going to destroy us, they meant Southern Italy, Russia, Austria, Hungary, and the rest of Eastern Europe. Fifty years earlier, they would have meant the Irish. All of who we would today consider part of the backbone of America. Why do we have to take these ideas seriously today when they have been wrong so consistently in the past?
The main drawback with utilitarianism is that I've yet to see a terrible and monstrous invasion of rights that wasn't somehow premised on the idea that its effects would be positive. The "utility monster" problem.
Libertarianism imposes the constraint on utilitarianism that it be voluntary, as a check against abuses in the name of the utility monster. You are proposing non-voluntary, non-libertarian, utilitarian policies.
We discussed this weeks ago and you agreed that your system most likely means radically less immigration. That reduction in the volume of immigration, coupled with a legal regime that physically excludes immigrants, sounds to me very different from open borders.
I think it's disingenuous to argue for greater controls on immigration and fewer legal immigrants, while saying it's in service of a path towards individual liberty of movement.
My belief in free migration mirrors my belief in free speech, free markets, and free religion. I don't think speeches should have to be sponsored by bondholders before they can be spoken, either - and I wouldn't say such a system of censorship was a necessary stepping stone to free speech in a closed society. If anything, that inculcates societal values inimical to free speech. So creating a society where migration is rare, expensive, and tightly controlled is more likely to lead to societal values less welcoming toward unregulated immigration.
Right, I get that you are staking your claim to realism and forsaking the quest for ethical purity. But you said it was illogical. I presented a syllogism showing why the logic works perfectly.
Logic is about the process of taking premises to the conclusion.
So it sounds like we agree that your premises are different than what I presented. You don't think libertarianism should be the rule, or not at the expense of some practical or political concerns of yours. But that doesn't mean that libertarian universalists are not being logical simply because they don't feel the need to be bound by your premise for pragmatism.
You're wrong again. Study property rights. You may see the light.
I don't exactly feel like I have changed my argument. Your original comment picked the economics out of my original comment as the wedge to pick my arguments apart. Fair enough, if I am going to make a categorical statement I should be able to back it up with reasoned argument. Since I couldn't immediately rebut it, I chose to concede in large part that particular position. For my troubles though I simply get accused of moving the goalposts. Good grief. No wonder nobody ever gives an inch on the internet.
I admit that I am distrustful of a open borders in the purest formulation of the term, but my original comment stated there were other possible reasons for border control. I have gone into those reasons in previous comment threads on this blog before and they have been fairly consistent:
1. Open borders is not really compatible with a welfare state. One element is who pays the bills, for which NL7 had a reasonable argument with regards to taxation. Another element is how much added burden on the social infrastructure there is. This is separate from the issue of whether or not there should be a welfare state. I do not think we should have one and that private or personal charity should be the provider of such services. But regardless, it is here to stay, at least until we melt down like Greece. (Even then, my guess is that we just end up with Sweden taxation with a heavy dollop of class warfare to keep it wheezing along.)
2. There is a community interest in knowing about potential immigrants entering the community, even if you do nothing to further restrict movement otherwise. Perhaps it is cliche to talk about known terrorists, sex offenders and the Ebola afflicted, but the fact that most people do make distinctions about who they want to associate with is why the security argument is stronger than you might think. I would argue that this is one reason why people are inherently distrustful of the "people gotta be free" argument. It's all fun and games in the abstract, but it gets real, real quick, when its your neighbor. Perception can be wrong, and dread a more powerful force than reality sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the assumptions and fears are completely irrational.
With regards to your argument though, it is easy to say that you are shifting the burden to the government while freeing the individual, but how does that work in practice? I would argue that lasts until the first serious incident occurs. Then the calls for government to "do something" happen because "clearly" evil corp just doesn't care enough. There is no sympathy for the argument that most people passing through did nothing wrong, instead what you hear is "why didn't you know these people were here?" Just like doctors performing batteries of tests to ward off malpractice suits, we get 4th amendmentally raped by the TSA because the incentives are to be as risk averse as possible. It may seem arbitrary and capricious at first glance, but the politician who has to stand tall before the voter is making a rational choice in enacting the border controls. What we the voter are not very good at is telling the politician they have gone too far. And so we treat the TSA as we would the DMV: enough petty power to ruin your day even if you prevail in a dispute... and life is too short to be fighting windmills.
3. I have often said (in this thread as well in warren's other posts on the topic of immigration) that there is an element of cultural preservation in limiting the rate of immigration. Assimilation rates will vary from country to country, and ours is a large and very rich one comparatively speaking so we are probably better equipped than most to handle a large influx of people. Historically, we have not had controlled borders in the manner we have today. Clearly our nation did not crumble under the weight of Chinese rail workers or Irish potato farmers. However, it is also true that geography in the form of two difficultly traversed oceans played a significant role in keeping the immigration rate to a more manageable rate in the past as well. (You seem to think that I believe that immigration is some terrible net negative thing. I do not. I think there is an amazing cultural richness to be had here precisely because of the complexity of the ingredients and their well mixed nature. But, as they say in toxicology, the poison is in the dose. I would argue on one hand the Syrian refugees is an example of a hard to digest bolus of migration, although given the circumstances I would say that compassion would dictate that some sort of accommodation be reached)
4. I do not believe borders and nation states to be entirely artificial creations but an emergent property of the social nature of the human animal and its desire for organization. (note: organization in the sense I mean it is not some imposition of tyranny by a group of strongmen. Even hippie communes and frontier communities largely free of outside influence tend to eventually develop some sort of system of achieving shared goals of promoting trade/commerce, resolving disputes, providing for a common defense, etc) Open borders and anarchic conditions (in the most neutral sense of both terms) only tend to exist as transitory states. The most favorable is when expansion is readily available (the old west), when a central government collapses without adequate resolution (Somalia), when the central authority is highly fragmented and relatively weak in projecting power (the German principalities of the 19th century), or when the population is really small.
As regards your other points, I agree that our current immigration system is shitty. The path we provide for legal immigration is arbitrary, expensive, and unfair in a number of ways. I think it should drastically change. As I mentioned in reply to a NL7 comment, I believe there should be a largely unrestricted non-citizenship path worker visa program that lets just about anyone obtain employment if they wish. By all means, let's bring the migrant workers above board and eliminate a whole class of 2nd class, highly exploitable people. Let's also do it in a manner that assuages the concerns of those who are concerned about the security aspects in the most neutral manner possible (applying current anti-discrimination law, for instance). But I view that as different from open borders in the purest sense. That is a limited controlled borders policy that could conceivably be worked out with the political system we have.
If you wish to know what brought on my original comment, it was more of a reference to an earlier conversation with one vikingvista in the earlier post "Wherein Coyote Learns to Troll". I was unpleasantly reminded that to the average anarchocapitalist, there are only those who believe in individual rights and those who are statists. Minarchists are functionally no different than marxists and receive the same measure of scorn despite the large amount of overlap in belief systems.
(if you do delve that post, you will see that my comments here are consistent with what I wrote previously)
Because the money to pay for the welfare to Americans is coming from Americans. Second, how do you really propose to end welfare?
Not it isn't. There is a major difference between the laws of a country applying equally to all the people in the country versus applying them to people outside the country. So, no, they are not the same.
However, as I said the last time we debated this. You are not changing my mind or any minds, nor am I going to change yours, so further discussion is worthless.
I believe in property rights, including the right to invite foreigners onto your property, the right to lease your property to foreigners, and the right to use your property to start a business that hires foreigners.
It's opponents of immigration who want to limit property rights. You are advocating for bigger government, more restrictions on what private people can do in the free market, and more bureaucrats to enforce those restrictions.
Why are you so concerned about only discussing policies that fall in some arbitrarily defined realm of "possible?" There's no rulebook that says our opinions must be confined to socially approved or politically popular statements. And the Overton Window theory suggests that the way you move the needle on things like free markets, abolition of slavery, or racial integration, is to talk about what's right and gradually habituate people to your arguments.
Pointing out the hypocrisy and irrationality in restricting immigration is what I do to slightly nudge open borders toward the realm of "possible future policy."
I don't see why it matters that you're taking money from some Americans and giving it to different Americans. Why privilege the category of citizenship instead of race or religion or sports team allegiance? Should taxes paid by Catholics only go to welfare for Catholics?
If we're taking money from payers and giving that money to recipients on the basis of recipients needing it more than payers, then it's irrational to limit the recipients to Americans. There are way needier people than Americans.
Why not just say: "There is a major difference between the laws of a race applying
equally to all the people in the race versus applying them to people
outside the race." You just keep saying it's different without giving a reason.
I'll feel free to point out the flaws in your argument as long as you keep spouting them. I don't feel like I need to limit myself to highlighting your irrational argument only once.
I guess we need some citations for when they were wrong. I can think of many historical instances of open border advocates being horribly wrong:
Gauls, Britons, Romans, Byzantines, North-African Christians, Anglo-Saxons, the original Prussians, Native Americans, etc...
Nice try at more trolling. The irrational one is the one who claims there should be no national borders.
It's irrational to justify your nationalism by stating that you're a nationalist. That's circular, like saying that racism is justified by being a racist. You aren't tying your belief to anything else.
If you find this argument frustrating, I'm not forcing you to be involved. But you keep saying things that I think should be challenged.
Well, I am certainly impressed to see that you are so arrogant that you now have to chase after me because you think I "should be challenged".
So, you are the guy who thinks there should be no borders, the American welfare should be available to anyone in the world, and, I assume, thinks government should be of the UN variety. Someone who also thinks a nations culture is immaterial and should be at the vagaries of anyone who wants to move in.
Further, you believe I should be challenged by the anonymous you because I disagree, and yet you think your task is to nudge the rest of us in that direction.
But, you are so insecure about your thinking you,are afraid to put your name on your nonsense. Here is a clue: you have convinced no one and you have nudged no one. I will, however, be interested in your experiences when you move to Saudi Arabia, or the West Coast of Africa, or even Venezuela, so you can be immersed in those cultures. Make sure you bring your current culture with you, so you can nudge your new culture in that direction.
I don't think there should be tax-funded welfare. I just question why money for poor people wouldn't be spent on poor people, just like I would question why welfare for white people wouldn't be available to black people. I can be against tax-funded welfare and also think that the government is applying prejudiced rules in the process of implementing a program I oppose.
I didn't say anything about the UN, so I don't see where that's relevant at all. You pile in a lot of unfounded assumptions and ask very few questions. I expect this is why you have such an unthinking opposition to immigration, and why you are unable to explain how immigration controls are fundamentally different from Jim Crow or apartheid.
Now we're getting somewhere. The right to exclude others is one of the fundamental property rights.
If you can just see that seizing the doctor is a form of compelled servitude, well, we may make a decent citizen out of you yet.
Yes, the right to exclude people is a property right. But you are saying that the government holds that right in superiority to the property owner. I believe the owner of the property alone should hold that right. When the government declares the power to exclude immigrants, even when the property owner invites them, then it is infringing on property rights.
Prohibiting emigration and prohibiting immigration are both restrictions on free movement. Free people must be allowed to do both. Conservatives think one is wrong and one is right, but cannot explain why they should be treated differently.
Good luck arguing about the govt.'s superior rights vis-a-vis immigration. To your second point, we are regularly barred from entry to places like fire houses, military bases, fraternities, corporate headquarters, schools. We think nothing of it. But the power to lock people in (anti-emigration) is generally reserved to governments and is based on behavioral problems. Immigration and emigration are not two sides of the same coin.
Immigration is not about private property rights, or else as a private property owner I could invite foreigners.
Restricting immigration is justified because it supposedly helps the majority of Americans. Nobody can explain why that argument wouldn't apply to emigration, if restricting emigration supposedly helped the majority of Americans. It's incomplete to simply say "they're different" without explaining why.
I think the only answer that completes the circle is "Americans have rights and foreigners don't have rights" or, to make a more moderate formulation "foreigners have fewer rights than Americans." Therefore, because of nationality discrimination, a conservative could say that Americans have a right to emigrate but foreigners don't have a right to immigrate. Without discrimination, it makes no sense to treat them differently.
Then the question is why Americans should have greater rights than foreigners. I can't come up with a compelling reason for that. It seems to be based on tradition rather than any reasoned argument about human liberty.
Either you're not trying very hard or you're being deliberately obtuse. You've argued with yourself three times in this thread and still can't find an answer that suits you. It's as simple as the difference between permission to enter and permission to leave.
Laying awake thinking about it. Try this: Forget politics. It's about social skills (Which is the basis for good political philosophy). If you can get an invitation to enter - all is well. But other than desperate social circumstances, I can't imagine a host forbidding you from leaving. That's something from North Korea or the old Soviet Union. Utter Klingons.
You aren't explaining why they are different, only saying they are.
Private rights are already negated by government controls on movement.
}}} Did you ignore the quote he responded to or do you just want to change the argument?
I ignored the quote he responded to because it's IGNORING THE ELEPHANT in favor of the mouse trotting in right behind him.
Or was my comment too obtuse for you?
No one with half a brain thinks that ignoring the elephant is a rational attempt to argue. It's an attempt to DEFLECT from the actual issue by transferring the argument to idiotic nitpicking details that have little to no relevance to the actual problem.
I grasp this tactic's intention. I'm calling attention to its irrelevance to a legitimate discussion of what matters.
}}} Yes, the right to exclude people is a property right. But you are saying that the government holds that right in superiority to the property owner.
In the context in which you make it, yes. Are you volunteering to provide ALL required upkeep, for the indefinite future, for your invited foreigners AND their heirs, or did you just want to take the part you wanted to take advantage of, and stick all the rest of us for the remainder of the bill?
Don't answer, your previous responses show what a lying ass you are.
If you wanted to take on the risk represented by the entire bill, then sure, more power to you. But you don't. You only want part of the costs, with the remainder passed onto the rest of us.... so you're really just a liberal ass who wants everyone else to pony up for your benefits. F. Off.
}}} Restricting immigration is justified because it supposedly helps the majority of Americans. Nobody can explain whythat argument wouldn't apply to emigration, if restricting emigration supposedly helped the majority of Americans. It's incomplete to simply say "they're different" without explaining why.
People have explained this to you several freaking TIMES you jerkwad. Stop repeating the same CRAP as though it never happened.
HERE, I'll REPEAT THE EXPLANATION. Then I'll point everyone to this the next time you repeat this crap, and tell you quite rudely to STFU:
=================
Restricting immigration is not the same as restricting EMIGRATION because ONE -- the latter -- involves restricting the right of people to live anywhere they have allowance to be. The FORMER is about them GETTING the allowance to be there in the first place, by people who ALREADY "own" the land.
Again, this is EXACTLY analogous to private property rights. The citizens of ANY nation own the land of that nation in a COLLECTIVE manner, which is where the government's powers come into play in the first place. Private Property rights SIT ON TOP OF that collective right. This would be why, if you die intestate, with no heirs at all, the State is by far the most likely beneficiary of your property... your private property, in the absence of anything else, devolves back onto the State.
And the FF's clearly UNDERSTOOD this when they suggested that one of the functions of a government is "to provide for the common defense". If that's not backed by a notion of collective property rights, then WTF is the government "defending" FROM? WHO is the government "defending" AGAINST, if anyone and everyone has the "right" to be there?
And even Jefferson, by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase, more than amply concurred with the idea of a nation owning property in a collective manner. He spent Federal funds obtaining that land from France, and putting it into the nation's collective assets.
Q.E.D, they aren't the same, and, frankly, if you weren't a disingenuous jackass attempting to defend an indefensible point, you'd grasp this without it needing to be repeated ad nauseum.
}}} Either you're not trying very hard or you're being deliberately obtuse.
I've highlighted the correct answer.
}}} then say that you have some problems with libertarianism. Maybe that's why you don't understand his beliefs on immigration.
Or perhaps we don't understand them because they make no rational sense. They aren't really about libertarianism, they're about complete and total anarchy, nothing less.
USUALLY, Warren shows considerable sense. On this, for some bizarre reason, he's showing ZERO sense, and most of his common readers agree.
You're attempting to make an irrational argument. Just because they've been wrong in the past says nothing about them being wrong NOW. It just offers a guidepost for proper skepticism.
No one here is failing to be skeptical. They've analyzed the argument NOW and seen how they apply NOW and agreeing with the application. Additional skepticism is neither needed nor called for.
Once again, "Your argument is FAIL:.."
}}} Any error, no matter how small caused by the oversimplification is magnified when unthinkingly extended to the infinite messiness of the real world.
"Quantum effects don't apply to the Macroscopic World".
There's a point beyond which a phase change occurs, and your systemic rules for working things out have to be re-analyzed and reconsidered. These phase changes can occur because of both size AND historical changes in both social mores and also technology.
Example -- The Atlantic and the Pacific used to shield the USA from any serious attempt at invasion or even significant destruction, making it impractical in the extreme. The technologies of the last 75+ years have negated the significance of those, such that the libertarian value of "leave them alone, they'll leave us alone" has become invalid. Both technology and the rising of the USA as a financial powerhouse make that argument faulty. To any other nation, attacking us -- even if it's nothing much more than a slap in our national face (and yes, this is what 9/11 was, in Truth) -- has tremendous value to an upstart nation. "Counting Coup" works on the national level. And failing to respond to such slaps will only result in far more slaps in the future.
And nuclear-tipped missiles make serious harm to the nation from half a world away quite possible.
So no, the historically accurate libertarian isolationist principle is no longer valid in any regard. While it can be, and still is, a valid guiding principle, it's not, by any means, a valid piece of absolute logic.
}}} It is sloppy in oversimplifying reality to a set of foundational principles which can fit on a 3X5 card and then forcing every real world, complex decision involving conflicting values and interests to fit into the narrow set of principles.
If it fits on a bumper sticker, it's pretty much total bullshit.
Liberals love bumper stickers, it absolves them of the need for messy "thinking" and its attendant moral complexities.
}}} Yeah, the idea of sponsorship is that some entity
I can get behind that idea, as long as it's done in a way that requires the sponsor to provide up front for it -- that is, a posted bond system. Otherwise, you can see some group "sponsoring" an infinite number of people and doing nothing (except perhaps declaring bankruptcy) when they fail to become citizens.
When I say an American has the right to start a new business, conservatives don't say I need to co-sign their business loans. Why should it be different when a non-American starts a business?
Your position only makes sense to someone who assumes that foreigners don't have the same natural rights as Americans.
Your explanation still conflates the distinction between private property and nationalism. I don't accept that the government has the right to set these rules.
You think the government has a property right over all land in the country, and therefore may exclude anyone it wants. To Communists, the state might be considered to have a property right in all human beings in the country, and therefore may deploy their labor wherever it wants. I don't see why your presumption of state ownership is fundamentally different from the second presumption.