On Immigration, Conservatives Sound Just Like Socialists
The other day John Hinderaker of Powerline wrote:
If someone proposes that next year we should import 10,000 unskilled immigrants from Pakistan, the first question we should ask is: why do we need them? But that is the one question that no one ever seems to pose.
This is a terrible question and to my eye shows just how close Conservatives come to accepting many of the assumptions of Socialism.
Socialists seldom think in terms of individuals, but instead talk about the economy as some great big machine that they get to run. We all remember Bernie Sanders saying
“You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this countryâ€
When Hinderaker is asking if we need more immigrants, or Sanders is asking if we need more deoderant choices, they are both working from an assumption that some authoritarian gets to sit at the top and make these choices for us.
The question "do we need immigrants" is actually senseless. Who is "we"? Who gets to make decisions for "we"? Only a socialist thinks this way. In a free society, the questions that matter are "Do I want to hire this immigrant?" or, as an immigrant, "do I want to take the chance of moving to an unfamiliar country to try to better my life." If I wish to hire someone from another country and they wish to move here and take the job, what the hell does it matter if John Hinderaker thinks this person is "needed"? I have decided I need a certain immigrant for my business, and the immigrant has decided that moving here is a good tradeoff for him. In capitalism, that should be a done deal.
Could the immigrant or I be wrong about my employment offer being a good idea? Sure. But authoritarian government second-guessing of individual decisions is supposed to be a progressive-socialist game, and here is a prominent Conservative doing exactly the same thing. If Bernie Sanders wanted to require me to get government permission to produce a new flavor of deodorant, Hinderaker would be outraged. But never-the-less he similarly wants me to get government permission (actually he wants to deny me government permission) to hire the employee I want to hire.
All this "Amercan jobs for Americans" thing may sound nice, and get head nods at the local Rotary, but what it actually means is that individual business people like myself have to be limited to hiring from a government-approved list. Doesn't sound much like the free markets and small government Conservatives claim to want.
Hinderaker quotes approvingly from David Frum
However one assesses [the Farook family] chain and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of legal immigrants choose to come—or, more exactly, are chosen by their relatives—for their own reasons. They are not selected by the United States to advance some national interest. Illegal immigrants are of course entirely self-selected, as are asylum seekers. …
Donald Trump’s noisy complaints that immigration is out of control are literally true. Nobody is making conscious decisions about who is wanted and who is not, about how much immigration to accept and what kind to prioritize—not even for the portion of U.S. migration conducted according to law, much less for the larger portion that is not.
Doing things for one's own reasons. Self-Selection. Lack of government control. Lack of government decisions about who or what is wanted. Lack of national priorities. These all sound like ... capitalism and a free society. Replace the word immigration with any other term and Conservatives would blast these two sentences and Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama would vigorously nod. I could write a $15 minimum wage screed using almost these identical words from Frum. Here, let me try:
However one assesses [the John Smith] $8 wage and its consequences, it seems clear that the large majority of employers set wages for their own reasons. These wages are not set by the United States to advance some national interest. The wage rates are entirely self-selected by employers and employees.
Bernie Sanders's noisy complaints that wage rates and income inequality are out of control are literally true. Nobody in government is making conscious decisions about who is hired and for how much, about how much income to accept and what kind to prioritize.
Postscript: Yes, I know that Conservatives are all worked up because 1 in a 1,000 or so of our immigrants might be murderers. You know what, one in a thousand Americans born every day will likely grow up to be murderers, but we don't ban sex. We accept the consequences that we get a few bad apples along with a lot of awesome productive people.
I would also ask Conservatives this -- why don't you think the Left's desire to ban gun ownership to head off mass shootings is fair? I would suggest one reason is that it is unfair to ban legal gun ownership for 1,000 good people because one will use their gun to commit a murder. If you agree with this statement, explain why your argument against immigration is different from the Left's call to ban gun ownership.
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
Refugees qualify for welfare. Most other legal immigrants have various restrictions on welfare and illegal immigrants are mostly barred from any welfare.
Do you oppose welfare generally, as a free market principle, or do you only resent welfare paid to people outside your tribe? Because open borders is likely to undermine support for welfare. Most people are irrationally supportive of welfare provided it only goes to people like them; they are more skeptical about welfare paid to people not like them. If you want less welfare, then more immigration is a good way to get there.
This is an argument that government can do anything its citizens deem necessary. That's certainly not libertarian, but neither does it leave anything outside of what you call "by its very nature the domain of the government." Any policy that a majority wants for its safety would fit into that rule, so it's not really meaningful.
The way you've defined it, the "domain of government" is anything governments do for the sake of their citizens. Reading your mail, for security reasons, could be the domain of government under this standard. Installing cameras inside every office and on every street corner, for security reasons, would be the domain of government. You've defined it so broadly that your argument doesn't say much about the core duties or essence of government.
Your argument seems to be "government exists to do anything that people want it to do." So I see why you don't like libertarianism, because that statement is the antithesis of liberty and limited government.
There's no reason that peaceful immigrants need to be conflated with belligerent invaders. You're simply assuming that being foreign is the same as being a threat, but there's no reason that has to be true, and usually it's not true.
That's terrible legal analysis to simply say that you don't need any Constitutional text to justify Congress' powers. You can't point to any provision, therefore you just assume they must have wanted it? No reference to the text of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, or any historic law or court decision? Just an unsourced assertion?
It's also terrible historical analysis, given that the US had no immigration laws before 1880, and had mostly open borders until 1921. How could they have definitely meant to include a power that wasn't exercised until most of their grandchildren were dead and buried?
None of that has to do with whether the arguments in favor of closed borders are socialistic.
Coyote Blog: This is a terrible question and to my eye shows just how close Conservatives come to accepting many of the assumptions of Socialism.
You are conflating conservative with libertarian. Nationalism is a long-standing social institution, entailing borders and control of immigration. Conservatives, as a rule, want to maintain long-standing social institutions, or at least moderate the rate of change in order to avoid disruption and unintended consequences.
Nor should this be confused with the currently prevalent strain of right-wing wackery.
You seem to believe that the only thing the government can defend us against is belligerent invaders. That is not true or the Constitution would have protections in it, not just for people, on our soil, but also for people seeking to be on our soil. It does not.
As to your other point, the Constitution confers on the government the power of naturalization. It is very logical to conclude, between that the the obvious power of national defense, and the long natural law history (on which our legal system is founded and which informed the writers of the Constitution) that this includes the power to control who comes across our borders. Courts agree. Constitution: "The Congress shall have Power To...establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization"
Not only does the government have the power, but it is good policy to decide who crosses our borders.
But I will go back to my original statement: as long as Libertarians believe in no control over border crossing, they will not have electoral success, because the American people have better sense than that. And also my assertion that failing to control border crossing is national suicide - demographic, economic and cultural suicide.
Good grief...
You can have clearly defined borders that are well controlled in an open immigration system. You've just decided that restricting the flow of peaceful people is the only way to demonstrate this sort of control and that simply isn't true.
The territorial boundary lines of the country are a federal concern, but you haven't demonstrated that immigration itself must be.
Right, but you're using national defense to mean everything we do against foreigners regardless of whether they're threats.
That doesn't really make sense given the history. The states regulated it from the beginning and the Constitution does authorize the government to define naturalization. A better answer is that they didn't think it was a necessary or just power of the federal government.
National defense has nothing to do with central planning and protectionism, and isn't a function of immigration.
That's not a deflection at all, but rather a challenge to your own framing of the issue at a hand. If you are going to cite the Constitution, then understand the Constitution. There is a constitutional duty to protect the right to bear arms, whereas there is no constitutional duty to restrict immigration at the federal level.
Now, if your argument is that the government has seized this power for itself without constitutional authority and that you like that the government has this power regardless, then say that.
I don't understand your argument about citizens versus non-citizens. No one is saying let immigrants vote or give immigrants all the privileges of Americans citizens. In terms of rights, though, of course immigrants have them. Americans have those rights when they want to live and work with foreigners, too.
And your point is.... I don't care about a policy being socialist or not, I'm pointing out that one is explicitly protected, and the other is subject to the immigration laws, as duly instituted, and presumably, enforced.
What's your problem with the question? I think it's reasonable. Mass immigration would likely erode public support for the welfare state, which is good if you objectively hate the welfare state. Look how worked up you are about the prospect of foreigners takin' yer tax dollars. You're not alone in your sentiment, and that's why the point holds.
Naturalization =/= immigration. We can always make naturalization more difficult and still open immigration.
And you are misunderstanding Caplan's argument. He says that immigration restrictions are clearly so bad that the burden is on the restrictionists (you) to demonstrate why we should do it anyway. Why are they so bad? They trap people in horrible countries where they have very little chance of working their way out of wretched poverty. They infringe on the liberties of Americans who want to live with or work with foreigners. They are a coercive measure on the part of the state, and all coercive state powers need to be justified.
He does not dismiss the possibility that there are good reasons to limit immigration. In fact, when he argues open borders after presenting a long case for why he thinks immigration is good, he says "even if I grant that all your complaints about immigration are as bad as you say..." and then proceeds to offer more humane solutions to deal with all the problems, real, imagined or exaggerated, of immigration.
You said yourself that national defense is for foreign threats. You haven't yet explained why people looking for work in the United States are threats. Is your argument literally just that they're foreign and foreign people can be dangerous?
Your constitutional argument doesn't really make any sense. They thought to limit the process of becoming an American citizen, but didn't think to limit the process of entering the country, and not once in US history has anyone thought to rectify this error by constitutional amendment, nor did the founding generation believe they had this power. In fact, we know the states regulated immigration from the very beginning and that seemingly no one objected, yet the Congress did undertake reforming the naturalization laws multiple times in the first few decades. Hmm, I think you're going to have a hard time making this case.
Right, we should discriminate against foreigners because they don't look and act like us. There's not much to say about that if you genuinely believe you have a right to control who your neighbors are to preserve the culture you like.
Economically, though, there's very good evidence that you're wrong there. Unlike the subjective value of culture, the economics can be measured.
The impulse is conservative, I would agree, but many of the arguments and presumptions, as well as the courses of action to bring about this end, are socialist in nature.
Yeah, I agree. Let's start with Tyrant Fluffy Pants who is presumably Americans (and white?), yet apparently doesn't understand the value of freedom.
You keep citing invented statistics for your argument? Not very compelling.
And why should a prospective employer have the right to decide whether someone is a risk to me and my children? What gives him that right and duty?
In any sensible theory of govt, even libertarianism, there is a police function. You seem to have missed on that.
The same right that allows an employer to hire an American. Americans are much more likely to kill you than immigrants and definitely much more likely to kill you than terrorists. If it's the risk of hiring a stranger or allowing a stranger to move into a neighborhood, that's just as true for Americans as it is non-Americans - in fact, more so.
So, perhaps the risk isn't your true objection. What is your objection, then?
That might be because you agree with many of his conclusions without accepting the fundamental principles and premises behind his arguments. Or because you don't apply your shared principles as consistently as he does. I can't say which it is without knowing you better.
"You might consider what Bryan Caplan has to say on this issue."
haw. If the American public could stomach the idea of allowing refugees to enter the country while refusing them public assistance, we'd *already* be doing that.
"on immigration he is simply myopic."
Not really, when you consider where the people who work for him come from.
People who are commenting on this post need to remember that Warren is also strongly against the concepts of minimum wage and mandatory worker protections. He's advocating for open-borders immigration, sure, but that's because he *also* wants a society where each individual's salary has no government-ordered requirements. That is, we won't have to worry about cheap immigrant labor because citizen labor will be equally cheap (and they'll speak English to boot.)
So because some activity has a nonzero level of risk, any level of government intervention is justified? No, of course not. If you're saying this is purely about utility, then you need to analyze the costs and the benefits.
Most economic evaluations of immigration, even after the effects of crime, suggest a massive benefit to increased immigration. It's probably more important than any politically possible tax reform or regulatory reform. There are several billion humans currently locked inside corrupt countries with poor legal standards and poor economic opportunities. Moving even a small portion of those billions into a more productive country would be a giant boon to mankind.
So if your goal is a "sensible" theory of government, you should grapple with the gigantic costs of mostly-closed borders.
That's true. And it's worth pointing out that when people complain that illegal immigrants have an unfair competitive advantage over Americans because they work under the table, don't pay taxes or have taxes paid on them by employers, legalizing immigration would remedy or at least mitigate these problems.
I'm going to assume this means you like welfare for Americans but not for foreigners.
Yep--if everyone got a green card just for coming across the border, they could go to the government and complain about poor pay and lousy working conditions without needing to worry about being deported.
Not only that, but they'd be on the government records--and so the IRS could come after employers for failing to send in payroll taxes (not to mention the ACA regulations involved.)
And I'm going to assume you two are just leftist pieces of garbage playing the race card.
We can assume a lot, can't we.
You're the one who mentioned race. NL7 said "tribe." Tribalism isn't racism, or at least it isn't exclusive to racism. You might just be tribal in favor of your country. A more flattering term might be "citizenism."
You can assume I'm a leftist if you want, although I can tell you that's not true.
See how easy it is to answer an accusation?
Your definition of "defense" includes non-violent offenders, so might as well extend to people who pay less than the minimum wage, people who import foreign goods, and people who smoke tobacco in public. You have constructed a situation where the government has unlimited powers to control anybody, even if they are peaceful and nonviolent, and you call that "defense."
Naturalization isn't immigration. Naturalization is the process of becoming a citizen. Immigration is the process of crossing the border into a country. Broad-based immigration controls didn't really exist in this country until 1921. You can't say that the founders "obviously" meant to include a policy that didn't exist for another 140+ years.
I think you mean "common law" not "natural law." "Common law" is the English legal tradition. "Natural law" or more commonly "natural rights" is the Lockean notion that humans are born free, which I think is confusing you. Most countries had relatively open borders before the 20th century, so citing the common law is really out of place. The common law couldn't have bequeathed a condition to America in the 17th or 18th century if that tradition wasn't really developed until the 20th century. I don't know what you think it proves, but citing "common law" without citing a specific principle or court cases is meaningless.
Citing natural rights or natural law is even more out of place, because there is no government in the state of nature (the Englishtenment euphemistic conception of anarchy). There are only individuals in the state of nature, under the natural law. Those individuals do not have the right to dictate the property rights of other individuals, they have only their natural rights. So natural law sides with me in saying that individuals have no right to enforce their immigration preferences onto others.
The title of the post: On Immigration, Conservatives Sound Just Like Socialists
So I gather you concede the point.
So your defense of border controls is that the government claims the right to control borders?
That's circular and nihilistic.
So you're a big fan of an anarcho-capitalist libertarian writer, but you're surprised when he values individual liberty and the free market over immigration controls?
A longstanding tradition... back to the Progressive Era, when immigration quotas were supported by progressives and labor unions. Why not conserve the open borders tradition that existed prior to that?
Nationalism is not Burkean. Nationalism was first Liberal, from the Enlightenment, about letting imperial subjects form their own governments over their own territory. Then it was Romantic, about reclaiming some passionate and poetic sense of self. But for hundreds of years, nationalism was the idea of reorganizing society and borders rather than preserving them. It was in opposition to the old order, which at that the birth of nationalism (as an Enlightenment ideal) involved rule over subjects by elite aristocrats who did not share their language, their culture, or often even their country of residence. Nationalism was the radical idea that leaders ought to be pulled from among the people being ruled and share their interests, language and culture.
A companion idea was the sense that multiethnic areas should be segregated, where possible, or even re-settled. Nationality-based controls on immigration stem from this corollary to nationalism.
So maybe your argument is something like "yes, nationalism used to be new, but now it's old, and Conservatives stand for upholding that which is old." In which case, I wonder first why conservatives want to uphold a system from the Progressive era over the traditions from colonization to 1921. I wonder second why conservatives want to vigorously enforce the border given that our recent tradition is to not vigorously enforce the border. Vigorous border enforcement is not traditional, it's reformist, it's radical, it's new. We had a policy of letting in millions and millions of unregistered immigrants, and conservatives are frustrated and angry at that tradition.
Most importantly, if American conservatives are cautious Burkeans, why do they talk about militarizing the border, adding a new giant wall that never once existed, implementing nationwide employment monitoring system, handing out mandatory identification cards, and why do they demand that billions and billions be spent on new equipment before a single common sense reform for existing immigrants can be passed? They talk about blanket moratoria on all new immigrants, or blanket bans on all immigrants or refugees of a certain religion. That's not cautious conservatism asking for small, measured changes. That's reactionary xenophobia. Manic, reactionary, populist, mouth-frothing anger that the system doesn't work as they want and that it must be changed immediately. They want immediate and dramatic changes, not slow moves to a more sensible system.
I think the more reasonable explanation is not that conservatives have a stalwart Burkean sense of slow, careful changes. The more reasonable explanation is that US conservatives don't like all these immigrants being here, and they refuse any compromise until their concerns are addressed.
Good points. I didn't get what he was saying with natural law. He probably meant common law.
Why did you post in a thread about how restricting immigration is socialist if you didn't feel like talking about that? I asked if you were against all welfare or just welfare to foreigners and you declined to answer.
Immigration is a political issue, not an economic one. When a country decides its immigraion policy it should and must evaluate several factors, including the ability of that immigrant to contribute to society and their ability to assimilate into the country. The reason why I oppose accepting the "Syrian" refugees is that they will almost all be fully supported by the government and they will have a difficult time assimilating into the Western culture. Our humanitarian function would be much better achieved by giving them aid locally and properly protecting them.
Middle Eastern immigrants are a European issue. They have to balance the needs for their labor shortages with the assimilation issue (which is a tremendous problem). The United States has a similar issue but our immigrants are from the Latin American states. If we truly need more immigrants to provide low end labor, that is where we should look.
NL7: So maybe your argument is something like "yes, nationalism used to be new, but now it's old, and Conservatives stand for upholding that which is old."
Not merely old, but entrenched into society. Institutions depend very much on one another, and once established, can be disruptive to change them, and fraught with unintended consequences. Nationalism was once a bold ideal, but is now the foundation of modern society.
NL7: I wonder second why conservatives want to vigorously enforce the border given that our recent tradition is to not vigorously enforce the border.
Conservatives have often railed against immigration. First it was the Germans, then the Irish, the Jews, the Catholics, undermining society. Now it's the Muslims.
NL7: Most importantly, if American conservatives are cautious Burkeans
American "conservatives" are not conservative, but right wing and reactionary. They want return to a world that never existed. Add a helping of wackery to xenophobia and you have the modern Republican Party.
I'm a cat. I think? The avatar is hard to see clearly.
Think of it as a gangrenous toe. You notice your skin is getting a little black. "Golly, I can't have my toe amputated, then I wouldn't have a whole, perfect body!" Before long, it's through your foot. "Nope! Gotta make sure I don't give up anything I hold dear." Before you know it your leg's falling off and you're half-dead.
You had a minor problem that would inevitably get worse, but instead of taking the slightest of actions to correct it you let it overcome you, because... why, exactly? The "critical" "freedom" (singular, not plural) of letting people who didn't participate in the building of this nation come to enjoy its benefits rather than working to create their own opportunities in their own homelands? It's not even your damn toe. This sort of self-harming absolutism is why no one takes you people seriously.
There is a difference between r/K selection and just not getting it. It's a lot easier to fix a redistributionist than a tyrant; in fact, the former tends to fix itself, whereas the latter needs a little outside help, to put it delicately.
Democracy has been in Europe for millennia. The Magna Carta turned 800 this year. Even the Canadians, with their beady eyes and flappy jaws, understand human rights on a elementary level, though their commission suggests otherwise. In contrast, we've gone to great lengths to spread these ideas to the corners of the globe, with varying levels of success. The US spent trillions and thousands of lives to hand republican governments to Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, even sprinkled in a little Sharia to make it more palatable, and its citizenry said, nah, no thanks. Now, I'd be willing to concede that people probably just want to make a go of it themselves, but after three thousand years I think we can safely say that, for some, it's just not on the priority list.
So, then what? We can't expect people to establish and maintain governments that respect freedom elsewhere, but if we let some in here they'll respect ours? What exactly is the difference between freedom there and freedom here? Other than the Social Security, that is.
Race does not equal destiny, but it takes a special kind of idiot to not take note of the fact that some peoples and/or some cultures place a lot less importance on personal freedom and self-reliance than we do here, and are less willing to assimilate and adopt the same values that allow us to enjoy the lifestyle we have. In fact, we have now, apparently, reached some kind of idiot critical mass whereby it's given that we should throw open the doors to anyone hailing from a region known for its pervasive anti-Western sentiment because, I dunno, some of them are aspiring pharmacists or something? But hey, don't want to infringe on anyone's freedom, hopefully they don't want to infringe on yours.
I expressed no surprise.
I thought he hired a lot of retirees. Are we really being inundated with retiree immigrants that want to work at parks? Now that would surprise me.
Agree's got nothing to do with it. I'm a fan because he writes clearly and has intelligent and interesting things to say. That I don't agree with him about everything doesn't make me less of a fan. That we don't share the same hierarchy of "shared principles" is just as descriptive as your jab that I'm inconsistent.
How are you going to defend the nation, then? Have an army in each city, but no central planning or control?
Since immigrants are, by definition, foreigners, controlling what they do to our country is an issue of defense of the nation.
My cat says we should deport all other cats.
I don't know if you're inconsistent. You might be. That's why I offered two possibilities. You agree with a lot of his conclusions, but for different reasons or you start from the same principles, but you don't apply them consistently.
You're showing me that you don't know what central planning is.
Central planning is a government-planned economy. That has nothing to do with the organization of the military.
National defense isn't what you do against foreigners. National defense, in your own words, exists to protect us against foreign threats.
You still continue to conflate a government action taken toward a foreign person and a government action taken against a foreign threat, a person, organization or government that means to do the country harm. Do you not see the difference?
Calling it a political issue, not an economic one, doesn't let you sidestep the accusation of the socialist nature of immigration restrictionism or avoid the fundamental questions about government powers. If that's the case, I'm sure the left would be happy to declare Obamacare and the minimum wage political and not economic.
Most everything government does has a political and an economic component. That doesn't change the argument. You've just told us all why you don't have to answer the question.
This confuses preserving a particular policy with preserving what conservatives of the time considered the very makeup of society. The latter is intrinsically more valuable. Hence, the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration based on the current ethnic makeup of the U.S. at the time.
So conservatives need to be reactionary today in defense of a racial composition of America, even if that prompts radical new changes? With no time to slowly absorb those legal and economic changes or consider their effect on democracy, liberty or culture?
That doesn't seem Burkean. It sounds like you're resorting to "we want to slow the rate of change" but your true concern is the ethnic and racial composition of America. Establishing a gigantic police force, a nationwide monitoring system for all job-seekers and all employers, and billions of dollars of walls and guards all together amounts to big changes. Whereas America has gone through many past periods of ethnic and religious immigration and come through fine.