One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as ”limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

“Martyrs” — That was one of the many signs on display during an NAACP and SEIU-sponsored rally that took place this weekend  in opposition to David and Charles Koch, CEO and Executive Vice-President, respectively, of Koch Industries and universal left wing hobgoblins. The ostensible reason for the demonstration was the brothers’ contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a coalition of conservative state legislators which has become an object of antipathy for liberal political activists at publications like The Nation and groups like Common Cause, People for the American Way, NAACP, and dozens of others-many of which were present at this anti-Koch rally on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

For full coverage and many more pictures, read more after the jump.

This press conference/march intended to draw an analogy between the explicitly discriminatory laws in place in the American South during the Jim Crow era and what the left views as “racist” laws intended to verify the eligibility of voters casting ballots in national and local elections. Hence, the employment of symbolism hoping to evoke thoughts of the worst civil rights abuses of this nation’s past, including the murders of Congress of Racial Equality workers Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. One of the signs crafted with this purpose in mind used a photograph that came to symbolize the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike.

One of the main themes the organizers of this demonstration emphasized was the alleged oppressiveness of voting ID requirements, which they repeatedly attempted to compare to discriminatory poll taxes levied against black citizens in large swathes of the American South prior to the enactment of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution.

Leaving aside the hyperbolic nature of this campaign, it’s not an especially convincing argument, especially since none of the voter identification laws-either proposed or enacted-would require voters to pay anything in order to obtain a proper ID, should they not already have one. Jay Nordlinger dissected some of the more spurious arguments posited in opposition to these laws in a National Review article published several years ago. Honestly, the opinions of skeptics in this regard don’t seem to be especially important to the organizations behind the anti-voter ID crusade, because the aim is to energize Democratic, left wing voters who view any such laws with absolute derision. So it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that local Democratic officeholders, such as ethics paragons John Liu  and Charles Rangel, were in attendance.

Also present was the current president of the New York State NAACP, Hazel Dukes. An opponent of charter schools and friend of the United Federation of Teachers-another enthusiastic backer of this event-Dukes is probably best remembered for her troubled tenure at the head of New York City’s Off-Track Betting, which was marked by corruption, racism and incompetence.

Apparently, none of that was enough to dissuade John Liu from giving Ms. Dukes a hearty embrace. I’m not sure if she used her pet name for Comptroller Liu, although the two share a troubling laxity with regard to overseeing their employees and abiding by seemingly prosaic ethical standards so they doubtless found many ripe topics for conversation.

Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel was also there, completing the sound stewardship of public funds by NY Democrats trifecta.

One of the chief sponsors of this rally was Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which sent one of its representatives to the rally. No one seemed to note the irony of a rally against “racist laws” being endorsed by an organization largely responsible for instigating the climate that led to the massacre at Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Apparently, the political power Sharpton wields within the Democratic Party today outweighs any concerns about his dubious past.

One of the fliers distributed at the press conference that preceded the march highlighted the states which had enacted some form of voter identification and verification. The speaker below tried to emphasize the purported threat to voting rights these laws presented to putatively disenfranchised minorities.

Anthony Romero, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, tried to emphasize that this was not a “partisan” event, but in reality…

The impression of an Obama reelection pep rally was palpable.

Bob Edgar, the CEO of Common Cause-a left wing 501(c)3 which lobbies for unconstitutional things like McCain-Feingold-was another one of the featured speakers at Saturday’s press conference. The absurdity of an organization that opposes the First Amendment denouncing constitutionally protected things like lobbying for more rigorous voter ID laws was lost on most of the crowd.

Although there were very few Muslims that came to the anti-Koch rally, our old friend Talib Abdur-Rashid was given a prime speaking slot to denounce what perceives to be attacks on minority voting rights.

One of the largest contingents at the event-which attracted several hundred people-was formed by the United Federation of Teachers. The president of the UFT, Michael Mulgrew, gave a speech attempting to draw a parallel between the Occupy Wall Street Movement and events like this anti-Koch rally. Both share common goals-and until recently, lockers.

Although the signs are new:

The demonstration included an unwieldy grab bag of leftist special interest groups, including the National Organization of Woman. NOW president Terry O’Neill  attempted to link new voters laws to attempts by pro-life legislatures to restrict access to abortion.

There were also representatives of Hispanic advocacy groups, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the continued national discussion over how-or, if you’re the Obama administration, whether-to enforce immigration law.

The open borders lobby, although considerably smaller than the group of union activists and NAACP workers, was an eager participant in the subsequent march to the United Nations.

Our good friends from the Minkwon Center:

Something tells me that the sign below isn’t entirely accurate.

But perhaps the most ubiquitous presence at this rally was supporters of the NAACP. President and CEO Benjamin Jealous gave the standard speech, not markedly different from any of his colleagues.

For what it’s worth, the organization did do a competent job of organizing local affiliates of the national organization:

There was one seemingly valid argument to be found at this event, notwithstanding the reservations expressed above. The question of whether convicted felons should be stripped of the franchise in perpetuity-and what classes of felonies should be subject to this penalty-is a necessary debate, especially with the increasing growth of federal criminal penalties that attach themselves to crimes that were never before within the purview of the federal government. While most people would find the thought of Charles Manson or Mumia Abu-Jamal casting a ballot deeply troubling, to say the least, I doubt that there would be many objections to restoring the rights of individuals who have been rejoined society after committing a nonviolent offense many years before. However, that is a far cry from demanding that convicted criminals be reenfranchised en masse.

One of the main motifs of this march, and the movement in general, harkens back to the height of the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s. Because there are very few actual victims of laws intended to thwart voting by illegal aliens and felons-and the cause of allowing people prohibited from voting back into the electoral process is not nationally popular-using vivid images of iconic victims of civil rights violations is necessary. And although well-designed, they’re probably not persuasive to the extent hoped for by their creators. Then again, these signs are not necessarily aimed at convincing undecided voters but rather energizing those who already subscribe to this very dubious analogy.

Several of the demonstrators did appear to be old enough to have participated in actual civil rights struggles…

Although those who were not at least had some knowledge of the aims of the civil rights movement and its leaders, such as Chief Counsel to the NAACP and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

However, there was still a sizable number of people there simply to voice their anger at the Koch brothers, attempting-with limited success-to tie this demonstration into the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As well as local struggles between organized labor and municipalities in other parts of the country:

Apparently this quip wasn’t self-evident. At least, to the person holding aloft a sign spelling out the Koch family name phonetically.

Tomorrow, more pictures from the Two Minutes Hate.

As we gather together with loved ones-or not so loved ones-to give thanks, or express regret, perhaps it’s a good time to put things into perspective. A few days ago an acquaintance posted a cartoon to Facebook often used to lampoon those of us who are not open borders fetishists by predisposition. I’m referring, of course, to this gem. Although his position on immigration is utterly deplorable, as illustrated by this interview with the indomitable Mickey Kaus, I have to give credit to Nick Gillespie for his astute observations about the insipidity of editorial cartooning. The aforementioned cartoon, which I can only assume is attempting to depict interaction between the Wampanoag and early Plymouth settlers, is no exception.

Leaving aside the distinction  between settlers and immigrants that is consciously overlooked by the cartoonist, there’s also the the not-so-subtle implication that unfettered immigration is to be welcomed because we, i.e. the descendents of European colonists, live in a country that used to be populated exclusively by indigenous Indian tribes. There are so many things wrong with this illogical notion that I don’t have time to enumerate all of its shortcomings in this entry, but let’s start with the bizarre premise that there was ever a time or period in modern society where the concept of sovereign territory didn’t exist. This is not only historically inaccurate-as the many protracted, sanguinary conflicts between Puritan colonists and American Indian tribes attest to-but also insidious. It is built upon the assumption that private property does not exist-which is what the open borders mentality is predicated upon, even among its ostensibly libertarian exponents-and that you are not entitled to your life and livelihood if any outsider, no matter how dubious his or her claims, wants to exploit it.  

The logical end-point is the sacrifice of your life in order to placate some altruistic ideal, founded upon myths and misconceptions propounded by the open borders dogmatists. If you want to see where this fuzzy thinking leads, I suggest you look into a riveting documentary about the Wampanoag broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens. In We Still Live Here, director Ann Makepeace traces the recovery of the Wampanoag language by a small group of tribespeople living in Southeastern Massachusetts. The fact that their language was extinct for over a century is attributable to the loss of their land, an elementary, ineluctable concept that open borders enthusiasts fail to or refuse to grasp. A concept that, however, is perfectly illustrated by this video. A cartoon short by the defunct cartoon series run on Current TV, I think it embodies the foolishness undergirding the open borders philosophy. 

For a lesson in why new immigrants aren’t assimilating, check out Mark Krikorian’s latest contribution to The Corner.