Category: Travel

To start, I do not write from the perspective of an American. My country has more of a problem with emigration than immigration, and it is not out of the question that I might want to leave myself. So I can see myself on the other side of the border to many from the States. I live under a sort of double jurisdiction, Romania and the European Union, and of a nationality that has been often the object of attack and mockery as immigrants in Western Europe. We are all lazy thieves, beggars, gypsies, wanting to take both the good jobs and welfare of the British chav. I have been bullied on this very website by, to my greate shame, Canadians of all people.  I am aware of the collectivist generalization most Western Europeans are prone to – despite the fact that without Eastern European doctors and nurses, their fabulous state medicine would have collapsed a while ago. And if you want trained doctors and engineers, some riff raff will inevitably come along. Although, after influxes of immigrants of late, Romanians no longer seem so bad.

I am a reasonably moderate libertarian, in that I am a bit of minarchist plus. So I do not write or think from an an-cap perspective. I am also the kind of libertarian who believes you have to advocate for both ethical, principled libertarian positions – regardless of their chance of being implemented – and policies that are fit for purpose, good enough, and move things to the right direction while being more palatable to others. I see little point to the “Fiat justitia, et pereat mundus” of libertarians, purity to the exclusion of everything else, who only recite philosophy and ignore the real world. And I am well aware of the danger of compromise but find it acceptable when the alternative is nothing. To complete, I am not a nationalist, I am not a patriot and dislike patriotism in most cases, and I do not feel any particular affinity for certain people over others just because there is a border between us. I can see I have more in common with the fine people on this fair website than with the vast majority of Romanians.

So I am starting with what I consider to be some basic facts: states and governments exist. Debating whether they should is meaningless at this certain point in time, for the purpose of this discussion. These governments have jurisdiction over state borders and have citizens and residents and temporary visitors, with the former having additional prerogative and responsibilities, especially in politics. Governments more or less (usually less) are – should be, to be more accurate – accountable to the citizens. Governments, having jurisdiction inside certain borders, have powers over and responsibilities towards people inside those borders. The US government should uphold the rights of people – including temporary visitors – in areas it has jurisdiction over – by libertarian standards this is its only job – and not the people of, say, Romania. The exceptions to this are American citizen abroad, towards which the government has certain responsibilities.

So a government treats insiders differently than outsiders. The question at hand is in what way the latter should become the former. Has government the right to control who crosses the border? My view is yes, up to a point.

The most often libertarian view for open borders is, paraphrased, the state has no right to impede peaceful people from traveling where ever they wish on public property, and to where ever they are invited on private property. The state has no right to stop people from freely associating.  It is the right of humans to travel where they choose. Or to go bleeding heart about it (which I do not recommend), we should care more about humans than borders.

This is all very feel-good, but has some issues, in my view. I would in first instance. replace people with people under the jurisdiction of said state. In my view when talking about rights – freedom of speech, assembly, religion in the context of government – we are talking first and foremost people who happen to be within those border.  In a better, non-interventionist world, government should not be able to influence non-residents, outside letting them in or not.

From a pure libertarian an-cap / minarchist point of view, many immigration issues would not be issues at all. With most property private and fully protected, the issues of public lands / areas would be minimal. With no government support at all for immigrants and refugees and with the perspective of being shot if you aggress the locals, a good number of problems would not appear. But that is not the world we live in.

There are several utilitarian reasons for some immigration restrictions. There is a risk posed by a large number of people with radically different values moving into an area, if these values can lead to breaking the Law. Any area has limited capacity to absorb newcomers and exceeding this will cause conflict. Police doing their job plus an armed citizenry could be a reason this problem would not appear in certain societies, but overall it can be unpleasant to have constant conflict in a community that needs to be addresses with violence.  How about deontological ones?

Libertarians who do not want to become caricatures understand liberty is not defined as do whatever you want, but within limits. First and foremost, your fist my nose, as the saying goes, but even beyond, there are certain elements of living in a society that will curtail liberty – just the difficulty of defining boundaries between my liberty and yours, and compromises necessary to live in a community.

The libertarian argument is this should be as little as possible and for very good reason. It is, of course, a vulnerable argument, like all arguments in politics – where to draw the line. (Bugs step over this line.) This always applies to human dealings and there should be a constant attempt to swing things in libertarian direction, err on the side of freedom and all that. Even anarchic communities have rules about behaviour, written or not, and probably debate them. But in the end, the community needs a very good reason for any intervention. That is the basic argument.

I usually ignore the every square inch of land privately owned school of libertarianism. This is not the case. Not how humans function. Commons always exist, the village green was rarely privately owned, many roads and lanes likewise.

While no libertarian would deny the right to associate on your property – as long as you are not doing something to affect others’ property – you will not have an immigrant solely on your property (except that 15 year old Russian girl you buy on the dark web and keep in your basement, but this is an exception). The community will have a role in deciding what happens in the commons. So unless you can teleport people onto your private property and then teleport them away, immigration will not be a solely private property issue.

Similarly there is not always an absolute right of free association. I cannot associate with convicted murderers whenever I choose. So here I go back to an earlier paragraph “the state has no right to impede peaceful people from traveling where ever they wish”. So I would say a state can at the very least restrict access to non-peaceful people.

I talked above about Romanians in Europe. To be completely fair, plenty of Romanians went West with mischief on their minds and some locals were rightfully annoyed. Especially in small towns and villages in which people were not used to rude, loud foreigners making a mess and stealing whatever they can. Romanians eating sunflower seeds and drinking beer on the street while spiting the seed husks is not something a Swiss mountain town wants to see – although these can be mere tourists, not immigrants. So the problem here can be simply of generalizing immigrants, not all immigrants. Some Romanians are, I assume, good people.

So I can say that a government may restrict access of people with high probability to engage in violent or illegal acts, or deport those who do engage.  Another class of people with restricted access beyond the violent may be the very diseased. A government may refuse access to people with dangerous, contagious diseases.

I find it difficult to make the freedom of association argument for completely open borders, let any and all in just in case I might want to associate with one of them. One solution to the freedom of association standard might be a resident should vouch for immigrants he want to associate with, a member of community with skin in the game and possibility of redress of wrongdoing.

In a world of government welfare – which I am not happy about the locals getting but there at least is some limit to them – and in which government does not properly protect the locals from immigrants, open immigration will not work.  A main argument against this along the lines of two wrongs do not make a make right argument, or just because we have welfare does not mean we should restrict immigration. I do not agree with this argument. If a needs b to work, then you can’t have a before b, is my view.  So yes, in libertopia immigration self regulates. To a point. Rapist and thieves may want to come anyway, but they would be dealt with without all the politics involved in current governments. We do not live in libertopia.

To be clear, I am not saying build a wall or kick all immigrants out. I am for as much immigration as possible within limits of safety, with some clear rules. No criminals would be a basic one.  You cannot really bring the thieves of the world to your country. It is not in order to protect jobs, not racial or cultural purity. Just keeping a certain control of dangerous criminal elements is not too much to ask. You can still get all the good people you need while restricting the very violent. And I would also add no government aid to new immigrants for at least a couple of years in which they earn income and pay taxes. Giving no aid at all is not an option.

Ok, thoughts? Let me have it in the comments. (I did write this post because my last few were kind of light on the comments, and it is sort of an experiment to see if I can get an good old fashioned argument going like on you know which site.)