My hypothesis is that at a psychological level people don't like open borders because they find seeing suffering up close more upsetting than knowing it exists elsewhere (Singer's standard example of the child dying in front of you versus across the world).
Open borders feels objectionable to people because they find the idea of seeing people living on our communities dying/suffering from treatable conditions very upsetting. That means they aren't willing to let immigrants in without a high base level of social services.
But if you guarantee everyone who lives here access to dialysis regardless of ability to pay then you should expect everyone who needs it but isn't given it by their government to move here. I tend to just see this as a bias to overcome but I think it's where the underlying discomfort stems from in many cases.
ive heard some people concretely argue this, that open borders is immoral because people would suffer on our streets, and we have moral duty to help people close by, but we cant help people on our streets if everyone if everyone moves to the country/local place
Therefore, we must have welfare for everyone; and then closed borders
I rather agree with Dan that Bryan under attends to the cultural/political concerns of mass immigration. Although I am generally in favor of increased liberalization of immigration policies, it isn't clear cut at all to me that the cultural and political effects are small. Considering the experience of people fleeing California, New Jersey or New York for neighboring states, and then proceeding to vote for exactly the policies that ruined their home states, it isn't clear that the same expectations of government behavior don't follow immigrants to new countries. Bryan has written extensively about how political beliefs are irrational, which makes me think that immigrants from a socialist hell hole are not going to recognize that the socialism was the problem instead of just the wrong people in power, for instance.
To be fair, we have plenty of big government, socialist/communist idiots in the USA, but I expect that Americans generally have more expectation of limited government than people from other countries. Cubans seem to be the only immigrant population that is hard core anti-communist; the rest seem ambivalent at best. That wouldn't bother me so much if our government was very limited and there was a strong tendency to cleave to a government such as the Constitution outlines. The USA as it stands is almost entirely unlimited democracy, meaning everyone has very large downside to letting potential voters who would vote away their rights into the country. I think that is a very real concern that is largely ignored by Caplan.
People migrate because they want a better life elsewhere, but the often don't understand, or even deeply consider, what popular policies made their former home much worse than their new one. Sure, civil wars, foreign invasion, those sorts of things are not the fault of the preferences of those fleeing them for the most part. At the same time, European countries have been descending into ideological madness, and it isn't at all clear that their average voter understands why, or that there is even a connection between their policy preferences and the outcomes.
Insofar that free immigration would result in the expansion of the state—a claim often made, but rarely substantiated—how does entrusting the state with discrete authority over immigration fix that problem?
The incentives imply precisely the opposite outcome. The state apparatus will simply sponsor its political supporters, and keep out anyone who might negate its control.
That’s a very good point. Considering what a convoluted mess the immigration system is, both aiding and hindering immigration at various points, I am not sure it would be used intentionally, but it would be used to poor effect with bad intentions no doubt.
"Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem much more worried about Swedes losing their culture than about Syrians trapped in wretched war zones."
So what? Only a radical egalitarian would have a problem with that. Most Westerners care more about Swedes than they do about Syrians. Just as they probably care more about Syrians then they do Africans.
Our emotional bandwidth is finite, so might as well prioritize.
Again, bias in appeals to the unknown rears its ugly head. This is disturbingly common when discussing institutions of state power.
Dan is happy to conjecture about possible catastrophic results of a free immigration policy, but he seems to offer little to no consideration to the reverse side of that analysis. That is, what horrible outcomes might stem from the government's continued control over immigration? Policy does not remain static, and this is also a relevant unknown.
Examples abroad are plentiful, even if we charitably discount the present indignities of the prevailing status quo. eg: The DPRK prevents people from leaving the country, and any immigration control policy or infrastructure in our own nations can be appropriated to similar ends if a more authoritarian administration comes to power. Case in point, during the COVID hysteria we saw the Australian government restrict people's ability to leave the country. Canada has also partially restricted travel to and from the country, under similar pretenses.
Conversely, is there even a single example of catastrophe from free immigration policy? After all, it's noteworthy that every example of "the pitfalls of open borders" I've seen cited on this subject, pertain exclusively to nation states with strong immigration control policies—failures of state management appealed to as evidence for the need for state management. It's not as though the latest "migrant crisis" took place in a country without border control, though they are always attributed to the policy.
Why would any reasonable libertarian trust the government by default?
If all we have are the *known* harms of state authority, and unknown appeals to apocalypse in either policy, then why should anyone entrust the state with sole authority over the cultural, moral, political, and functional outcomes of the nation? What if *that* dooms us all?
People like Hans-Hermann Hoppe have already written much on the interactions between Liberty and this topic. In the present day and continuing forth as long as the government controls the border, controls the roads/easements, and imposes public charity ... government is imposing _something_ on the citizens with every immigration/nationalization decision. Either "you _may not_ physically associate-with this person, hire this person, etc" or "you _must_ pay 'your fair share' for this person to go to the ER without health insurance, for this person's children to go to public school, to rehabilitate this person of any criminal intent, etc". It is not immediately unempirically obvious which of these two impositions is worse, but one of them is present at all times regarding every person who enters or could enter.
The question should not be "Will the government grant an immigrant—who also pays taxes, even if illegally settled—access to welfare?" since that's not actually the rights violation.
The question should be "Will the government counterfactually tax or impose other rights violations more, or less?" It seems to me that no bureaucrat on Earth would lower the tax burden for want of immigrants, and state immigration control entails unique and intrinsic rights violations, such as tax funding, threats of harm during travel, checkpoints, "papers please" legal documentation, breaking and entering for deportation enforcement, etc.
Appeals to the electoral control of so-called "public property" being a proxy for free-market conditions tacitly endorses the present state in its entirety. eg: If the electorate all vote to restrict people's movements on whether they've been vaccinated or not, that could be (wrongly) justified on the basis that open access is also *technically* an imposition.
In the earliest days of the covid outbreak, Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping for information and made the mistake of trusting Xi to tell him the truth - instead he was told that the virus was of no concern (which, statistically is correct, but I digress). He still did consider border closures, and he made another mistake of being cowed by media accusations of xenophobia.
The result: people who were infected with covid had open access thru the border when covid was still a novel virus.
So to be clear, you believe that COVID—a virus which you freely concede was of no statistical concern—should have resulted in total interational lockdown?
That, insofar the border remained open in any capacity, this was somehow a mistake?
Any "lockdown" consisting of anything more than a border closure was absolutely a mistake.
And border restrictions that have occurred after the virus crossed the border on one person, were absolutely a mistake.
Total closure of the border would not have been a mistake, if it had been done prior to observing the presence of the virus inside the border. Once the virus crosses the border, closing the border does no good.
Before the virus crosses the border, if you haven't yet been able to observe the virus's characteristics via a Diamond Princess type event, border closure keeps the panic down. Once such observations are made, border closure either keeps the pro-lockdown people in check (if it's a nothingburger like covid) or saves lives (if it's more like airborne ebola).
Perhaps a better way to avoid COVID hysteria would be for the government to not manifest it in the first place.
Can you substantiate your claim, though?
New Zealand closed down its borders in the wake of COVID hysteria, and they currently have more restrictive policies in place than the U.S. Further, they also have a blatantly anti-capitalist prime minister, who has remained in power throughout.
That seems like good evidence to the contrary of your claim.
Domestic vs. international lockdowns is an obvious a false dichotomy. It's possible to have neither, and most countries had both in some capacity.
The anti-capitalist prime minister is obviously the relevant factor for New Zealand - I doubt that anything short of general rebellion will get rid of the covid hysteria there, because covid hysteria is a tool for bludgeoning free markets. There would be an equal amount of hysteria there regardless of whether or not the virus arrived there and to what extent. Closing the border to keep the virus out, because the virus is not yet in, only affects domestic policy if there are multiple viable political factions and if reality has even somewhat of an input into policy; like in the US circa 2020.
1) Open borders would primarily be about low iq people moving to high iq countries.
2)Low iq people add little to the societies they are in. What are these billions of people going to do? Clean your house every hour on the hour? Do your nails ten times a day? Is that even convenient for you?
There is no trillions of dollars in upside out there. There is no scalar benefit on the comparative advantage you only think exists.
The upside is objectively weak. We can’t even find useful things for the low iqs we have today to do, they wallow in idleness, make work, and every place with too many low iqs is a third world wreck of crime and welfare dependency.
3) *the only thing that matters* is that the rich innovative countries stay rich and innovative. That is the only thing that promises to improve humanity, including for the global wretched. The potential downside is *civilization*.
So there is little upside and massive downside. That makes it a BAD BET.
At best, Klein is acting as a right-wing liberal, based on a mix of classical liberalism with some conservative (right-wing) ideas and attitudes. However, such liberalism or semi-liberalism often leads to "freedom/liberty for my own group" as middle-class citizens, and not the individual in universal sense. Note also that Klein's opinion before 2016 and during 2016-2020 was that liberals and libertarian should favour the Republican Party under Trump than Democrats under Hillary and Biden.
Regarding Arpi, the guy is not only against free migration/open borders but also he is against of right to asylum and also he promoted "white self" ideas, meaning racism regarding migration.
Bryan, regarding Sweden , here is one text from 2016 by cosmopolitan libertarian Jacob Lundberg who also works at Timbo think-tank that has cooperated with Klein and Arpi. My translation:
"I'm for free immigration, but..." That's how it sometimes sounds when immigration is discussed. For liberals, free migration is an inviolable universal principle. With this text, I want to show that there is no "but", even in a welfare state.
The classic liberal rights tradition comes from writers such as John Locke, Ayn Rand, and Robert Nozick. It says that humans are self-possessing, as intelligent beings. From this derives the right to life, liberty and property. The right to move across national borders is part of the right to freedom.
If we feel uncomfortable with this derivation, moral intuition often works well. Most people intuitively feel that murder, slavery and theft are wrong. It is not because the Riksdag has decided it, but it comes from universal values. As Johan Norberg and Fredrik Segerfeldt write in the book Migrationens kraft, most of us would also think it would be wrong if barbed wire fences were erected at the Dalälven and migration from southern to northern Sweden was limited. The Berlin Wall and the migration restrictions it represented are for many the image of oppression.
Sometimes you hear the argument that a country is a club with the right to decide on the common property and set membership rules. It is of course an opinion one can have, but it has nothing to do with liberalism. Suppose a country is a club where unrestricted majority rule prevails. In that case, it can be used as an argument against all individual rights: "In our club you can only buy alcohol at Systembolaget." "We have decided that you are not allowed to be homosexual in our club." For a liberal, a country is not a club.
Someone may object that the state only needs to respect the rights of its own citizens. It is a strange attitude if you see rights as inviolable. Does the state have the right to confiscate foreigners' property in Sweden? Shouldn't the state care about the right to life of foreign citizens in war? In addition, immigration restrictions restrict the right of citizens of their own country to interact with foreigners as customers, employees, tenants or partners.
A common argument is that there is a conflict between free immigration and property rights, and that it is right to limit immigration as long as it risks leading to the native population having to pay higher taxes.
Such reasoning does not hold up to a closer rights-ethical analysis. Rights are inviolable. One restriction of rights does not entitle another. This is how you can see it: The immigrant is doing a completely legitimate and permitted act (immigrating to Sweden). This potentially causes the government to violate the taxpayer's rights through higher taxes. But it is not the immigrant's fault that the state violates the taxpayers' rights. You cannot limit the immigrant's rights regarding someone else's actions (the state, in this case).
Or imagine a mother who gives birth to a child she cannot provide for. As a result, the state restricts the property rights of taxpayers. But the mother has done nothing wrong to the taxpayers. It is immoral to restrict a woman's right to give birth to a child. In civilized countries, the right to decide over one's body and reproduction is absolute.
Anyone who argues that the risk of higher taxes legitimizes rights restrictions has in practice given up the opportunity to argue for liberal reforms on a principled basis. In that case, tax-funded health care can justify alcohol taxes, tobacco guardianship and seat belt laws. The pension system would legitimize the Public Health Authority. It would be difficult to conduct liberal opinion formation.
That free migration is a universal right means that it is illegitimate for politicians to decide on immigration restrictions, regardless of how big a majority they have behind them. The individual's right to free movement across national borders should be guaranteed by a constitution and a Supreme Court, which invalidates any law that restricts immigration - just as the US Supreme Court invalidates any law that restricts the right to have an abortion or to be gay.
Opinion work for increased opportunities for immigration should be pursued on all fronts: Increased labor immigration. More quota refugees. More generous asylum rules. Introduction of a green card lottery. Abolition of dependency requirements for dependent immigration. Permanent residence permits. Investor visa. Possibility of family immigration for people other than the nuclear family. Amnesty for the undocumented. Any liberalization of immigration policy is a victory.
Very interesting. Anyone worried about the effects of such an immigration policy should read "The Camp of the Saints" by Jean Raspail. While a bit dry, this down to earth and well-researched work of speculative fiction should dispel the uncertainty of Caplan's detractors. Take heart, ye friends of liberty: "Freedom is all or nothing. With the likes of this would-be heartrending rabble, these pseudopathetic peons beating his battering rams against the gates, Dio knew that, in time, he was sure to smash them down." Those walls of repression can only hold the tide of liberty at bay for so long.
I'm all for open borders and one day country borders should be as easy to cross as state borders but there are large costs to being the only country to not screen out ax murders, terrorists and such as you might get undesirables deliberately dumped on you.
That doesn't mean invasive checks necessarily but at least retaining the option to go kick ppl out and deny certain entries once such hijinks are discovered.
Wouldn't the same judiciary that addresses native-born axe murderers and terrorists* serve in this purpose? What's special about immigrants, exactly, that a separate apparatus is needed?
* — Naively assuming the state can distinguish, of course.
It must be discouraging that you can’t even win over a Dan Klein to your view of immigration. Nice try, though!
On “do I get my country back”: of course, the country is always changing. I grew up in the U.S. in the 1950s; *my country* isn’t coming back! There might be less concern about having to accommodate strange foreign people if some of the “civil rights” laws were repealed, so that people could more successfully limit their associations to those they regarded as “like them.” For example, if a housing development could limit residence to native-born Americans, and if businesses were not required to hire people whom the owners or managers or current employees regarded as undesirable. People could more nearly re-create the former social conditions in “bubbles” within the country, even though many strange people were being admitted as residents.
As for the welfare state, your slogan should be: “Open Borders + No Welfare””; that should be a big seller!
In the discussion of Sweden: "Politically, the main effect would almost surely be a major retreat from the welfare state..."
I wonder how many immigration restrictionists would be fine with increasing immigration *if* the relevant law was passed as a package deal that also limited government welfare (and in particular made clear that the new immigrants would not be the recipients of welfare). Of course, in the US, the children of immigrants become citizens if born here, which leads to worries that even if immigrants themselves are technically ineligible for welfare, their children will still receive it.
fellow swede here; ive mentioned the idea to not allow welfare to immigrants to plenty of swedish democrats, our far right conservative party: ive had the responses that it wouldnt be allowed by the left so therefore the idea is meaningless(without them saying if they think it is good or not) Or "we have a moral duty to help people here, so that cant be allowed
I am both naturally cynical about human nature and an activist vegan. I would double down on the latter.
My hope comes from the proven tendency of technological and sociological advancements toward moral improvement despite -- not because of -- the virtues of the constituent individuals.
If every tradition needs a homeland, then the open-borders tradition needs a homeland and that should be the US.
Freedom is a good tradition :)
My hypothesis is that at a psychological level people don't like open borders because they find seeing suffering up close more upsetting than knowing it exists elsewhere (Singer's standard example of the child dying in front of you versus across the world).
Open borders feels objectionable to people because they find the idea of seeing people living on our communities dying/suffering from treatable conditions very upsetting. That means they aren't willing to let immigrants in without a high base level of social services.
But if you guarantee everyone who lives here access to dialysis regardless of ability to pay then you should expect everyone who needs it but isn't given it by their government to move here. I tend to just see this as a bias to overcome but I think it's where the underlying discomfort stems from in many cases.
ditto
ive heard some people concretely argue this, that open borders is immoral because people would suffer on our streets, and we have moral duty to help people close by, but we cant help people on our streets if everyone if everyone moves to the country/local place
Therefore, we must have welfare for everyone; and then closed borders
I rather agree with Dan that Bryan under attends to the cultural/political concerns of mass immigration. Although I am generally in favor of increased liberalization of immigration policies, it isn't clear cut at all to me that the cultural and political effects are small. Considering the experience of people fleeing California, New Jersey or New York for neighboring states, and then proceeding to vote for exactly the policies that ruined their home states, it isn't clear that the same expectations of government behavior don't follow immigrants to new countries. Bryan has written extensively about how political beliefs are irrational, which makes me think that immigrants from a socialist hell hole are not going to recognize that the socialism was the problem instead of just the wrong people in power, for instance.
To be fair, we have plenty of big government, socialist/communist idiots in the USA, but I expect that Americans generally have more expectation of limited government than people from other countries. Cubans seem to be the only immigrant population that is hard core anti-communist; the rest seem ambivalent at best. That wouldn't bother me so much if our government was very limited and there was a strong tendency to cleave to a government such as the Constitution outlines. The USA as it stands is almost entirely unlimited democracy, meaning everyone has very large downside to letting potential voters who would vote away their rights into the country. I think that is a very real concern that is largely ignored by Caplan.
People migrate because they want a better life elsewhere, but the often don't understand, or even deeply consider, what popular policies made their former home much worse than their new one. Sure, civil wars, foreign invasion, those sorts of things are not the fault of the preferences of those fleeing them for the most part. At the same time, European countries have been descending into ideological madness, and it isn't at all clear that their average voter understands why, or that there is even a connection between their policy preferences and the outcomes.
Insofar that free immigration would result in the expansion of the state—a claim often made, but rarely substantiated—how does entrusting the state with discrete authority over immigration fix that problem?
The incentives imply precisely the opposite outcome. The state apparatus will simply sponsor its political supporters, and keep out anyone who might negate its control.
That’s a very good point. Considering what a convoluted mess the immigration system is, both aiding and hindering immigration at various points, I am not sure it would be used intentionally, but it would be used to poor effect with bad intentions no doubt.
"Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem much more worried about Swedes losing their culture than about Syrians trapped in wretched war zones."
So what? Only a radical egalitarian would have a problem with that. Most Westerners care more about Swedes than they do about Syrians. Just as they probably care more about Syrians then they do Africans.
Our emotional bandwidth is finite, so might as well prioritize.
Again, bias in appeals to the unknown rears its ugly head. This is disturbingly common when discussing institutions of state power.
Dan is happy to conjecture about possible catastrophic results of a free immigration policy, but he seems to offer little to no consideration to the reverse side of that analysis. That is, what horrible outcomes might stem from the government's continued control over immigration? Policy does not remain static, and this is also a relevant unknown.
Examples abroad are plentiful, even if we charitably discount the present indignities of the prevailing status quo. eg: The DPRK prevents people from leaving the country, and any immigration control policy or infrastructure in our own nations can be appropriated to similar ends if a more authoritarian administration comes to power. Case in point, during the COVID hysteria we saw the Australian government restrict people's ability to leave the country. Canada has also partially restricted travel to and from the country, under similar pretenses.
Conversely, is there even a single example of catastrophe from free immigration policy? After all, it's noteworthy that every example of "the pitfalls of open borders" I've seen cited on this subject, pertain exclusively to nation states with strong immigration control policies—failures of state management appealed to as evidence for the need for state management. It's not as though the latest "migrant crisis" took place in a country without border control, though they are always attributed to the policy.
Why would any reasonable libertarian trust the government by default?
If all we have are the *known* harms of state authority, and unknown appeals to apocalypse in either policy, then why should anyone entrust the state with sole authority over the cultural, moral, political, and functional outcomes of the nation? What if *that* dooms us all?
I'm not sure what I think about this, but I am finding the discussion interesting and illuminating. Thanks!
People like Hans-Hermann Hoppe have already written much on the interactions between Liberty and this topic. In the present day and continuing forth as long as the government controls the border, controls the roads/easements, and imposes public charity ... government is imposing _something_ on the citizens with every immigration/nationalization decision. Either "you _may not_ physically associate-with this person, hire this person, etc" or "you _must_ pay 'your fair share' for this person to go to the ER without health insurance, for this person's children to go to public school, to rehabilitate this person of any criminal intent, etc". It is not immediately unempirically obvious which of these two impositions is worse, but one of them is present at all times regarding every person who enters or could enter.
The question should not be "Will the government grant an immigrant—who also pays taxes, even if illegally settled—access to welfare?" since that's not actually the rights violation.
The question should be "Will the government counterfactually tax or impose other rights violations more, or less?" It seems to me that no bureaucrat on Earth would lower the tax burden for want of immigrants, and state immigration control entails unique and intrinsic rights violations, such as tax funding, threats of harm during travel, checkpoints, "papers please" legal documentation, breaking and entering for deportation enforcement, etc.
Appeals to the electoral control of so-called "public property" being a proxy for free-market conditions tacitly endorses the present state in its entirety. eg: If the electorate all vote to restrict people's movements on whether they've been vaccinated or not, that could be (wrongly) justified on the basis that open access is also *technically* an imposition.
In the earliest days of the covid outbreak, Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping for information and made the mistake of trusting Xi to tell him the truth - instead he was told that the virus was of no concern (which, statistically is correct, but I digress). He still did consider border closures, and he made another mistake of being cowed by media accusations of xenophobia.
The result: people who were infected with covid had open access thru the border when covid was still a novel virus.
That sounds a lot like an imposition.
So to be clear, you believe that COVID—a virus which you freely concede was of no statistical concern—should have resulted in total interational lockdown?
That, insofar the border remained open in any capacity, this was somehow a mistake?
That is all completely wrong.
Any "lockdown" consisting of anything more than a border closure was absolutely a mistake.
And border restrictions that have occurred after the virus crossed the border on one person, were absolutely a mistake.
Total closure of the border would not have been a mistake, if it had been done prior to observing the presence of the virus inside the border. Once the virus crosses the border, closing the border does no good.
Before the virus crosses the border, if you haven't yet been able to observe the virus's characteristics via a Diamond Princess type event, border closure keeps the panic down. Once such observations are made, border closure either keeps the pro-lockdown people in check (if it's a nothingburger like covid) or saves lives (if it's more like airborne ebola).
Perhaps a better way to avoid COVID hysteria would be for the government to not manifest it in the first place.
Can you substantiate your claim, though?
New Zealand closed down its borders in the wake of COVID hysteria, and they currently have more restrictive policies in place than the U.S. Further, they also have a blatantly anti-capitalist prime minister, who has remained in power throughout.
That seems like good evidence to the contrary of your claim.
Domestic vs. international lockdowns is an obvious a false dichotomy. It's possible to have neither, and most countries had both in some capacity.
The anti-capitalist prime minister is obviously the relevant factor for New Zealand - I doubt that anything short of general rebellion will get rid of the covid hysteria there, because covid hysteria is a tool for bludgeoning free markets. There would be an equal amount of hysteria there regardless of whether or not the virus arrived there and to what extent. Closing the border to keep the virus out, because the virus is not yet in, only affects domestic policy if there are multiple viable political factions and if reality has even somewhat of an input into policy; like in the US circa 2020.
1) Open borders would primarily be about low iq people moving to high iq countries.
2)Low iq people add little to the societies they are in. What are these billions of people going to do? Clean your house every hour on the hour? Do your nails ten times a day? Is that even convenient for you?
There is no trillions of dollars in upside out there. There is no scalar benefit on the comparative advantage you only think exists.
The upside is objectively weak. We can’t even find useful things for the low iqs we have today to do, they wallow in idleness, make work, and every place with too many low iqs is a third world wreck of crime and welfare dependency.
3) *the only thing that matters* is that the rich innovative countries stay rich and innovative. That is the only thing that promises to improve humanity, including for the global wretched. The potential downside is *civilization*.
So there is little upside and massive downside. That makes it a BAD BET.
At best, Klein is acting as a right-wing liberal, based on a mix of classical liberalism with some conservative (right-wing) ideas and attitudes. However, such liberalism or semi-liberalism often leads to "freedom/liberty for my own group" as middle-class citizens, and not the individual in universal sense. Note also that Klein's opinion before 2016 and during 2016-2020 was that liberals and libertarian should favour the Republican Party under Trump than Democrats under Hillary and Biden.
Regarding Arpi, the guy is not only against free migration/open borders but also he is against of right to asylum and also he promoted "white self" ideas, meaning racism regarding migration.
https://glibe.substack.com/p/white-racial-self-interest-is-racism
Bryan, regarding Sweden , here is one text from 2016 by cosmopolitan libertarian Jacob Lundberg who also works at Timbo think-tank that has cooperated with Klein and Arpi. My translation:
http://www.jacoblundberg.se/2016/01/valfardsstaten-legitimerar-inte.html
"I'm for free immigration, but..." That's how it sometimes sounds when immigration is discussed. For liberals, free migration is an inviolable universal principle. With this text, I want to show that there is no "but", even in a welfare state.
The classic liberal rights tradition comes from writers such as John Locke, Ayn Rand, and Robert Nozick. It says that humans are self-possessing, as intelligent beings. From this derives the right to life, liberty and property. The right to move across national borders is part of the right to freedom.
If we feel uncomfortable with this derivation, moral intuition often works well. Most people intuitively feel that murder, slavery and theft are wrong. It is not because the Riksdag has decided it, but it comes from universal values. As Johan Norberg and Fredrik Segerfeldt write in the book Migrationens kraft, most of us would also think it would be wrong if barbed wire fences were erected at the Dalälven and migration from southern to northern Sweden was limited. The Berlin Wall and the migration restrictions it represented are for many the image of oppression.
Sometimes you hear the argument that a country is a club with the right to decide on the common property and set membership rules. It is of course an opinion one can have, but it has nothing to do with liberalism. Suppose a country is a club where unrestricted majority rule prevails. In that case, it can be used as an argument against all individual rights: "In our club you can only buy alcohol at Systembolaget." "We have decided that you are not allowed to be homosexual in our club." For a liberal, a country is not a club.
Someone may object that the state only needs to respect the rights of its own citizens. It is a strange attitude if you see rights as inviolable. Does the state have the right to confiscate foreigners' property in Sweden? Shouldn't the state care about the right to life of foreign citizens in war? In addition, immigration restrictions restrict the right of citizens of their own country to interact with foreigners as customers, employees, tenants or partners.
A common argument is that there is a conflict between free immigration and property rights, and that it is right to limit immigration as long as it risks leading to the native population having to pay higher taxes.
Such reasoning does not hold up to a closer rights-ethical analysis. Rights are inviolable. One restriction of rights does not entitle another. This is how you can see it: The immigrant is doing a completely legitimate and permitted act (immigrating to Sweden). This potentially causes the government to violate the taxpayer's rights through higher taxes. But it is not the immigrant's fault that the state violates the taxpayers' rights. You cannot limit the immigrant's rights regarding someone else's actions (the state, in this case).
Or imagine a mother who gives birth to a child she cannot provide for. As a result, the state restricts the property rights of taxpayers. But the mother has done nothing wrong to the taxpayers. It is immoral to restrict a woman's right to give birth to a child. In civilized countries, the right to decide over one's body and reproduction is absolute.
Anyone who argues that the risk of higher taxes legitimizes rights restrictions has in practice given up the opportunity to argue for liberal reforms on a principled basis. In that case, tax-funded health care can justify alcohol taxes, tobacco guardianship and seat belt laws. The pension system would legitimize the Public Health Authority. It would be difficult to conduct liberal opinion formation.
That free migration is a universal right means that it is illegitimate for politicians to decide on immigration restrictions, regardless of how big a majority they have behind them. The individual's right to free movement across national borders should be guaranteed by a constitution and a Supreme Court, which invalidates any law that restricts immigration - just as the US Supreme Court invalidates any law that restricts the right to have an abortion or to be gay.
Opinion work for increased opportunities for immigration should be pursued on all fronts: Increased labor immigration. More quota refugees. More generous asylum rules. Introduction of a green card lottery. Abolition of dependency requirements for dependent immigration. Permanent residence permits. Investor visa. Possibility of family immigration for people other than the nuclear family. Amnesty for the undocumented. Any liberalization of immigration policy is a victory.
Very interesting. Anyone worried about the effects of such an immigration policy should read "The Camp of the Saints" by Jean Raspail. While a bit dry, this down to earth and well-researched work of speculative fiction should dispel the uncertainty of Caplan's detractors. Take heart, ye friends of liberty: "Freedom is all or nothing. With the likes of this would-be heartrending rabble, these pseudopathetic peons beating his battering rams against the gates, Dio knew that, in time, he was sure to smash them down." Those walls of repression can only hold the tide of liberty at bay for so long.
I'm all for open borders and one day country borders should be as easy to cross as state borders but there are large costs to being the only country to not screen out ax murders, terrorists and such as you might get undesirables deliberately dumped on you.
That doesn't mean invasive checks necessarily but at least retaining the option to go kick ppl out and deny certain entries once such hijinks are discovered.
Wouldn't the same judiciary that addresses native-born axe murderers and terrorists* serve in this purpose? What's special about immigrants, exactly, that a separate apparatus is needed?
* — Naively assuming the state can distinguish, of course.
Nacim -> Nassim
Feel free to delete this comment.
It must be discouraging that you can’t even win over a Dan Klein to your view of immigration. Nice try, though!
On “do I get my country back”: of course, the country is always changing. I grew up in the U.S. in the 1950s; *my country* isn’t coming back! There might be less concern about having to accommodate strange foreign people if some of the “civil rights” laws were repealed, so that people could more successfully limit their associations to those they regarded as “like them.” For example, if a housing development could limit residence to native-born Americans, and if businesses were not required to hire people whom the owners or managers or current employees regarded as undesirable. People could more nearly re-create the former social conditions in “bubbles” within the country, even though many strange people were being admitted as residents.
As for the welfare state, your slogan should be: “Open Borders + No Welfare””; that should be a big seller!
Or "Build a wall around the welfare state instead of around the country"
In the discussion of Sweden: "Politically, the main effect would almost surely be a major retreat from the welfare state..."
I wonder how many immigration restrictionists would be fine with increasing immigration *if* the relevant law was passed as a package deal that also limited government welfare (and in particular made clear that the new immigrants would not be the recipients of welfare). Of course, in the US, the children of immigrants become citizens if born here, which leads to worries that even if immigrants themselves are technically ineligible for welfare, their children will still receive it.
Its always the first thing brought up, so either it would lead to greater support for increasing immigration OR they would come up with excuse #2.
I am cynical; I would bet on the latter.
fellow swede here; ive mentioned the idea to not allow welfare to immigrants to plenty of swedish democrats, our far right conservative party: ive had the responses that it wouldnt be allowed by the left so therefore the idea is meaningless(without them saying if they think it is good or not) Or "we have a moral duty to help people here, so that cant be allowed
I am both naturally cynical about human nature and an activist vegan. I would double down on the latter.
My hope comes from the proven tendency of technological and sociological advancements toward moral improvement despite -- not because of -- the virtues of the constituent individuals.