Illegal Immigration, Libertarianism and Austrian Economics

Miscellaneous Current Events
81

Brian I was considering one of your posts earlier. Actually I am not a one world anarcho capitalist. I am still fencing between anarchy and minarchy or maybe something else. However, the question here is not whether something is legal or illegal but the question is should it be legal or illegal within the framework of property rights. I do consider having laws within a state to be a valid concern but to regulate the economic happenings (such as trade, labour, and visitations) should not be up to the state to decide. I am oppossed to immigration laws for the same reason I am oppossed to laws against trade barriers such as tarriffs. Now if an immigrant broke a law then naturally they should be under the subject of that law (For consitancy sake I’ll even give you that by breaking current immigration laws they should in fact be subject to the law). However, I do not believe the law is either justified nor practical and should be abolished. Also, if we allowed free movement between borders with the explicit understanding that as a non US citizen they may not use the benefits of the country without permission from the governmetn then your concern over the issue of welfare is a mute point. this includes programs such as welfare or public schooling however, they should still be given protection from crimes against their person and enjoy the same rights prescribed by law and constitution.

This is not to say that I am in one accord with your policy as I also believe(along with you) that the welfare system is also immoral and harmful to society but to say that people should not be able to allow whomever they want on their property or to say that people who own property within the state can not visit thier home without government permission I must say is against the very idea of owning property in the first place.

I hope this clarifies my argument better. I don’t care if I am right as I see every argument as a chance to learn and grow.

82

Low costs means more of it.

83

What statute says that it is criminal now?

84

“As I said, since I believe in government enforcing our borders, being in the country illegally is illegal. It is breaking the law. If you break the law, the government can stop you from doing so.”

May I suggest you read Bastiat’s “the Law” , and if you already have may I suggest you read it again. Just because the State decrees something as “law” does not mean that that “law” is just. Law is justice. If the State decrees at this very moment that by “law” all blue-eyed people are illegally in this country and must be deported immediatly would you blindly follow this “law” ? By your logic how could you not. It’s the law after all and these blue-eyed people are here illegally. Is this law just?

“But while I know that it is way too big, I don’t think it’s too big as far as security on our boaders goes”

In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little tempory safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

85

In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little tempory safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Ben Franklin was also an anti-immigration (en masse at least):

“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs any more than they can acquire our complexion?”

86

@ Angurse.

You are abosutly right and I see now that using Benjamin Franklin was a poor choice. I was simply trying to show Brian that if you value safety/security over liberty you deserve neither one and that quote popped into my mind. Thank you for pointing this out though :slight_smile:

87

When I used to be a Fox Newsesque conservative, it bothered me to no end that liberals would never make the distinction between “immigration” and “illegal immigration.” Then when I converted to libertarianism, I still held that position. Then when I became an ancap, I finally realized the root problem that I was having. These people have been deemed “illegal” by fiat and there’s that South Park paranoia of “dey tooked 'er jerbs!” Who cares? Why is an American worker inherently more valuable than a Mexican worker?

Of course, the proposed solution is to “fine those greedy corporations who hire illegals!” That makes the problem worse, and the supposed liberal Obama is on board with this proposal that has widespread support. I’ll accept the idea that if you’re going to grant the legitimacy of the state, then you grant the legitimacy of the welfare programs, then illegal immigration would be a problem in light of the fact that they are not citizens and don’t pay any taxes. But the State is the core issue and the one that manufactuers the problem.

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@ Eric 080

I took pretty much the same path to my ideological beliefs. I have a good friend who is a conservative on the issue of immigration and he gets so angry when I tell him “let people live where they want, as long as they are not infringing on someone elses legitimate property who cares.” He simply cannot understand freedom of association. The State IS the problem and its total direspect for property rights and freedom of association.

89

I would take it a step further.

A) People don’t have any kind of positive right to a job

B) It cannot be shown empirically or logically that they literally stole stole someone else’s job. Many of those job opportunities had been vacant for a long while. American’s were not interested in them. In fact had the job not been sitting there available, they wouldn’t had migrated in the first place. Its the fact that there was an unfillable demand for a specific type of labor in the US that increased immigration over the past 10 years.

If you look back at the immigration numbers of the past decade you will see that it’s graphical behavior nearly clones the durable goods bubble. Now 2010 we see that immigration has come to a radical trickle. After the bust was apparent, there were no available jobs, migrants stopped coming in masses.

So they didn’t take anyone’s job, what they did was fill a niche that America was unable to fill, due to various other reasons like minimum wage, ect… Not to mention American’s tend to be highly specialized, so there is also the principle of comparative advantage here.

Thats my argument really.

Watch this, it’s entertaining…

http://www.mscd.edu/news/debate/

90

Why do so many of you ignore the fact that immigrants are more likely to be welfare recipients than White/Asian Americans?

It’s not just idle ramblings, it’s documented fact. Same holds true for Norway too (only other nation I’m aware of that we have data for on this matter).

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what follows from this empirical correlation?

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At least in my case I do not ignore this fact assertion I just simply believe it’s not true.

Even if your assertion were true however, it does not follow that we need to isolate our country from migration. It’s really ironic to believe that if immigrants come here for welfare that we should eliminate the immigrants, a task nearly impossible to accomplish. Instead, why do we not focus our energy on reducing the amount of welfare? In my opinion, assuming the premise true, the problem would be welfare, get rid of it. Spending billions to create fences and walls won’t stop immigration. The economic incentive remains and as such human action will follow. Getting rid of immigrants also does nothing to fix our domestic welfare problem.

As I have stated above however I simply do not believe it’s true that an immigrants primary reason to come here is welfare. I stated previously that I simply believe your “documented facts” as not being facts at all. Like many arbitrarily discovered correlating statistics they tend to be self defeating in the long run. A study gets released which finds a random correlation between XYZ, then two years later they find that the correlation was actually with XWZ, and a few years later they amend it yet again. IN every case it’s called a fact for some reason…

If it were true that immigration increased in correlation with welfare then why hasn’t immigration radically increased during the Obama administration where welfare is being increased further? What we see is that the opposite has actually come to pass. Immigration has slowed. This has lent more merit to the theory that immigrants come to fill a demand in labor, not necessarily to enjoy the fruits of a nations welfare. In our case we had a massive influx of immigration during the bullish side of the bubble, and now that we have reached the bearish end the influx of migration has weakened.

Another question I ponder, is it the amount of a nations welfare that causes the desireibilty of immigration? OR does it more likely have to do with a nations wealth and economic prosperity, and that those nations tend to have larger welfare programs as a result. Also why did we not have rampant run-away inflation in the worlds historically leading welfare states, like Russia for example. Instead we witnessed massive emigration. I may be stretching it a bit there but the point is this, we cannot simply assert that the more welfare a country creates, the more immigration that will follow. Countries with extreme amounts of “Welfare” have in several times, historically speaking, been met with wide-scale emigration.

Either way you look it, the data provided is very inconclusive.

Finally, many have argued that it is a documented fact that immigrants come here for welfare. When I do research however to find these documented facts, all I can find are more people asserting that these documents supposedly exist. Do you have any studies to provide to us?

Here is some additional reading, regarding the recent slowdown in immigration and how it has correlated closely with the tail end of the bubble.

http://www.newser.com/story/58984/us-immigration-slows-delaying-minorities-rise.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122213015990965589.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Best Regards

93

Please help me understand – I really do want to learn – and I appreciate all the people here who have the time to read and learn more than I

immigrants do not come here only for welfare – but since they are largely poor, they do, as a group, receive public benefits in greater percentages than most natural born. Also the poor, in general, as a group do use statist apparatus to lobby for socialism, multiculturalism, i.e less liberty more than more advantaged people. – please do not give rich people do too etc. etc.. please note the “in general” and in greater percentages..

Since in fact the state does exist, tell me how the state allowing tens of millions of the above people to be thrown into our voluntary (or not) current social contract is NOT aggression against the rights of tens of millions already here.

And where are the minarchists on this site that believe one of the few duties of the state is to protect it from foreign invasion???

Is it POSSIBLE that some liberties ( open boarders) cannot take place until other liberties ( ownership of my labor) are already realized.

Or said differently; is it POSSIBLE that theory of how things should be in a stateless society is not always useful in solving real world problems in a society with states?

94

@Adorno, sorry, I mean Flic

See: George Borjas, “Heaven’s Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy”, Milken Institute Review 1, no. 3 for the data.

Do you have any nationwide empirical data that disproves what Borjas observes about NAMs (non-Asian minorities) being recipients of welfare far and above the rate of White Americans?

95

Is this your of way of attempting to troll someone into a negative proof fallacy? Let’s say it another sort of differently. State that how things should be done in a stateless society is not always useful in real world problems and then prove that statement.

96

Honestly not trying to be malicious or “trolling”. Just looking for people to help clarify things to me in a simple manner. I am older and less educated than most on this site – but still interested. Area of interest has been history, not philosophy or logic. So trying to trick people into double positive negative fallacy – means nothing to me.

97

It’s funny how you refer to immigration as foreign invasion. A person is only foreign until he immigrates. But I would see them more as salvation. Unlike the parasitic blob of entrenched goo festering in the crannies of the state bureaucracy and their useless slob kids, immigrants actually have work ethic once in a while. The only difference between the citizens and the immigrants is the welfare that immigrants receive is actually called that. When citizens receive welfare it is more often called “college” or a “job”. A guy who sits at a desk at town hall filing papers no more has a “job” than a guy from Timbuktu that plays XBox all day and collects $350 from the same parent corporation every week. We need constant immigration just to keep any life left on this flophouse continent.

98

Have you entered into any voluntary contract with the state? What I am trying to ask is whether someone has approached you and asked if you would like to be a part of the state? Did they also say it was completely voluntary? Did they say that if you choose not to participate, you will not be punished and will be simply left alone?

There is no social contract. Its a fallacious thinking from the 18th century. Granted, it played a great role in winning some freedoms, but overall, it is used as an argument by the state to expand itself (GOV-T is THE PEOPLE, so the GOV-T can do anything it wants). People didnt enter into any social contract with the state. The state was hoisted on the people by elites a long time ago.

There are no liberties. There is a principle of private property from which the so-called liberties are derived. Open borders is basically a freedom of movement. The only hypothetical scenario in which the borders can be closed is when all the land at the border of a certain country is owned by an individual (or a group) who decides that they dont want anyone passing through their land (a completely legitimate decision btw).

99

@Brian Said:

but having a selective immigration policy will make people try harder to make a life for themselves in their native country

You either don’t understand the current legal immigration policy, or you are actually promoting to relax legal immigration requirements, or you think illegal immigrants are illegal immigrations because they are psychologically incapable of following the law, because no illegal immigrant wants to be an illegal and not get the other benefits and be so much in jeopardy all the time. If they could, they would be legal immigrants. The fact is there is a giant massive bureaucracy involved in immigration process, years and years of wait, and even then 100s of legal immigrants get kicked out of America mostly because they are trying to follow the law.

Secondly Unless you are willing to turn this country into a police state you can never get rid of immigrants, the only choice you have is to either have 13 million illegal immigrants or 13 million legal immigrants(or produce 13 million new babies or spawn clones of american citizens), but you cannot, not-have these 13 million new people.

100

fantastic, even I was thinking in the same line!, extending one step further - now that lot of people own stocks of companies based out of other countries, in essence owning a share of that company’s assets as well (of course, all of this with limited liability). In a globalised world, it is very difficult to let factors outside one’s national borders (of which illegal immigration is one) from influencing oneself, just as the recent financial crisis and several other historical crises (during peaks of globalisation) amply proved.