I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders [well, not exactly…]

Related:

• Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan
• See links at On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library
• A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders, LewRockwell.com, September 1, 2005
• I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders
• Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan
• Reply to Neverfox on immigration: “Whatever Mileage We Put On, We’ll Take Off”
• Boudreaux on Hoppe on Immigration ¹
• (KOL258 | Liberty Forum Debate vs. Daniel Garza: Immigration Reform: Open Borders or Build the Wall?), by Stephan Kinsella, Daniel Garza, and Jeremy Kaufman, New Hampshire Liberty Forum, Manchester, NH (Feb. 7, 2019)
• Kinsella on Anarchy Time Discussing Immigration
• Discussion with Bieser on Immigration

***

Update and Clarification: I now believe my title here is misleading. I am anti-INS, but I do not believe my position can be described as “open borders,” as most libertarians seem to mean when they use that term. Let me elaborate. See my recent post On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library, which fleshes out my views here. I reject the framing by “open borders” libertarians because I believe it is either from the pro-state minarchist side, or from the anarchist side based on a mistake about the status of state-owned property. Given the existence of the state and its ownership of “public property,” especially in a modern, democratic welfare state, there is really no solution. Whatever policy the state adopts will violate rights, since there is no way to use the property legally owned by the state but rightfully owned by the citizens that is objectively optimal. Rights of citizens will be violated either by forced exclusion or by forced integration and related harms.

In an ideal society there would be no state and no public property, and, as Hoppe points out, really no such thing as “immigration” since there would be no citizenship or immigration controls by a state. Instead, there would be privately owned property, and perhaps other property that is unowned since it has yet to be appropriated by anyone. In such a world, anyone is free to homestead unowned land, but for privately owned, already-appropriated land, no outsider can enter or use that land without the owner’s consent.

In today’s world, non-owners, including legal (and illegal) immigrants, have various rights to use or affect owned land because of anti-discrimination and related laws and because of public roads that make exclusion of outsiders by existing owners from their homes or businesses difficult or impossible, i.e. forced integration. In my view, ² the state controls two types of property: state-owned property that is rightfully owned by taxpayers and others who paid for it via taxes, and unowned property such as most of the federal public lands, including about 245 million acres of surface land and 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate across the U.S., administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The state should “privatize” all of this by returning the owned property to the relevant taxpayers, and should permit anyone to homestead the unowned land (perhaps citizens would have the first right to homestead since returning owned state land to them will not fully compensate them for past harms, but this is a detail).

In the meantime, the state ought to set rules for the use of state owned resources to provide as much in-kind restitution to the citizen-taxpayers as possible. This would mean the right of citizens to use state roads, for example, and imposing normal rules for use of the roads like speed limits and so on, to make the roads actually useful to the citizens. Similar rules for other resources like state owned libraries, and so on. Because foreigners have no claim on these resources it does not violate their rights for the state to deny them access to state roads. If the state did not grant permission to every outsider to use state roads, this would not violate their rights. However, it would reduce the amount of harm done to citizens in two ways: (a) it would provide them some valuable service (transportation services) and (b) it would reduce to some extent the forced integration otherwise caused by immigration.

However, in some cases—namely, where a given resident wants to invite an outsider to his home or business, for employment, say, or to marry someone, or to have a relative or friend come live with them—a state rule banning all non-citizens from using the roads would amount to forced exclusion and thus violate the rights of some citizens (not the outsiders, though). Thus, the state ought to permit use of the roads by an outsider who has such an invitation from a citizen. This policy would increase the absolute numbers of immigration, reduce the amount of forced exclusion caused by state ownership of public property, and also reduce the amount of forced integration.

Is this likely? No. As Hoppe explains:

What should one hope for and advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform national immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the “nature” of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility. [Hoppe, Democracy, p. 148]

Still, I would argue it would be a big improvement in a world of second-bests.

The open borders libertarians maintain state property is unowned, because it is illegitimate. This is to make the mistake of legal positivism, as I mentioned in my recent post On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library. Because they make this mistake, they think any rules the state sets on public property are illegitimate, and thus that no rules, including those that discriminate between citizens and outsiders, is legitimate. But there is no basis for this, as I explain there; and it would increase the harm already being done to citizens by reducing the amount of in-kind restitution that is provided when the state sets more reasonable rules in line with the preferences of the rightful owners.

This does not make me opposed to immigration, in my view, but the open borders guys will see it differently.

***

And though I do not deny that mass immigration is a problem, I simply cannot take the side of the federal government goons or ICE or INS. As I wrote previously:

“I was simply making the point that I’m not taking a side either way. I can’t side with the INS, the federal government using force to stop these innocent people. I mean, if I had to take a side of a person, I would take the side of the innocent immigrant because they have committed no aggression, but the other guy is an agent of the state. I’m simply saying, if they’re prevented from using a public road in America that they have no ownership claim to, that in and of itself doesn’t violate their rights. That was my only narrow claim, and that if that was put into place, that would, as a matter of fact, be one way to reduce what we see now as the flow of illegal immigration. That was my only point. But to me, the interesting issue is what’s public property, what’s unowned property, who the natural owners are, who are the claimants to this property. To me, that’s the interesting issue.” ³

Tyrell: So going to a libertarian issue that I have some issues thinking about because there’s just so many different things to consider—it’s the open versus closed borders. I used to be quite a firm closed borders libertarian but then I’ve just gotten more doubt into that position. So what are your exact thoughts on it?

Kinsella: Ideally I’m an anarcho-capitalist or an anarchist. So I think the state should be abolished and in such a world the concept of citizenship and even immigration would just evaporate. There would just be private property and rules related to that. In today’s world I think Hoppe’s analysis is roughly right. What Hoppe identified is that especially in today’s world where there’s no monarchy anymore and there’s mostly democracies and large powerful democracies at that which have led to welfare states and to all kinds of egalitarian rules like anti-discrimination law and welfare and voting rights and all this kind of stuff—in such a world whatever the state’s immigration policy is, and it will have a policy like to the extent the state exists it will have a policy one way or the other—someone will be harmed by this which is one reason we’re against the state because the state results in a situation where against in a sense we’re all losers and we’re all there’s a war of all against all… we’re all sharing for our piece of the pie since the government forces us to fight for it because they take from us and they only let us get back what we can fight back for all this kind of stuff.

So Hoppe’s kind of paradigm is what he calls forced integration and forced exclusion, which means that if you have a mass immigration into a modern democratic welfare state then this violates the rights of homegrown citizens because the immigrants have the right to vote. They have the right to get welfare. They have the right to use the public roads to move in next to you. They have the right to work in your factories because you can’t exclude them because of anti-discrimination law. All these kinds of things. So it’s called forced integration.

On the other hand if you were to not have open borders you’re preventing some people from entering and at least in a large number of those cases it’s someone that would be invited by a local resident who wants someone to come work for them or to live on their property and they’re not permitted to do that. So that’s called forced exclusion. So that’s the problem there.

So both of these problems exist.

Now let’s take the United States. If the United States had open borders tomorrow I’m afraid it would result in hundreds of millions of people if not billions just moving here and you would lose the character of being American and maybe you’d lose the country at a certain point. So you’d lose liberty. ⁴ Just like if we had a one world government and we had egalitarian policies then the top 10 rich countries would all become impoverished because you’d have to they would go from a GDP per person or an income per person of 50-70,000 per year to like 10.

So that’s why decentralization is always optimal and centralization is always bad which is effectively what immigration is doing. It would basically extending the scope of the state to more people by having a billion people move here. Now they’re covered. It’d be like making the world one state in a sense.

On the other hand as a libertarian I simply detest and despise the federal government of course in the US the central state and I just can’t side with the INS either stopping people from coming. So I have like a dilemma, right?

Now my personal view is like in the US and probably many other countries an obvious not solution but an obvious improvement would be if the US were to simply say anyone can come if they’re invited by an employer or by a property owner. As long as you have a legitimate invitation you can come. That would result in now it’d be better if that could come with limitations like and you can’t get welfare and all that but let’s say whoever invites you has to be kind of responsible for you for some period of time that would limit it—basically it would increase the number of immigration because I think you could at least get 10-20 million people a year in the US if they were invited but that’s way way more than we allow now so it would expand the number of immigrants and therefore it would reduce the amount of forced exclusion that we’re doing, right?

But it would also reduce the amount of forced integration because the people that would come would be more productive. They would be less of them would be on welfare.

So that would be a second best improvement I think would be to move to an invitation system. That’s the only thing I can think of that would be an improvement in liberty for immigrants, citizens, and libertarians that live in the country.

Tyrell: So in Australia we have an election coming up and our Libertarian Party has kind of put out like a similar Hoppe-like invite-y.

Kinsella: Oh really? I didn’t know that.

Tyrell: Yeah it’s not completely Hoppe. It’s like an in between from like the current state to Hoppe. I forget the exact details but it’s quite interesting.

Kinsella: I mean there are some countries that need immigration and you can see them doing better. I mean the US is pretty good at assimilating people. Probably Australia and some other countries they need immigration and they’re good at assimilating it. Now there are some other countries you can imagine Liechtenstein or Switzerland or Japan. ⁵ Now they might although Japan might need immigration because of their plummeting birth rates but if you just open the doors in Japan or Switzerland or Liechtenstein you might the countries might be like you might no longer have Japan you know it wouldn’t be Japanese anymore after a certain point in time and I don’t think those costs are negligible. It’s everything’s a difficult problem when you have collectivism and tribalism and statism all mixed in together.

Tyrell: Yeah it is. ⁶

It’s hard for an ancap to support the INS, or any other federal goonds. OTOH it’s hard to support mass subsidized immigration either. Hoppe himself sees the heart of the problem is one caused by state democracy, welfare, and intervention: if the state prevents a citizen from inviting some outsiders, that violates his rights; it is what Hoppe calls forced exclusion. He specifically criticizes state immigration policy when it violates the rights of its citizens to invite whoever they want to their property. OTOH if the state subsidizes mass immigration and forces people to support and associate with and employ and give voting rights to these outsiders by means of antidiscrimination laws, welfare, and public roads and transportation and other state owned public property and facilities, this violates the rights of citizens by way of forced integration. Both forced exclusion and forced integration violate property rights of the citizens, according to Hoppe. Hoppe’s solution–the “first best”–is to abolish the state so that neither forced exclusion nor forced integration occur. Barring that, his “second best” solution as to a reasonable way to minimize both, to reduce the rights violations from either forced exclusion or forced integration, is to deny outsiders the use of public resources owned by citizens (because given welfare and other legal rights, they will have access to this as soon as they are permitted access) unless they are invited by a citizen who takes responsibility for them. By prohibiting them from accessing public resources (without an invitation) you reduce forced integration and related costs and rights violations; by permitting someone who is invited by a citizen, you reduce the forced exclusion problem (and by making the invitee-citizen responsible, you further reduce the forced integration problem since presumably there is a lower chance the immigrant will be a criminal or on the dole, since a citizen has to vouch for and to some degree even be responsible him). Until we abolish the welfare state, voting, and the state itself, you can see why his solution has an appeal to some libertarians: it’s an attempt to reduce both types of rights violations perpetrated by the state: forced exclusion, and forced integration/mass-subsidized immigration. ⁷

See also KOL258 | Liberty Forum Debate vs. Daniel Garza: Immigration Reform: Open Borders or Build the Wall? (quoted below):

It’s hard to say that any libertarian with a good heart can support the INS.  In the end, if forced to choose, I don’t want to lose liberty in this country.  I don’t want something to happen that will cause us in 10, 20, 30, 40 years to have lost the liberty that we have and the tenuous grasp on it that we have and the potential that we have.

00:14:57

But in the end, we also can’t support the INS.  So I’m left with an uneasy sort of conclusion.  I can never support the INS, the goons of the federal government.  You just can’t do it. “

***

Update: see Open the Borders, End the Housing Glut; also my comment to Michael Barnett’s post Anti-immigration libertarians are treading in dangerous waters, where he linked to my article “A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders”:

Mike, my article was to provide a simple argument against unrestricted immigration. I did not imply that I agreed with it. I was trying to emphasize a few points: that the real owners of public property in (say) the US are the taxpayers, not outsiders; that there is no way for the state to manage the property in a way that satisfies all owners, short of returning it; that if an outsider is prevented from using the public property held by the state but owned by US citizens, this does not violate the rights of the outsiders, any more than if the natural owners were to forbid them use of it. But it’s an argument about second- or third-bests, and one meant to focus on the main point: some private people (victims of the state) are the natural owners of or claimants to the property; the state is the legal owner, but should not be. Ideally it should dissolve itself and return the property to the real owners; but if it does not, the question arises as to what rules it should set if and so long as it does legally control the resource. I sought to tie in some implications of this notion to the immigration issue.

In any case, let me be clear that I completely oppose any state laws or action that restricts immigration.

I’ve also pointed out that I have trouble supporting the criminal Federal Government, via its INS, policing immigration at all. And also, that when would-be immigrants—outsiders, foreigners—are prevented by the federal government from using public property such as roads, their rights are not necessarily violated (though would-be hosts and employers might have a different complaint). ⁸

Immigration Invitations: A Marginal Improvement

Given this, as Hoppe and I agree, the only real solution is to abolish the state—at least large, democratic, modern welfare states. Milton Friedman had a point when he said “You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and free immigration. I am in favor of free immigration, but not if you have a welfare state.” ⁹

As long as we have the our current large democratic states, one significant improvement would be to change the immigration system so as to permit anyone so long as they are invited or sponsored by an existing citizen or local employer. This would (a) reduce the amount of forced exclusion and also probably greatly increase the (absolute) numbers of (legal) immigration, and also (b) reduce the degree of harm caused by forced integration. (See my various tweets on this in the Appendix I below.)

In order to reduce the effects of forced integration while still reducing the degree of forced exclusion of our current system, the sponsorship or invitation program would have the following features:

• exclusion of the immigrant from all publicly funded welfare
• exclusion of the immigrant from all existing antidiscrimination,  affirmative action, and similar laws and policies
• exclusion of the immigrant from any birthright citizenship policies
• a valid invitation and personal sponsorship by a resident citizen and his assumption of liability for all property damage or crimes by the invitee committed against the person or property of any third party and a requirement for the invitor to carry liability insurance for such guests/invitees. (For more on this, see Hoppe’s comments on what constitutes an “invitation” or “sponsorship” in Appendix II below.)

This would not be an ideal solution—short of an anarchist libertarian society, there is no real solution especially in a modern large, western, rich democratic welfare state. Hoppe and libertarians who oppose open borders do not deny that current government welfare policies violate some citizens’ rights, as in the case of forced exclusion. An invitation system would greatly ameliorate this harm and also expand legal immigration. But the open borders side seems not to want to acknowledge that state control of immigration necessarily leads to some harm, not only forced exclusion, but also forced integration. ¹⁰

00:13:19

If we believe that if Japan or Israel or Switzerland tomorrow lowered their barriers completely, I think we all have an idea that they would be overrun very quickly by lots of outsiders, and things would change very quickly.  And those societies where they’re not libertarian utopias, they are relatively liberal and open societies compared to the bottom half of the world or the past.  So let’s say the Swiss identity or the Japanese identity are the way of life or freedom itself was wiped out within a generation or two because of mass immigration.

00:13:59

Would we be in favor of it even then, even though that was the right thing to do?  I’m not so sure.  The problem as a libertarian is we have to recognize that the federal government in America is the steward of the government behind, in a sense, the greatest nation on the Earth.  But it’s also the greatest, the most evil, powerful government that’s ever existed because it’s parasitical upon the wealth that the free market in this country produces.

00:14:29

It’s hard to say that any libertarian with a good heart can support the INS.  In the end, if forced to choose, I don’t want to lose liberty in this country.  I don’t want something to happen that will cause us in 10, 20, 30, 40 years to have lost the liberty that we have and the tenuous grasp on it that we have and the potential that we have.

00:14:57

But in the end, we also can’t support the INS.  So I’m left with an uneasy sort of conclusion.  I can never support the INS, the goons of the federal government.  You just can’t do it.  On the other hand, you can make a theoretical case, which we maybe can get to if we have time, for how to analyze this situation and how to view that the best second-best policy that we can hope for,  ¹¹ for a state like we have now would be to do something similar to what the effective rulers in a free society would do to try to minimize the harm done to us.  So that would be the policy that I would say they should adopt.  And to be honest, from having read Mr. Garza’s policies on his website, they seem pretty reasonable. ¹²

Update:

An old LRC post:

More on Immigration and Open Borders

Posted by Stephan Kinsella at September 1, 2005 11:54 AM

Re my LRC column “A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders,” I’ve already received many comments, most, surprisingly, positive. One thoughtful reader writes to tell me he is concerned that the argument could be used to justify all sorts of unlibertarian laws. For example, the State could say citizens can only use the roads if they agree to submit to taxation and narcotics prohibitions.

Let me quickly summarize my thesis and then reply to this. My basic idea is that the citizens are the true owners of public property, and should have some say-so over how the state uses that property. Their interests and preferences should be taken into account. This will result in a greater degree of restitution, and thus an overall smaller degree of net harm, to them. Now obviously all their preferences cannot be simultaneously satisfied, but it seems reasonable, other things being equal, for the state to try to use the property in reasonable ways (like a private owner would) so as to result in partial restitution being made the citizens, or as many of them as possible. Obviously a greater degree of restitution (a better use of the property) made to a larger number of citizens is “better” (even from a libertarian standpoint) than a smaller degree of restitution (a more wasteful use of the property) made to fewer citizens. This does not imply there is an “optimal” usage of state property (other than to privatize it) but it does imply some uses are clearly worse than others. And it also implies that not every rule that ends up reducing usage by outsiders (immigrants) is necessary or inherently unlibertarian.

And yes, I share the concerns that this can be abused and it could be used to impose illiberal regulations on us. Gray areas and slippery slopes are a problem, but that is the unavoidable problem accompanying a state-run society. Given such a society, I see no reason we have to throw up our hands and say that any (second-, third-, or fourth-best) rule of property usage is just as good as any other. I threw in a lot of ceteris paribuses in my argument.

Given public ownership of property, which is already an offense, a rights-invasion, is it not libertarian to at least prefer certain public uses (and rules) to others, namely, those rules that don’t further victimize people, and/or that return to them some benefit to partially compensate them for the damage done to them by the public system in the first place?

And is it not sensible then to ask, what would a private owner do? to determine a better public use of property? Sure, this can be limited, and can only go so far, because the state is not a private owner. For example: a private road might not discriminate against outsiders–it might allow immigrants to move on the roads to property of willing participants. But the private road would also charge a fee (which is a way of filtering out some people); and would only take people who had a destination to go to (a willing invitee); and would not be imposing affirmative action and anti-discrimination requirements on citizens, so that its trafficking immigrants would not be a costly action.

And consider this too: whose rights are violated if the state does not permit immigrants onto roads? The immigrant’s rights? How so? This is a resource collectively owned by the citizens of the U.S. Whatever rule “they” adopt, I don’t see how the outsider has a right to complain. So I don’t see that it violates immigrants’ rights to not be permitted to use a U.S. public resource.

So whose rights are violated? arguably, those citizens who want to use the roads to transport immigrants to their own property. These citizens are “part owners” of the road and are unable to have it used in the way they wish. But for every citizen like this, there are 99 others who do not want the roads open to all–because that means dumping tons of immigrants onto public services and having the right to sue for discrimination and having access to everyone’s neighborhood due to the network of public roads. So if the open borders citizen has his way with the property, then 99 of his neighbors have their rights violated, because the road is being used the way 1 guy wants but not the way 99 others prefer. So there is no way to avoid violating someone’s rights, since the property is public and it has to be used one way.

It seems to me it is reasonable to use the property in this case the way 99 prefer, instead of the one prefers.

Now, as I stated in the article, if the state let only the military use the roads, that would harm the citizens by failing to let them use the roads. The state could theoretically enfore all kinds of bad “law”–taxes, drug laws–by saying to citizens: you may use the roads only if you agree to submit to taxes, drug laws. However, notice that this is just a conditional grant of usage of the property. I would not agree that is a good use of it–it’s tantamount to saying only the government can use it. Given that the citizens own it, it’s reasonable to allow the citizens to use it (with orderly rules, like speed limits) instead of to ban them from using it. If you prevent citizens from using it, that is reducing the restitution. So I would say that conditioning a citizen’s right ot use the roads to establish de facto unlibertarian laws is reducing the restitution, and increaseing the state aggression and harm, so I would oppose it. But denying an outsider the right to use the roads is not the same at all.

Bottom line: any libertarian who disagrees with me her must do so on one of two grounds: (a) there are no second-best rules; the state may not impose any rules at all; or (b) there are second-best rules but they require the state not discriminate against outsiders in the rules set on public property.

I reject (a) because it means you can’t prefer a peaceful use (a park or library) over a tyrannical one (IRS office, nuclear weapons facility); and it means you can’t prefer a reasonable use that gives some benefit back to citizens (public roads with reasonable rules and usable by citizens) rather than a wasteful use that provides no restitution (roads with no rules at all; or usable only by the military). And as for (b), the critic would need to set forth a theory of second-best usage of property. I tried to sketch some of these factors: prefer a peaceful to a criminal use; prefer a reasonable use along the lines of what a private owner would do, and taking into account the level and degree of restitution and the preferences of citizens. If someone has a better theory, let’s hear it.

Coda:

Email from a reader:

Stephan:

I’m surprised you’re surprised about all the positive comments on your recent essay. There seems to be a disconnect between people I would consider at the “top” of the libertarian community (academics, writers and political activists) and “rank-and-file” libertarians. Perhaps more people (not necessarily you) realize that the cause of liberty is hampered by the importation of millions of people with no tradition of limited government. These new arrivals (the ones here legally) owe the blessing of US residency not to the locality where they live but to the District of Columbia.

I think the libertarian arguments against immigration can be summarized as follows:

1. Mass immigration is a form of rent-seeking. Employers can increase their margins and off-load the increased infrastructure and various non-monetary costs on others.2. Government is enforcing compulsory association. “Civil rights” laws and welfare benefits mean that those who do not want immigrants around are forced to abide and pay for them.

3. Government is importing more welfare-warfare state constituents.

4. Government is deliberately changing the native culture over the wishes of its own citizens. Substantively, there is no difference between the US open borders policy and the American Indians de facto open borders policy.

5. Open borders are a tragedy of the commons.

6. Government is inflating citizenship and residency in the US, as it did with college educations. Prior purchasers of these assets now see them devalued.

Few people realize that prior to a Supreme Court ruling in the 1850’s, immigration was a matter for the individual States, where the expense of immigration is actually borne.

Keep up the good work.

1. In fact, an entire Journal of Libertarian Studies symposium issue a few years ago about immigration had only one open-borders advocate (as I recall) Walter Block. The rest Hoppe, Machan, Raico, Simon, Hospers, et al. if I remember right, were all against completely open borders/unrestricted immigration:
   

   Volume 13
   Introduction	Ralph Raico	Vol. 13 Num. 1
   Are There Grounds for Limiting Immigration?	Julian Simon	Vol. 13 Num. 2
   A Libertarian Argument Against Opening Borders	John Hospers	Vol. 13 Num. 3
   A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration	Walter Block	Vol. 13 Num. 4
   A Libertarian Theory of Free Immigration	Jesus Huerta de Soto	Vol. 13 Num. 5
   Immigration Into A Free Society	Tibor R. Machan	Vol. 13 Num. 6
   The Sanctuary Society and its Enemies	Gary North	Vol. 13 Num. 7
   The Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration	Hans-Hermann Hoppe	Vol. 13 Num. 8

   [↩]

2. See On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library; Hoppe and Kinsella on Immigration; “A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders.” [↩]
3. KOL426 | Discussing Immigration and Homesteading Donuts with Matthew Sands of Nations of Sanity. [↩]
4. Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan, on Switzerland. [↩]
5. Switzerland, Immigration, Hoppe, Raico, Callahan. [↩]
6. KOL464 | Law, Rights and Hoppe | Tyrants’ Den Ep 4. [↩]
7. Tweet. [↩]
8. See A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders; I’m Pro-Immigration and Pro-Open Borders. [↩]
9. Friedman Contra Open Borders (1999): A Line-by-Line Critique. See also Look to Milton: Open borders and the welfare state; Milton Friedman’s objection to immigration. [↩]
10. On “Unowned” State Property, Legal Positivism, Ownership vs. Possession, Immigration, Public Roads, and the Bum in the Library. [↩]
11. “What should one hope for and advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform national immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the “nature” of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act as if they were the personal owners of the country and as if they had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of utmost discrimination: of strict discrimination in favor of the human qualities of skill, character, and cultural compatibility.” Hoppe, Democracy, p. 148 [↩]
12. KOL258 | Liberty Forum Debate vs. Daniel Garza: Immigration Reform: Open Borders or Build the Wall? [↩]