Being able to send money overseas at all means that they are consuming less than they are giving to the society here, even at their depressed wage levels.
Medical cost is a red erring; most illegals are at prime age, or what insurance companies would call best customers. The long desert walk tends to weed out the weaklings :-) On any given day, far more immigrants, legal and illegal, probably work in our hospitals than there are patiants in the same place. Along with car insurance, if there is a rational policy that does not outlawing their buying insurance (how can one buy car insurance without SS# or driver's license, for example), the problem would largely solve itself. Instead, now we have to spend more tax money (car chases after accients) because we previously wasted money on irrational enforcement policies.
The argument about depressing wages doesn't make much sense. Someone is getting their service for less than otherwise would be. If depressing wages were a logic argument, shouldn't we outlaw new births and most certainly outlaw volunteerism?
"totally agree. but the first bit sells well even to the non-racists, those who are solely self-interested. "
Only if they believe that protectionism by the government could possibly enhance standards of living. In reality, such government intervention not only leads to the deadloss triangle that is familiar on any microeocnomics textbook but also, as Mises and other Austrian economists repeatedly pointed out, the material and moral cost of enforcement: gaggles of new bureacrats would have to be appointted to essentially get in the way of free exchange between willing men and women, plus the inevitable corruption, then another layer of bureacratic watchers, and so on and so forth. Road to serfdom indeed. The very idea that people should be attached to the land of their births is the foundation of the relaitonship between the Feudal lords and their serfs. The massive national ID system that will be required to have a "comprehensive immigration control" would go a long way towards stripping what freedom is left of US citizens.
IMHO, the difference is largely the result of them running in different party primaries. While both parties have libertarian-thinking individuals (more on the Republican party in the past few decades), there are huge amount of statist votes in both party, especially traditional primary goers. Republican statists tend to be the variety that demand law and order, even if some laws make no sense and only breed corruption that might undermine law and order in general (besides immigration, there are issues like Prohibition and War on Drugs); Democat statists on the other hand can't wait for the Republicans to make the immigrants feel scared by the xenophobia so they can come out and play the good cop and drag the entrepreneurial immigrants into voting their money away for protection. It's a dog and pony show, I tell ya :-) Unfortunately, Ron Paul too has to get enough votes among Republican primary goers to get anywhere. IMHO, as soon as the bill of hundreds of billions of dollars to actually enforce existing immigration laws, on top of requiring every US national to have a natinal ID, is made clear, the support for enforcement will vanish. Statist tendencies are usually subsisted upon a common fantasy that government intervention against natural human behavior has no cost.
IrishOutlaw: Physiocrat: I can't believe no-one has brought this up yet. Natural Order, the State and the Immigration Problem by Hoppe. It's not about hate; it's about respecing private property. I think it would take all day to point out everything that is wrong with Hoppe had to say in that. Even if we take out the drivel on the idea of separating "ethno-cultures" and focus on the property issue, it is off base. What the government has taken from people by force isn't private property, it is government property. Taxes and land taken from citizens by the government doesn't belong to all citizens, it belongs to the government. If you don't think this is true, show up at your local elementary school in your boxers and hang out in the classrooms. Or go build yourself a house in area 51. There is no "public" ownership of anything. It is either private or government. If anything immigration laws represent a collective attitude that private property is forfeit to the "greater good". Imminent domain is used to take private land away from the owners and put it in the hands of the government so they can patrol or build fences or whatever it is they choose to do. It shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, that this collective attitude is so widespread since it is used so often to sell a load of crap to the average citizen. Even to the point were people who claim to believe in a free market are asking for government intervention into the market to save American jobs. If I claimed to believe in the free market but also touted immigration laws, I would be embarrassed for myself.
Physiocrat: I can't believe no-one has brought this up yet. Natural Order, the State and the Immigration Problem by Hoppe. It's not about hate; it's about respecing private property.
I can't believe no-one has brought this up yet.
Natural Order, the State and the Immigration Problem by Hoppe.
It's not about hate; it's about respecing private property.
I think it would take all day to point out everything that is wrong with Hoppe had to say in that. Even if we take out the drivel on the idea of separating "ethno-cultures" and focus on the property issue, it is off base. What the government has taken from people by force isn't private property, it is government property. Taxes and land taken from citizens by the government doesn't belong to all citizens, it belongs to the government. If you don't think this is true, show up at your local elementary school in your boxers and hang out in the classrooms. Or go build yourself a house in area 51. There is no "public" ownership of anything. It is either private or government. If anything immigration laws represent a collective attitude that private property is forfeit to the "greater good". Imminent domain is used to take private land away from the owners and put it in the hands of the government so they can patrol or build fences or whatever it is they choose to do. It shouldn't be a surprise, I guess, that this collective attitude is so widespread since it is used so often to sell a load of crap to the average citizen. Even to the point were people who claim to believe in a free market are asking for government intervention into the market to save American jobs. If I claimed to believe in the free market but also touted immigration laws, I would be embarrassed for myself.
Exactly. This has already been addressed earlier in the thread. The state, including its "borders" (which defines its territorial monopoly), is not private property. To equate state enforcement of political "borders" and immigration restriction to protection of private property is absurd, especially considering that it must violate the liberty of individual owners to do as they please with their individual plots of property. To enforce political border is, by default, to strengthen or reinforce the state's territorial monopoly. Hoppe seems to think that this territorial monopoly should be treated as the quotal, common property of the tax-payers (which strikes me as a collectivist approach, treating entire nation-states as common property of all the legal citezens when in reality it is treated as the property of the government, who directly controls it in actual fact). I think that it should be treated as unowned, homesteadable property because it has no legitimate original owner that can be reasonably distributed to. The state certainly is not a just owner of it, and the tax-payers cannot reasonably exercise their alleged quotal share of ownership of it.
JimS:The US is attractive to the people born in other countries because of (relative) FREEDOM, not free handouts.
The US is attractive to the people born in other countries because of (relative) FREEDOM, not free handouts.
i agree with you about free handouts not being a primary motivator, but think you're wrong on the first point. most immigrants come to the us (and europe, where personal freedom is less vis-a-vis the us) for economic reasons. just like your example of us nationals flocking to nyc for a piece of the (rich) action.
I think we are actually in agreement. "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happniess" The word "freedom" is not explicitly in there as it may mean different things to different people, yet somehow inter-related between "Liberty" and "Pursuit of Happiness." To a lot people, "freedom" can be as simple as the freedom to buy drinks on Sunday and party until sun rise, both are in much greater abundance in NYC than in upstate NY; to others, it may also mean not having to have their lives sucked dry by corrupt Mexican officials. It is no co-incidence that freedom and economic prosperity go hand in hand . . . and if you think about it, without freedom (free exchange), economic prosperity as measured by government statistics is quite meaningless. I remember a time, back in the 80's, both the soviet block and CIA were telling us that East German economy was more prosperous than that of West Germany :-) I guess that 1/3 of the entire population working for national security (spying on spouse, parents, children etc.) must really puffed up the GDP numbers, along with the protected domestic car productions etc. to ensure full employment.
Brainpolice:Exactly. This has already been addressed earlier in the thread. The state, including its "borders" (which defines its territorial monopoly), is not private property. To equate state enforcement of political "borders" and immigration restriction to protection of private property is absurd, especially considering that it must violate the liberty of individual owners to do as they please with their individual plots of property. To enforce political border is, by default, to strengthen or reinforce the state's territorial monopoly. Hoppe seems to think that this territorial monopoly should be treated as the quotal, common property of the tax-payers (which strikes me as a collectivist approach, treating entire nation-states as common property of all the legal citezens when in reality it is treated as the property of the government, who directly controls it in actual fact). I think that it should be treated as unowned, homesteadable property because it has no legitimate original owner that can be reasonably distributed to. The state certainly is not a just owner of it, and the tax-payers cannot reasonably exercise their alleged quotal share of ownership of it.
If I steal your property then you are entitled to it back. Agreed. Yet you seem to say that if the state steals it then you can't have it back? Contrary what you say the state cannot own anything- what it claims to own is owned by the taxpayer. So those parts treated as government property should be considered as a taxpayer owned firm in which each taxpayer owns shares according to their net tax receipts. To consider it unowned would deprive millions of people of their rightful property. Your point about Hoppe's system violates the liberty of the of individual owners to use their own land is absurd. The can do what ever they wish with it; all that is restricted is how they bring people their using taxpayers land.
The real issue here though is how to deal with taxpayers, or public, land. Does a bum have the right to sleep, and live, in a public library or not? Should the public roads have no enforced rules given? This is a far wider issue than it first seems as Walter Block points out in his Rothbard and Big Tent Libertarian lecture.
Finally I don't think we should impute bad motives to the pro and anti immigration position and declare them not libertarians or true market anarchists. We all agree that the state shouldn't exist and is what we're working towards. However how one deals with the state while it's here is another question. This is not a fundementals debate; it is a complex question of the application of the libertarian axioms.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
Since I paid over $60k in federal taxes last year, show me which slice of the Rio Grande or St. Lawrence River border is mine. I will start selling tickets :-)
Every single socialist People's Democratic Republic prolaims common ownership of all the country's land and other "means of production" by all the people of that country. Are we so naive as to believe that propaganda? Instead of reconizing the reality that those countries are owned by their dictators/oligarchs? Ownership means control over use and disposal. If you can not use a particular strip of border for your purpose or sell it, you don't actually own it. How would you like your two neighbors to the left and to the right of your house take a vote 2-to-1 and decide that henceforth they will have exclusive use of your house and you can not sell it even though you are still the "owner" of the house? What kind of ownership is that? It's not ownership; you just got expropriated by majority tyranny.
JimS:Since I paid over $60k in federal taxes last year, show me which slice of the Rio Grande or St. Lawrence River border is mine. I will start selling tickets :-) Every single socialist People's Democratic Republic prolaims common ownership of all the country's land and other "means of production" by all the people of that country. Are we so naive as to believe that propaganda? Instead of reconizing the reality that those countries are owned by their dictators/oligarchs? Ownership means control over use and disposal. If you can not use a particular strip of border for your purpose or sell it, you don't actually own it. How would you like your two neighbors to the left and to the right of your house take a vote 2-to-1 and decide that henceforth they will have exclusive use of your house and you can not sell it even though you are still the "owner" of the house? What kind of ownership is that? It's not ownership; you just got expropriated by majority tyranny.
That kind of ownership exists though isn't legally recognised; this is why the share scheme should introduced to make it a reality. You example doesn't stand because I exclusively own the house and no-one else has shares in it unlike roads etc.
I've been reading the debate between BP and xahrx for a while now and I have to say that xahrx just makes more sense.
You are welcome to form your own conclusions. I'm sticking to mine.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!UH... UH... UH... OTHER PEOPLE! OH NOEZ!
The much-vaunted Senate “compromise” on immigration is a compromise alright: a compromise of our laws
The Origins of Capitalism
And for more periodic bloggings by moi,
Leftlibertarian.org
Thanks for illustrating my point. Exclusive ownership is ownership; shares that are re-assignable (for profit) are ownerships. "Shares" that you are born with and can not be sold, nor idetifiable to specific subdivision of the property is not real ownership. People live in "people's democratic republics" around the world like North Korea do not actually own their land or any "means of production" despite what their government propaganda says; they are serfs to their government. The example I gave about the majority being able to vote the minority out of their dwellings is exactly the type of ownerhsip in "people's democratic republics" in the former Soviet bloc; sure, everyone was theoretically part of the shared ownership of everything in the country according to the propaganda, but in reality the government could strip anyone of their dwellings at any time.
The idea that people are attached to the land of their births is the very foundation of serfdom.
JimS: The idea that people are attached to the land of their births is the very foundation of serfdom.
I'm pretty sure Hoppe isn't opposed to that either. ;)
Physiocrat: Brainpolice: Exactly. This has already been addressed earlier in the thread. The state, including its "borders" (which defines its territorial monopoly), is not private property. To equate state enforcement of political "borders" and immigration restriction to protection of private property is absurd, especially considering that it must violate the liberty of individual owners to do as they please with their individual plots of property. To enforce political border is, by default, to strengthen or reinforce the state's territorial monopoly. Hoppe seems to think that this territorial monopoly should be treated as the quotal, common property of the tax-payers (which strikes me as a collectivist approach, treating entire nation-states as common property of all the legal citezens when in reality it is treated as the property of the government, who directly controls it in actual fact). I think that it should be treated as unowned, homesteadable property because it has no legitimate original owner that can be reasonably distributed to. The state certainly is not a just owner of it, and the tax-payers cannot reasonably exercise their alleged quotal share of ownership of it. If I steal your property then you are entitled to it back. Agreed. Yet you seem to say that if the state steals it then you can't have it back? Contrary what you say the state cannot own anything- what it claims to own is owned by the taxpayer. So those parts treated as government property should be considered as a taxpayer owned firm in which each taxpayer owns shares according to their net tax receipts. To consider it unowned would deprive millions of people of their rightful property. Your point about Hoppe's system violates the liberty of the of individual owners to use their own land is absurd. The can do what ever they wish with it; all that is restricted is how they bring people their using taxpayers land. The real issue here though is how to deal with taxpayers, or public, land. Does a bum have the right to sleep, and live, in a public library or not? Should the public roads have no enforced rules given? This is a far wider issue than it first seems as Walter Block points out in his Rothbard and Big Tent Libertarian lecture. Finally I don't think we should impute bad motives to the pro and anti immigration position and declare them not libertarians or true market anarchists. We all agree that the state shouldn't exist and is what we're working towards. However how one deals with the state while it's here is another question. This is not a fundementals debate; it is a complex question of the application of the libertarian axioms.
Brainpolice: Exactly. This has already been addressed earlier in the thread. The state, including its "borders" (which defines its territorial monopoly), is not private property. To equate state enforcement of political "borders" and immigration restriction to protection of private property is absurd, especially considering that it must violate the liberty of individual owners to do as they please with their individual plots of property. To enforce political border is, by default, to strengthen or reinforce the state's territorial monopoly. Hoppe seems to think that this territorial monopoly should be treated as the quotal, common property of the tax-payers (which strikes me as a collectivist approach, treating entire nation-states as common property of all the legal citezens when in reality it is treated as the property of the government, who directly controls it in actual fact). I think that it should be treated as unowned, homesteadable property because it has no legitimate original owner that can be reasonably distributed to. The state certainly is not a just owner of it, and the tax-payers cannot reasonably exercise their alleged quotal share of ownership of it.
I'm saying that this notion of the state as being the quotal, common property of tax-payers is absurd and impossible to enforce. I don't understand this view that treats government land as the common, quotally shared property of the tax-payers. There is no discernable just owner. It would be impossible for the individual tax-payer to exercise their alleged quotal share of such property. You cannot sell your 1/500000th (or what have you) portion of government land. The tax-payer does not directly control it in any way whatsoever. Even granting that it may constitute stolen property, it has been redistributed so many times over and time has passed for so long that it would be impossible to allocate it back to the original just owners. I disagree with your view of public property. I say it is homesteadable. It currently has no just owner.
My accusation that immigration restriction inherently violates the liberty of individual property owners to associate with immigrants is not absurd. If I wish to sell a home to an immigrant, hire one or allow one into my home, in order to enforce the anti-immigration laws you must violate my liberty to do so with my property as I please. You cannot enforce political borders and immigration restrictions without reinforcing the state's territorial monopoly. You cannot control the entire territory without implictly controling the individual plots of land within it. Furthermore, the tax-payers have no uniform desires. They are conflicting with eachother in their preferences as to how to use it. So any attempt to enforce on particular such preference is not going to represent the will of all tax-payers. We therefore fall back on interest groups.
What to do about the bum sleeping in the public library, or by the doorsteps? Treat the public library as if it were private property and kick him out? Or is should the bum be viewed as essentially homesteading it? And, even if the public library is treated as if it were private property, how do we know that a given owner may not very well allow the bum to sleep there? This has a lot of implications for the immigration debate. I think that to treat the public library as if it were private property or the common property of the tax-payers is absurd. Once again, the tax-payers are not a single entity. They have no uniform desires. Enforcing one particular preference in the name of all tax-payers is not going to represent their preferances accurately. There is no way for them to exercise ownership of it as individuals.
I'm not so sure. The last time I checked, Prof. Hoppe didn't exactly praise Honecker for ordering the shooting of East German serfs who dared to cross the Berlin Wall. On top of that, Prof. Hoppe himself has at least seen his own career bringing himself outside Germany to Italy and the US . . . very much in the role of a new entry alternative to the market place of intellectual ideas that had been previously stifled by monpolistic political correctness (even if I personally do not necessarily agree with some of his points of view).
What I mean when I say that immigration restriction must inevitably violate the property rights of individual owners, Inquisitor, is this. Suppose I, a legal citezen, invite an illegal immigrant into my home. Suppose I sell one a home or rent one out to them. Suppose I hire one. In order to enforce the immigration laws, you must essentially, in effect, restrict trade and force disassociation. You must forcibly kick them out of voluntarily aquired homes, from willing sellers and renters. You must forcibly end their voluntarily aquired jobs, from willing employers. Thus, these immigration laws cannot be enforced without eggregious violations of individual property rights; the property rights of citezens. If any citezen wishes to voluntarily associate with an illegal immigrant in any way, you must forcibly end those associations. If you wish to allow the government to control access to the entire territory, you must implictly control access to individual plots of property within it. Conclusion: immigration restrictionism violates private property rights.
Another observation about immigration: Comparative advantage anyone? Even if you can demonstrate that these immigrants are on average uneducated and unskilled, even if you can demonstrate that a given group of people is inferior in all kinds of ways, it is still generally mutually beneficial to associate and trade with them on some level. In the long-term, discrimination is a suicidal buisiness practise. I don't see how immigration restriction is any less suicidal in the long-term either. Yes, an individual owner of private property has the right to exclude groups that they do not like from that property. But no, this is not in their own best interest in the long run. Hoppe's vision of an anarchist society in which there is widespread ethnic separatism (unless I'm interpreting him wrong, although I don't think I am) strikes me as nonsensical. Once the state actually is gone, the incentives towards association do not dissapear.
Exactly! Restrictions against immigration labor essentially amounts to a government enforced labor union running the whole economy as a closed shop. Talk about massive capital impairment!
From a historical perspective, anti-immigration policies were indeed pushed through by the labor unions.
This debate has gotten rather repetitive. Let me try to summarize the problem with the property-rights immigration arguements and why they clash at least with anarchism and why they must inevitably legitimize the curtailment of the liberty of individual owners to decide how to employ their property by vesting that power to decide how it will be employed in either the state or others within society who do not legitimately own the given individual piece of property.
The monopolistic, monarchal legitimization of the state.
If the state is treated as the private property of the government's members, then it is legitimized. The members of the state itself may henceforth be treated as legitimately controlling the entire territory. All of us who reside in the territory, and all of the individual plots of land and things that we possess, may be treated as the property of the government. You do not own yourself, the state owns you. You do not own your home, the state owns your home. You may not decide how to employ your property; you are not its owner, you are only being allowed to use it by its true owners, the state. It is not your property. The members of the state may freely decide to exclude anyone from the territory as they please, since it is theirs. You may not decide how to employ the individual portion that you are "allowed" to use; the state decides this for you. All hail the total state.
The democratic, communal legitimization of the state.
If the state is treated as the common property of the tax-payers, then it is legitimized. We should all henceforth buy into the phrase "we are the government". Of course, a gigantic practical problem arises: the tax-payers cannot act as a single entity with a preference scale of its own. The tax-payers are conflicting over how they wish to use this common property. The tax-payers cannot exercise their quotal ownership in reality. It is impossible for the "community" as a whole to enforce all of their individual preferences for how to employ such property. Thus, in practise, we are left enforcing either the members of the state's preferences for how to use it or the preferences of a particular group of people within "the commity" for how to use it in the name of "the community". You may not decide how to employ the individual portion that you think you own; "the community" (I.E. in practise, the state or a special interest group acting through the state) decides this for you. All hail the total state.
Basically, apply what Rothbard said about communalism in "For A New Liberty". It devolves back to monopolism anyways.
B
JimS: Being able to send money overseas at all means that they are consuming less than they are giving to the society here, even at their depressed wage levels. Medical cost is a red erring; most illegals are at prime age, or what insurance companies would call best customers. The long desert walk tends to weed out the weaklings :-) On any given day, far more immigrants, legal and illegal, probably work in our hospitals than there are patiants in the same place. Along with car insurance, if there is a rational policy that does not outlawing their buying insurance (how can one buy car insurance without SS# or driver's license, for example), the problem would largely solve itself. Instead, now we have to spend more tax money (car chases after accients) because we previously wasted money on irrational enforcement policies. The argument about depressing wages doesn't make much sense. Someone is getting their service for less than otherwise would be. If depressing wages were a logic argument, shouldn't we outlaw new births and most certainly outlaw volunteerism?
as to your first point: instead of spending their money in the country where it was earned it is sent out to other countries. i believe you get the point but want to turn it around and use it against me. nice try but it doesn't make sense. they are taking more out than they are returning. if they spent earned money here it would be a wash.
as to your second point: medical costs is not a red herring due to the fact that someone has to pick up the medical costs that are not paid by these illegals. if you have a job that provides health insurance the cost of that insurance is greater than it should be due to the unpaid bills. those bills do not go away just because they are not paid. additionally, you need to go down and hang around your local ER on any given evening. you may get an education. the same goes for the car insurance. your car gets banged up and the other driver leaves the scene the damage doesn't disappear. the insurance companies are in that game to make a profit. they will not just fix your fender gratis.
as to your third point: your argument is ridicules and deserves no rebutal.
xahrx, i'm afraid, won that round. it would seem that your idealism has deposited you squarely in a fantasy world. it is obvious you are unaware of how much and where your tax dollars are going. you also obviously have never found an illegal standing in your garage helping himself to your tools or observed the neighbor's car sporting three different license plates at weekly intervals. your arguments are those 'looks good on paper' kind. while i agree that the government is the one that is robbing us and giving it to those that have little incentive, i believe that we should be pressing for real change within the government to correct this problem. until we tatbo (throw all the bast--ds out) and start with people that have our interests at heart nothing will be accomplished. we can blog all day and night in futility.
if that illegal had not violated the law you wouldn't be able to invite him in, now would you? noncitizens can own property here. to visit it, however, one must go through certain channels that are there to protect me and you. a certain number of these people have skirted these channels and are dangerous to our health and welfare. if you would like to associate with them you are free to go to their countries and do so. they should not be free, though, to just wander into this country unnoticed and without going through the procedures set down.
I'm really tired of the smears of "idealism". It is the exact same attitude that is expressed towards libertarians by liberals and conservatives. If anything is a sign that one is living in a fantasy world, it is the notion that we can restrict immigration (expand immigration restriction, even) without violating our own core principles and expanding state interventions in all kinds of ways (more taxes spent, more strict police powers, paramilitary presence, eminent domain, national I.D. cards, beureacratic management, etc.), and end up reducing the welfare state as a consequence. What I find truly detached is the idea that a black market in immigration can be controlled by expanding and attempting to enforce prohibition on it. If we really want to address this is utilitarian, pragmatic terms, I have a question: why doesn't prohibition theory apply to immigration and immigrant labor?
poco424: What I mean when I say that immigration restriction must inevitably violate the property rights of individual owners, Inquisitor, is this. Suppose I, a legal citezen, invite an illegal immigrant into my home. Suppose I sell one a home or rent one out to them. Suppose I hire one. In order to enforce the immigration laws, you must essentially, in effect, restrict trade and force disassociation. You must forcibly kick them out of voluntarily aquired homes, from willing sellers and renters. You must forcibly end their voluntarily aquired jobs, from willing employers. Thus, these immigration laws cannot be enforced without eggregious violations of individual property rights; the property rights of citezens. If any citezen wishes to voluntarily associate with an illegal immigrant in any way, you must forcibly end those associations. If you wish to allow the government to control access to the entire territory, you must implictly control access to individual plots of property within it. Conclusion: immigration restrictionism violates private property rights. if that illegal had not violated the law you wouldn't be able to invite him in, now would you? noncitizens can own property here. to visit it, however, one must go through certain channels that are there to protect me and you, . a certain number of these people have skirted these channels and are dangerous to our health and welfare. if you would like to associate with them you are free to go to their countries and do so. they should not be free, though, to just wander into this country unnoticed and without going through the procedures set down.
if that illegal had not violated the law you wouldn't be able to invite him in, now would you? noncitizens can own property here. to visit it, however, one must go through certain channels that are there to protect me and you, . a certain number of these people have skirted these channels and are dangerous to our health and welfare. if you would like to associate with them you are free to go to their countries and do so. they should not be free, though, to just wander into this country unnoticed and without going through the procedures set down.
Yes, that "illegal" (I.E. human being) broke an unjust law in order to get into the territory, in the same way that slaves who tried to run away from their masters broke an unjust law in order to attempt to free themselves, and in the same way that some hippie who smoked a joint broke an unjust law in order to damage his body for a little bit of temporary euphoria. Just because something happens to be the law does not mean that it is just by any stretch of the libertarian imagination. Civil disobedience, my friend. Civil disobedience. Is it risky? Hell yes! I kind of have to admire them for their courage in their risk-taking. Is it in violation of anyone else's rights? No, not unless we distort the meaning of rights beyond recognition as to imply that one has a "right" to dictate that other people not enter land that is not actually one's own legitimate private property. Not unless there is such thing as a "right" to make discrimination/exclusion mandatory on either other people's property or unowned land.
The "procedures" are arbitrary and constitute red tape. People illegally come here, in part, precisely because the "procedures" are ridiculous and draconian, making them end up on waiting lists for years while they're trying to escape bad conditions. I don't see any rational reason why someone should have to go through a ridiculous bereaucratic process, loaded with regulations, in order to simply enter the territory and aquire a home from a willing seller. These "procedures" have nothing to do with liberty so far as I can tell. I don't really care if such "procedures" are there in the name of "public safety". I had thought that libertarians are generally quite skeptical of attempts by the government to create "public safety" through regulations. Why should someone need special permission from the government to enter the territory? It seems to me that your arguement amounts to the idea that it is necessary to pass through the proper regulations (excuse me, unecessary and mostly pointless legal hoops and barriers) in order to enter the territory. I certainly don't feel "protected" by such a government bereaucracy.
There are so many good libertarian arguements against immigration restriction and the claims of those who support it, both ethical and practical, that I find myself wondering why this is even an issue up for debate. But unfortunately it is.
Brainpolice:My accusation that immigration restriction inherently violates the liberty of individual property owners to associate with immigrants is not absurd. If I wish to sell a home to an immigrant, hire one or allow one into my home, in order to enforce the anti-immigration laws you must violate my liberty to do so with my property as I please. You cannot enforce political borders and immigration restrictions without reinforcing the state's territorial monopoly. You cannot control the entire territory without implictly controling the individual plots of land within it. Furthermore, the tax-payers have no uniform desires. They are conflicting with eachother in their preferences as to how to use it. So any attempt to enforce on particular such preference is not going to represent the will of all tax-payers. We therefore fall back on interest groups.
Selling homes to immigrants constitutes voluntary immigration as there is a demonstrable will for the immigrant to reside there indefinately.
Kent C:Paul speaks about individualism trumping collectivism while having a collectivist immigration policy. How would you like me to view it?
I couldn't care less how you view it. As I've said in other threads, the government is social herpes. We've got it and we're not getting rid of it. So what you're asking is essentially, "How do you preach health when you have an incurable but nonfatal disease?" Easy, you do the best with what you have, you compromise where necessary. No where have I seen Ron Paul present himself as anything but an old right adherent, all of whom accepted the existence of government as a more or less necessary evil that should be minimized. I have no desire to offer criticisms of people solely because they deviate from perfection of principle in practice. The entire planet is unworthy by those standards.
Brainpolice:I don't think this is a fair characterization at all. You do not need to improve human nature one bit to eventually overthrow the state. State or not state, human nature remains exactly the same.
And what you're missing is that the state is itself derrived from human nature. People want to steal, people want to push their neighbors around, and to do so with impunity, people want unearned income, people want favorable treatment and 'legal' advantages, etc. I do not propose to break the monopoly. The state is essentially the dominant mafia, and they don't tolerate competition, period.
Brainpolice: Market anarchism is not utopian.
To say that is arguable is to put it modestly.
Kent C:Now, how about a libertarian being a nationalist. That's just another form of collectivism very similar to racism. And denying access to the country is certainly done because of nationalist concerns. Therefore, Were a "libertarian" to adopt nationalist political views, he would instantly cease to be a libertarian. "
Unfortunately there's a difference between denying access to people and trying to weed out criminals and welfare leeches before you let people have access.
Brainpolice:A national border is unowned land; it has no discernable just owner. Anyone can cross it as they please.
I beg to differ. Ask anyone with a ranch on the southern border who routinely loses animals to holes in their fences that they have to routinely pay to repair. If they electrify, they get sued. I remember one guy who, having had enough, put out ladders for the illegals. There is plenty of private property getting messed with, and real property too, not just confiscated money that's getting forcibly redistributed to the illegals.
Brainpolice:We've already been through this. The existance of intervention X does not legitimize intervention Y.
However intervention Y is already in effect, just not enforced, and for the very reason that it would be detrimental to the state to do so. Which, for now, makes intervention Y my friend.
IrishOutlaw:Wow, I never get tired of how people who claim to believe in liberty advocating ways to deprive others of it. It just never gets old.
Nor do mischaracterizations of arguments, but you seem to be jumping on that bandwagon without much pause.
IrishOutlaw:Aren't you glad there are laws against murder, otherwise people would run around killing each other day and night.
Ah, but living in the US borders, what principled anarchist would, after awakening and finding his whole family slaughtered, use the STATE police to catch and punish the murderer? I mean, intervention X doesn't justify intervention Y. Think of all the people who would be forced to pay for food and board for the murderer were he caught, those who would be impressed into jury duty for the trial, the lack of restitution made to you the victim as indeed you would be one of the people paying to keep the murderer in food and clothing, the redistribution of wealth to pay the salaries for all the state employees involved, etc.
Surely a principled anarchist would never go to the police in such an instance and do something so horrible as perpetuate the existence and power of the state, and certainly would not make use of such services and laws while in existence while still doing his best to change them into a form he found more in line with his principles, if not perfectly so. Such an instance would be unthinkable. Better to develop an alternative law enforcement agency and see how it fares in competition with the state.
IrishOutlaw:Can anyone provide me with the list of "freedoms" that we are losing because of immigrants? Because the only things I am losing, I am losing to the government.
Is there a reason why when a corporation goes to the government and begs, it is seen as at least complicit in any wealth transfer that is granted, but when a Mexican does the same thing they are champions of liberty? Does not the corporation too make valuable productive additions to society as any individual worker does, legal or illegal?
poco424:For every one of the illegal immigrants you mention that has done so well, and I applaud her, I can show you a legion that are of another ilk. If you read the police reports in your local newspaper you will notice that, on most days, the surnames of those arrested for violent crimes and driving violations will be Spanish.
Fully one third of the people in the prison here are illegals. They are a miniscule but fast growing portion of the population, not yet over 5% here. Yet 33% of the prison population in for various misdemeanors and felonies, from DUI to rape and murder. The neighborhoods they have congregated in have seen crime indexes skyrocket, and in areas that by and large are well below national averages. Schooling quality drop through the floor.
Locally near my mother's house someone tried to open a slum a couple years ago, no other way of putting it. Well over 20 people staying in a one family home. Matresses were spread through the backyard, the front door was taken off its hinges and simply left on the lawn. Kids got harrassed, bikes and cars stolen, homes robbed. The people in the neighborhood got together and demanded the existing zoning ordinances be enforced and the slum closed. Things went back to normal real quick.
A departure from perfection of libertarian principle to be sure. I guess the principled solution would have been for everyone to band together and buy the house, then try to evict the people, deal with the lawsuits and whatnot that followed, etc. Or perhaps everyone could have built fences around their property and put bars on their windows, bought chains for their kids bikes and alarms for their cars and houses if they didn't have them already, etc. Or maybe they could have paid the people in question to not act like such complete scumbags. But for some reason I can't bring myself to judge the neighborhood too harshly for their unprincipled action of actually using existing laws to ensure their kids could, as they could before, play stick ball in the street and leave their bikes on their lawns with reasonable reassurance that they wouldn't be stolen.
I think you and I are in agreement, people who are idealistically and on principle opposed to any immigration controls by and large aren't subjected daily to the real, material, immediate problems large floods of illegals are causing. As has been said, well to do Mexicans with pristine records and careers aren't hiking across the border. Especially seeing how things are set up in Mexico currently, we are getting the dregs. The lower class that is being crushed. And were there not currently entitlements open to them and little to no means for screening criminals out, I'd welcome them. But until the immigration process is made easier (interesting thing for a 'nationalist' to ask for...) and until entitlements are ended, using existing laws to protect ourselves from an escalation of problems and money loss makes sense.
The high school I went to as a kid, which was routinely awarded and turned out some honestly smart and productive kids, is now overrun with latino gangs. There's loads of graffiti on the walls, litter all over the grounds, smashed car windows all over, and roving bands of punks eyeing every person of differring skin complexion who drives through the area. Bottles of piss are to be found next to buildings, piles of clothing, houses in the area were seeing property values drop long before the crash, slums are popping up, etc. And I don't think it's nationalist or racist or even unreasonable to note that it's not waves of illegal immigrants from Norway that seem to be the problem, and that current laws on the books should be enforced to curtail immediate problems while the roots are also dealt with, which is a much longer term goal.
JimS:Being able to send money overseas at all means that they are consuming less than they are giving to the society here, even at their depressed wage levels.
A thief may send money overseas, he is not giving more to society than he is taking.
JimS:Medical cost is a red erring; most illegals are at prime age, or what insurance companies would call best customers. The long desert walk tends to weed out the weaklings :-) On any given day, far more immigrants, legal and illegal, probably work in our hospitals than there are patiants in the same place.
I know several nurses and a doctor who would disagree. The illegals here use the ER for every conceivable problem. They aren't showing up for broken legs or heart attacks. They are flooding the ER with the sniffles, stomach aches, splinters, ear infections, tooth aches, the squirts, etc., because they have no health insurance and no primary physician, there's a longer wait at the free clinic, and they know the ER won't and often can't turn them away.
xahrx: IrishOutlaw:Wow, I never get tired of how people who claim to believe in liberty advocating ways to deprive others of it. It just never gets old. Nor do mischaracterizations of arguments, but you seem to be jumping on that bandwagon without much pause.
Stupid is as stupid does I guess.
Brainpolice:Another observation about immigration: Comparative advantage anyone? Even if you can demonstrate that these immigrants are on average uneducated and unskilled, even if you can demonstrate that a given group of people is inferior in all kinds of ways, it is still generally mutually beneficial to associate and trade with them on some level. In the long-term, discrimination is a suicidal buisiness practise.
Another observation about immigration: Comparative advantage anyone? Even if you can demonstrate that these immigrants are on average uneducated and unskilled, even if you can demonstrate that a given group of people is inferior in all kinds of ways, it is still generally mutually beneficial to associate and trade with them on some level. In the long-term, discrimination is a suicidal buisiness practise.
then you haven't been to japan, probably the most closed and xenophobic nation on earth. sure, there is the odd expatriate, but absolutely no tolerance for mass immigration as we in the western world know it. they invest and trade internationally, just don't mix it with the rest of humanity. and they're no slouches, economy wise. goods/services travelling borders freely can deliver the wealth that comparative advantage unlocks. people don't have to be part of that mix, and the japanese had very rigid views on race, ethnicity and society.
on the other hand, take botswana, they've got a real problem with managing the enormous efflux of refugees coming from zimbabwe. the botswana are not happy with the situation, in spite of your sanguine attitude to illegal immigration. same capital make-up, just a couple of million extra mouths to feed. many of the refugees are forced to continue on to south africa, whose bigger capital base is more accomodative of large arrivals. but there's a limit.
maybe you could illustrate one wealthy country in today's world where open borders are successfully operating. because i can think of plenty where leaky borders are creating extreme distrust on the part of the host nation (and not the elites, the ordinary joe). only when there is enormous capital accumulation can mass immigration not drag down living standards (think hong kong since ww2, absorbed large numbers of refugees from prc, but increased living standards nonetheless). recipe: light regulatory regime, low tax, and high respect for property rights. (even so, the hk wasn't open borders, coastguard, immigration etc. )
xahrx: IrishOutlaw:Aren't you glad there are laws against murder, otherwise people would run around killing each other day and night. Ah, but living in the US borders, what principled anarchist would, after awakening and finding his whole family slaughtered, use the STATE police to catch and punish the murderer? I mean, intervention X doesn't justify intervention Y. Think of all the people who would be forced to pay for food and board for the murderer were he caught, those who would be impressed into jury duty for the trial, the lack of restitution made to you the victim as indeed you would be one of the people paying to keep the murderer in food and clothing, the redistribution of wealth to pay the salaries for all the state employees involved, etc. Surely a principled anarchist would never go to the police in such an instance and do something so horrible as perpetuate the existence and power of the state, and certainly would not make use of such services and laws while in existence while still doing his best to change them into a form he found more in line with his principles, if not perfectly so. Such an instance would be unthinkable. Better to develop an alternative law enforcement agency and see how it fares in competition with the state.
It is funny you should mention that. I have had two first cousins killed that I was very close too. The people who killed one of them are now also among the deceased, the people that killed the other one made Detective. I personally have never called the police, don't like em, don't interact with them voluntarily for anything. As far as I am concerned they are nothing but parasites with guns and no balls, paid to inflict fear in the populace.
The neighborhood I live in is the hood. Last week someone was killed in front of my house, a few weeks ago the police got into a high speed chase through the neighborhood with someone they SUSPECTED had drugs on them, and ended up with the fence getting rammed into and knocked down. My neighborhood resembles the UN, very few people speak english and those that do speak it with heave accents. Veitnamese, Mexican, African, Polish, Russian, all immigrants, don't know who is here "legally" or "illegally". Don't care either. I have good relationships with them all. The women are hot, LOL. There is mutal respect, it is a great thing too. I don't worry about one of them being the boogeyman, so I don't need the government to check under my bed before I can go to sleep at night. If a conflict arises, we deal with it like neighbors.
So, I am not too worried about my family being slaughtered and what position I would be put in should it happen. The chances are slim to none. Plus, my family wouldn't go out without a fight.
xahrx: IrishOutlaw:Can anyone provide me with the list of "freedoms" that we are losing because of immigrants? Because the only things I am losing, I am losing to the government. Is there a reason why when a corporation goes to the government and begs, it is seen as at least complicit in any wealth transfer that is granted, but when a Mexican does the same thing they are champions of liberty? Does not the corporation too make valuable productive additions to society as any individual worker does, legal or illegal?
How does that have anything to do with my post? I don't remember calling anyone that takes from the government being the champion of liberty.
The whole problem, what you at least seem to be missing, is that just because the government exists is no reason for us to use it to our advantage. That is no different than any of the other collectivists. EVERYONE can justify using the government to advance their personal agendas. They all have sound logical reasons why the government should provide all the things they think it should provide and do all the things they think it should do, from domestic wiretapping to national health care. Anyone that argues for the government to intercede on their behalf against the liberty of another person is in the same boat and the don't have a leg to stand on when they complain about someone else seeking the government to their bidding. Its all the same.