The Case for Open Immigration

Immigration has always been a topic of discussion in US politics, but the media has been talking about it more often than ever since the election of Donald Trump. Supporters of US immigration laws say that illegal immigrants are voting socialists into power, collecting welfare, taking jobs from Americans, and undermining the culture. Therefore, they argue, immigration laws should be more strictly enforced and strengthened rather than repealed.

In this article, I will argue the opposite position. I will argue that immigration laws are an immoral violation of the rights of US citizens and should be repealed as soon as possible.

US laws against immigration

Before discussing whether immigration laws are right or wrong, we should first review what these laws actually do. Here is a summary of immigration laws in the US.

Tourism visas and visa waivers:

If you were born in another country and want to enter the US, the easiest way to do so is to get a tourist visa or a visa waiver. This will allow you to come here for anywhere from 90 days to six months. However, you are not allowed to work for the time that you are here. If you are caught working for an employer, you may be deported.

Once your temporary visa or visa waiver expires, you must leave the country, and you can’t come back until a “reasonable amount of time” has elapsed. This “reasonable amount of time” is interpreted by the border officials. But basically, you are not going to be allowed to use a tourist visa to live in the United States.

Temporary employment visa:

If you want to stay for longer than 90 days or six months, one way is to obtain a temporary employment visa. To do this, you need to be an athlete, artist, entertainer, doctor, nurse, or practice some kind of highly skilled profession that requires a college degree.

The only exception to this is if you apply for an H2-A or H2-B visa. In this case, you may not be a college-educated professional, but you’ll need to be a worker in some field for which the government believes your employer can’t find quality workers. Your employer also has to prove that “there are not enough U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work” and “Employing H-2B workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.” (See this USDHS page)

Even if you manage to get a temporary employment visa, you probably won’t be able to stay permanently. And if you quit your job or change your profession, you’ll be deported.

Permanent employment visa

If you want to stay here permanently for employment reasons, you are going to have a difficult time accomplishing this task. By law, only 140,000 people each year are allowed to become permanent legal residents for this purpose. And the number of people petitioning to be included far outweighs this number.

Immigration officials are told to prioritize athletes, artists, entertainers, professionals, and other skilled workers with extraordinary ability. So unless you are a movie star or a famous surgeon, your chances are not good. In fact, your chances are so low that only 15% of new permanent legal residents each year get in on this basis.

Refugees and asylees

Since it’s so difficult to get permanent residency for employment, you might consider claiming that you are being persecuted in your home country due to your religious or political beliefs, race, or nationality. However, the number of people allowed to become permanent residents on this basis is even lower, just 30,000/year. And you have to present some proof that you really are being persecuted.

It is possible for some people to circumvent the 30,000 cap as “asylees” if they have already entered the United States. But this option is not available for people that are not currently in the US. Only about 3% of all new permanent residents in the US are allowed in as refugees or asylees.

Family preference system

While the previous two options don’t offer much hope, you are much more likely to get in through the family preference system. 480,000 people each year are allowed to move into the US permanently because they have family members who live here. 111,800 of these are adult children and siblings of US citizens. The other 114,200 are spouses and unmarried children of permanent resident non-citizens. An unlimited number of spouses, unmarried minor children under 21, and parents of US citizens are also allowed in.

While this is great for people who are lucky enough to have citizen or permanent resident family members, it doesn’t do much for anyone else. And even most family members of current residents are not allowed in (unless they are spouses or unmarried minor children of citizens) because the number of applicants is far greater than 480,000.

Visa lottery

If you can’t get permanent residency through any other method, the one final chance you have is to literally get lucky. 50,000 people are allowed in as permanent residents randomly from countries that are underrepresented in US immigration.

The open immigration argument

The supporters of immigration laws believe this grab bag of seemingly arbitrary quotas is justified. In fact, even the “pro-immigration” politicians agree with this basic premise that we need to have restrictions on immigration. They just disagree with particular aspects of immigration law, not with the fundamental idea that government has the right to decide how many people are allowed into the country.

Given this near universal consensus, it’s important to review the reasons why there were no immigration laws in the US prior to the Page Act of 1875, why Americans did not believe there needed to be any such laws, and why modern advocates of open immigration continue to advocate for the repeal of immigration laws.

The Classical Liberal view of politics

Prior to the early 20th century, the dominant political philosophy in the US was Classical Liberalism. This view argued that human beings possess certain natural rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are created due to the human need to protect these rights, and the powers of government flow from this need.

However, governments often become violators of rights themselves. So when human beings create governments, they need to have a written constitution that expressly spells out the government’s powers. If the government acts apart from the powers granted to it under the constitution, the people have the right to rise up and overthrow it, and to create a new government so that their liberty will be protected once again.

The US constitution

The US Constitution was ratified to expressly spell out the powers of the new Federal Government. And it contained provisions to allow Congress to deal with foreigners coming into the country who were a threat to current residents or citizens.

For example, Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 3 states that Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States;” Clause 8 states that Congress can “declare war;” and clauses 11-16 state that Congress can punish piracy, maintain an army and navy, and do a host of other things to protect the United States from invasion.

Taken together, all of these clauses imply legitimate power to remove people who are enemy combatants, foreign criminals seeking to flee prosecution, terrorists planning attacks against US residents, or are otherwise threats to the liberty or property of citizens.

However, what is not given in the constitution is the power to arbitrarily restrict immigration. There is no place in the constitution where it says the US government has the power to limit the number of immigrants based on a number it thinks up, such as 480,000 family members or 140,000 workers. And in fact, there was no such arbitrary law in the US for the first 87 years after the ratification. When the first immigration laws were passed, Classical Liberalism had already begun to die out and to be replaced with legal instrumentalism. (for more information on the shift towards instrumentalism, see David Littel’s essay). This is why the constitution was reinterpreted to allow such quotas.

The modern Objectivist argument

Since Classical Liberalism has died out, most discussions of immigration have assumed the government has unlimited authority over it. The only question has been whether the voters will be more or less happy if immigration is restricted, and if so, how much of a restriction will be beneficial.

But modern Objectivists disagree with this view. They argue instead that only a policy of open borders is consistent with the principles of justice and morality. While this does not mean that there can be no border restrictions at all, it does imply that there must be some legitimate security reason for keeping people out, such as because they are proven to be criminals, terrorists, or other threats to the lives of Americans. For example, see Leonard Peikoff’s argument here and Yaron Brook’s here.

In the Objectivist view, the only legitimate, moral purpose of government is to protect the rights of US citizens. Since quotas as to how many people are allowed into the country do not do anything to protect these rights, they are illegitimate.

The right to property and immigration

To flesh out this view, let’s consider how immigration quotas affect the right to property of American citizens.

The right to property and immigration: housing

If you are a property owner with a vacant house, trailer, or apartment, immigration quotas prevent you renting your home to a person who currently lives outside of the US. This may cause your property to be vacant, costing you money. Or it may cause you to have to rent your home out for less than you otherwise could. This is a violation of your property-right as a homeowner.

If you are a relative or friend of a person who lives outside of the US, you may be willing to financially support that friend or relative and allow him or her to live in your home. Yet only 480,000 family members and no friends are allowed into the country. This too is a violation of your property-right as a homeowner.

The right to property and immigration: employment

If you are an employer who wishes to hire someone currently outside of the US, you are prevented from doing so unless you can prove that it will not “adversely affect” American workers. This implies that American workers own your business instead of you. This is a violation of your property-right as an employer.

The right to property and immigration: commerce

If you are a consumer, you may be willing to purchase products made by unskilled laborers brought in from other countries if they are cheaper than products made by higher-skilled laborers. Yet the immigration quotas force you to buy these products from foreign firms that import them into the country. This raises the costs of these products, since the products have to be shipped from outside of the country instead of made here. This is a violation of your property-right as a consumer, of your right to spend your own money how you choose.

Arguments against open immigration

Now let’s briefly consider some common arguments against open immigration, along with some rebuttals.

• Immigrants use welfare, they are going to bankrupt the state - This problem can be eliminated by making immigrants ineligible to get welfare
• Immigrants are socialists, they are going to vote Democrats into power - This problem can be eliminated by amending naturalization laws to make it more difficult for immigrants to gain citizenship (as opposed to permanent residency)
• Legal immigration is good, but illegal immigration is bad - The only reason there is illegal immigration is because there are arbitrary quotas and restrictions on immigration. Getting rid of these restrictions will make nearly all immigration legal
• Immigrants are destroying the culture - Every individual has the right to subscribe to whatever “culture” he wants. He can speak whatever language he wants, practice (or not practice) whatever religion he wants. He can also choose not to rent his property out to certain people, not to hire certain people, and not to buy products from people whose culture he disagrees with. What he can’t do in a free society is to make that decision for others who do not share his view. The argument that says “immigrants are destroying the culture” is really just a version of the “argument from democratic power” discussed in the next section.
• Immigrants are taking away jobs from American workers - Like the previous argument, this is really just a version of the “argument from democratic power.” The person who makes this argument is saying that an employer’s property belongs to the worker because the worker has the political power to say what can be done with it. The short answer is that you don’t have the right to tell other people what to do with their property. The next section will discuss this in more detail.

The argument from democratic power: is freedom worth it?

Many of the arguments for immigration restrictions implicitly assume individual citizens have the right to make decisions about the personal lives and property of other citizens. In other words, they implicitly assume that absolute democracy is a legitimate form of government.

In this view, workers have the right to enact arbitrary immigration quotas such as “only 480,000 family members allowed in” or “only 140,000 skilled workers allowed in” because they have enough votes to win elections.

This view is understandable because for over 100 years politicians have been telling people that we live in a democracy and that democracy is good. But the truth is, this country was intended to be a republic. In a republic, only certain public issues are up for a vote, such as what is the best way to fight crime or defend the country from invasion. Private issues such as who an individual rents his home to or hires are supposed to be off-limits to the government.

Nevertheless, many people think it obvious that absolute democracy is good for them. They can’t imagine the social world being structured in any other way.

The problem with absolute democracy, however, is that it is not just bad for employers or property-owners who want to hire or rent to immigrants. It is bad for everyone. Here are just a few of the terrible laws that have been enacted or proposed in our “democratic society:”

• Overtime restrictions that force workers to work less than 40 hours a week unless their employers pay them time-and-a-half
• An Obamacare Employer Mandate that forces workers to work less than 30 hours a week if they can’t convince their employer to give them health insurance
• Obamacare’s “guaranteed issue and community ratings,” which makes it illegal for health insurers to offer low-cost insurance and forces middle-class savers to drop their health insurance due to rising premiums
• Anti-discrimination laws that attempt to force a Jewish baker to bake a cake for a gay couple (luckily, an “anti-democratic” decision was made here)
• National banking laws that declare the government’s paper money to be “legal tender,” thereby giving the government the power to suppress interest-rates and rob savers of yield
• A $15 minimum-wage has been proposed, which would throw millions of fast-food workers out of a job

Some of these laws directly affect the ability of low-skilled workers to earn a living. In some cases, they may even lead to workers being homeless or living without utilities because they can’t get enough hours at their jobs or can’t even find jobs. In other cases, these laws affect other groups of people. But no matter what, putting voters in charge of individuals’ private lives is harmful. It’s harmful to workers, it’s harmful to employers, it’s harmful to consumers, it’s harmful to religious people, it’s harmful to atheists, it’s harmful to gay people, it’s harmful to straight people.

If we want to have better lives, we need to stop believing the “argument from democratic power” and start fighting for a free society once again. Opposing immigration quotas is a good way to start accomplishing this task.

I hope this article has provoked you into thinking more deeply about immigration laws in the US. If you are interested in more of these types of articles, be sure to click “follow.” If you have thoughts or questions, please leave them as comments below.

Images:
Immigration by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service" By Gulbenk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23445038

"May Day Immigration" by Jonathan McIntosh, CC BY-2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehero#/media/File:May_Day_Immigration_March_LA03.jpg

"Christmas Island Immigration Detention Center" by DIAC images, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Christmas_Island_Immigration_Detention_Centre_(5424306236).jpg