Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Immigration

  • The Old Man and Immigration

    Libertarians often believe in what is de facto open borders. But let’s look at the consequences.

    Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, but our current situation is different than it was in the past. The country is suffering from immigration indigestion. The existing laws of the United States now exclude certain classes of immigrants who, we can all understand, would be most undesirable additions to our population. These exclusions have been enforced, and the results have been beneficial; but the excluded classes are extremely limited and do not by any means cover all or even any considerable part of the immigrants whose presence here is undesirable or injurious, nor do they have any adequate effect in properly reducing the great body of immigration to this country. There can be no doubt that there is a very significant and heartfelt desire on the part of the American people to restrict further, and much more extensively than has yet been done, immigration to the United States.

    I needn’t mention the economic side of the general policy of restricting immigration. In this direction the argument is unanswerable. If we have any regard for the welfare, the wages, or the standard of life of American workers, we absolutely must restrict immigration. There is no danger to American workers from the entry of skilled or trained and educated immigrants with an established occupation or pursuit, for immigrants of this class will never seek to lower the American standard of life and wages. On the contrary, they desire the same standard for themselves. But there is an appalling danger to the American wage earner from the flood of low, unskilled, ignorant, immigrant labor which has poured into the country for some years and which not only takes lower wages, but accepts a standard of life and living so low that Americans cannot compete with it. In essence, the current wave of immigrants is merely cheap competition for American workers, and a heavier drain on the welfare system. It has been well documented that reliance on foreign workers in low-wage, low-skill occupations, such as farm work, creates disincentives for employers to improve pay and working conditions for American workers. When employers fail to recruit domestically or to pay wages that meet industry-wide standards, the resulting dependence — even on professionals — may adversely affect both U.S. workers in that occupation and U.S. companies that adhere to appropriate labor standards.

    New arrivals should be limited to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. For this purpose, it is necessary to continue a policy of restricted immigration. It would be well to make such immigration of a selective nature with some inspection at the source, and based either on a prior census or upon the record of naturalization. Either method would insure the admission of those with the largest capacity and best intention of becoming citizens.

    To sum up, we have been called the melting pot of the world. We have experienced a situation where it looks as though we have allowed influences to enter our borders that are about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot. There has come about a general realization of the fact that the immigrants who have been coming to us in recent years are wholly dissimilar to native-born Americans; that they are unfamiliar and perhaps hostile to self-government, something that has taken us many centuries to acquire. America is also beginning also to feel the pain from the internal ‘foreign colonies’- those groups of aliens, either in city slums or in country districts, who speak a foreign language and live a foreign life, and who want neither to learn our English nor to share our common life. Instead, let’s keep what we have, protect and preserve what we have, make what we have the realization of the dream of those who wrote the Constitution.

     

    (yes, this is a pastiche of contemporary comments from politicians in the early 20th century with some archaisms updated. They argued that Italians, Slavs, Asians, and Jews were qualitatively different than previous immigrants. Thus did half my family perish in Hitler’s concentration camps.)

  • Practical immigration policies

    There have been several articles on immigration in the past, mostly from a theoretical perspective of liberty and immigration. I decided to write about what I would see as a more practical approach to immigration. I will restate that I am not a fully open borders libertarian, that as long as sovereign states exist – and they do for now – they need to be able to exercise some measure of control over the borders of their jurisdiction. As such, as I see the need for a policy. The merit of open/closed borders is not a subject for this post. This is a post about controlled immigration and mostly about compromises in policy. Furthermore, this is not a “ in libertopia these things would be solved by private property” argument. While this argument has its merits, sadly we do not live in libertopia and there is a distinct lack of cocaine vending machines in my vicinity.

    Border castle

    First and main point: if you are going to have a government, the basic function of that government is preservation of rights, laws and in general the King’s Peace. From this I conclude that the absolute lowest constraint to immigration policy should be the ability of the government to ensure this, for the both the existing and the new residents. This starts with preventing violent criminals and sever contagious diseases, and moves on from there.

    The second point is that for any location, the infrastructure at a given point is of a given size and can accommodate a given number of people. Exceeding this number can be workable, if uncomfortable. Greatly exceeding it can get unworkable. Off course, immigrants often mean economic growth and development, but this takes time – building houses, roads, hospitals and so on. If the population of Austin Texas would all move tomorrow to Houston Texas, there would be no room. If the population gradually arrives over years, expansion can happen.

    Some open borders people say that it worked for the US in certain times in the past, but did it really? Or was the press at the time bemoaning immigrants living in overcrowded, insalubrious diseased slums? The same thing happened during the industrial revolution: when a lot of people moved from the country to the city, the lived in cramped, crowded, rather unsanitary conditions. The same thing happens now in certain immigrant areas of Europe. The left waive this away as due to the evil of capitalism, but in general more homes do not appear out of thin air and the “empty homes of the rich” are not that many. Even the left prescription of the government building housing takes time.

    A form of current open borders policy is the EU, but this was not done right away. It was accomplished by sort of applying the rules: a country was allowed in when it was considered it was ready and would not excessively disrupt others. Romania made it in 2007 with some extra restrictions until 2012. Even now Romania is not a full member of the Schengen area. So this is another form of controlled access, in the end.

    We must also keep in mind, not being libertopia, there are political constraints. If a lot of immigrants come in and start creating issues – camping in parks, squatting on private land, creating piles of trash, solving this by having police or military go in force is both dangerous as a precedent for the society and untenable in certain situations, due to the uproar it causes among the bleeding hearted ones. Now, I cannot prescribe this or that number of immigrants for this or that country, but these are things that cannot be ignored completely.

    In my view, existing residents do have some claims that new comers do not: they contributed to the building of the respective country, they – or their ancestors – have invested labor and capital, build houses, planted trees and all that. They have significant skin in the game that a new comer does not have right away, and as such newcomers must be mindful of these and respect the existing society, and policy must reflect that by not promoting mindless “multiculturalism.”

    This may be a bit overkill though

    It is too often that people move to a place and want to keep their existing culture and behavior intact, without adapting to the new place. This cannot always work. This is significantly more important for people moving from a low prosperity country to a high prosperity one. Just like the great strings of bad luck which derailed socialist policies, many of these people do not make a link between the difference in culture and the difference in prosperity. They want to move to a new place and keep doing what wrecked the first one. This is nonsensical. Furthermore, there are some social mores to be respected. Romanians, to take a simple example, moving to Switzerland cannot keep their habit of eating sunflower seeds and spitting husks on the pavement, without expecting upset Swiss. All these must be kept in mind for a workable policy.

    I cannot see value in visas like US H1B, which tie the immigrant to a certain company or job. This can welcome abuse and it is not good for either the immigrant or the natives – from a labor market perspective. I feel my preferred policy in the current world would be something vaguely similar to the New Zealand points system.  Give people points for good characteristics, deduct for bad. There would be deal breakers – criminal records for serious crime, dangerous diseases, participation in serious gangs, criminal or terrorist organization, published intent to harm the new country. There would be points received for experience in skilled work, spotless records, speaking the language, education, having assets or capital to bring to the new country. Points would be deducted for misdemeanors, not speaking the language, not having any education or skills to speak of. In the end decide how many points are needed to get in.

    After the immigration there would be a number of years of probation – be on your best behavior, prove you have attempted to integrate in the new culture. Any crime in this period means deportation. Not learning the language to a tolerable level at the end of 5 years should be frowned upon severely. In this period you may need to occasionally offer proof of employment and of residence in proper conditions, not 100 people registered in the same apartment. You may be required to have some sort of liability insurance in case you cause damage. After 5 years you could become a full resident, eventually with a path to citizenship.

    Given the current climate on immigration, another thorny issue arises for immigration policy, politically and maybe practically. That is very delicate for libertarians as it is rather counter the ideology: can this policy be purely individual or will some collectivism inevitably sneak in.  When you see a certain group commit a significantly disproportionate amount of bad things, can you submit members of that group to additional scrutiny? Or to rephrase, in certain cases people group other people in categories out of convenience. And people notice patterns. Should these patterns be used? I have to admit that I do have some reticence about certain immigration in Europe, but would not support blanked bans on whole categories. But can using patterns for some extra scrutiny be warranted? I am not sure I know myself. As a Romanian I have been on both ends of such conversations.

    Of course, this are general guidelines I have yet to think of the actual points involved and how to add them up. But it is what I think can be a start for some countries. Opinions or are we all in agreement?

  • Immigration in Modern America

    A Succinct History

    Immigration is what created the country as we know it, whether your ancestors were on the Mayflower or you bundled up your life and came here yourself, it is undeniable that this country wouldn’t exist without it. After independence, immigration (like most things in this country) was relatively ungoverned, but in the early years it was also barely a trickle. It wasn’t until the 1840’s that things really got started, and more and more immigrants entered the country. The foreign-born population reached its zenith circa 1910 at 14.7%. Unsurprisingly, as the foreign-born population rose higher, more and more people found it objectionable and worried about the loss of cultural and political unity in the country (sound familiar?). Restrictions increased up until around 1965 when restrictions were significantly loosened. This was palatable to the public because the foreign-born population, around 5%, had reached a low not seen since shortly after the founding. The preceding waves of immigrants had seemingly melted into the fabric of the country. New and different waves of people arrived on America’s shores and the foreign born population exploded (sometimes literally) to 13.1% by 20131. Almost half of these are naturalized citizens2, meaning only approximately 7% of the US population are not considered Americans by the US government.

    Current Immigration System

    This is the confusing part. We only let in certain numbers of people from each country on certain visa categories, and have overall limits on each category as well. The wait for a highly qualified Indian or Chinese national on an H1B (skilled worker) visa can be tens of years while a Nepali (who is culturally similar to many Indians) can get in right away without any special skills. There are categories for every type of situation, I am not an immigration lawyer so I won’t pretend to know them all, but I will mention a few I’m familiar with. Student visas (F-1) allow people to stay here to study, these expire after their education ends. Holders of F-1 visas can apply for what is called OPT, Optional Practical Training, which allows them to stay in the country for 1 year to work a regular job related to their degree. Typically they do not pay all the payroll taxes (like SS/Medicare) and thus make attractive employees where industries are able to employ them economically without much training/pay or they expect to get them an H1-B visa after the F-1 visa expires.

    Speaking of H1-B visas, this is a contentious visa which allows employers to petition for skilled workers they ‘couldn’t’ otherwise employ among the native population at the prevailing wage. The definitions of all these things (skilled worker, prevailing wage, couldn’t hire) are all points of contention between restrictionists and their critics. These visas are most famously given to ‘Tech’ and healthcare workers, my own wife was a recipient. It is by no means a sure thing for those who apply for them as the whole supply (the government limits the total number given out) is usually used up in a few days after the application process opens. There are also unskilled and migrant worker visas. I don’t have much experience with these, or much to say about them. There are also visas for highly skilled persons, who can provide something which no one else in the country can. I usually think of these as visas for professors with specialized fields of study.

    Lastly are the family-type visas (ignoring tourist visas, which obviously aren’t immigrant visas). The so-called fiancee visa allows Americans to petition for their intended to stay in the country for just long enough to get married and apply for the spousal visa. These are given out to basically anyone who can show a legitimate relationship, maybe the complexity of this process can be best illustrated through an anecdote…

    How the Sausage is Made, An Anecdote

    My anecdote is to some extent second hand, but also my personal experience. I am a natural-born US citizen, but my wife is a relatively recent immigrant. She was able to take advantage of the relatively easy entrance to the US after gaining acceptance to a US university. Thereafter she spent 2 years on an F-1 student visa. As explained previously, these visas allow one to continue on OPT, ‘Optional Practical Training’, for a year or two. We became engaged soon after she graduated, but she took advantage of this OPT period to continue to work and live in the US. In February of the next year we were married, the timing of the marriage allowed us to file for her Permanent Residency. The so-called Green card is available to anyone who has been married to a US citizen. The process is confusing and costly, even if performed by oneself. I have a folder on my computer dedicated to this process and it contains over 120 documents, including financial statements for all my accounts for the year prior to application, photos of us together with family, and affidavits from the same testifying to the veracity of our relationship. The two main forms are i-864 (9 pages) and i-130 (2 pages), I needed an additional page (form g-325), because they asked for every place I’d ever lived or worked, which is a substantial number of locations for someone my age at the time (25). We also needed to file i-485 for her (18 pages) which queried similar information, and felt like a lot of duplicative effort, and was equally confusing.

    What is least understood about this process is that it has to be initiated by the immigrant’s ‘sponsor’ or petitioner. All the forms were things I was doing to get her status in the country. Between form i-130 and i-864 I was vouching for her both in the sense that she would have a legitimate connection to this country (marriage to a US citizen in this case) and that she would never fall below 125% of the poverty line – any benefits she collects are a liability I need to pay back to the government. After all the work of decoding the forms and their instructions, finding and printing all the required documents and bugging relatives for their affidavits all I had to do was send them out to the correct office along with the low, low fee of ~$865 and wait (this fee is now $1,225). And get finger printed. And wait. And send more documents in. And wait. A few days before the deadline when my wife would have been eligible for deportation her temporary permanent resident card arrived in the mail. Valid for 2 whole years. Thats right, temporary permanent resident.

    Things went well for 18 months, then we had to file to renew her green card. This application cost us something again, I’m not even sure how much. No, you cannot file to renew more than 6 months out. Yes, they are almost guaranteed to need more than 6 months for them to review your renewal application. We received two temporary cards so far since applying to get her permanent status renewed. By now she can apply for her citizenship, but once you start the application you cannot leave the country until this process is completed.

    That was the complex and confusing process for two relatively well educated people to perform without the help of staff, and is also likely one of the easiest routes to permanent residence.

    The Rights of Immigrants (Libertarianism and Immigration)

    Libertarianism (well, my form of libertarianism, and thus the One True Libertarianism) recognizes the right to self ownership, and all the rights resulting from that right. Among these rights it is recognized the right to travel, as anything you own, you are typically allowed to transport, this is typically called freedom of movement when applied to persons. If you do not recognize this right, then one can be arbitrarily detained. That is tantamount to saying one can be imprisoned without trial. This line of thinking strongly boosts the case for a complete freedom of movement between and within countries, to stop someone, don’t you have to abridge their right to freely move, and thus their self ownership?

    Arguments Against Open Borders: The Constitution

    ‘Aha!’ one says, ‘what about the constitution? That gives the government the power to enforce immigration laws.’
    When questioned, proponents of this point of view often cite Article 1, Section 8 and 9. The relevant excerpts are as follows:

    To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

    -US Constitution Article 1, Section 8

    The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

    -US Constitution Article 1, Section 9

    Between the power to establish rules of naturalization and the implicit allowance on the prohibition of migration or importation of persons seen in section 9 there seems to be a solid enough constitutional foundation for restrictions on immigration, especially given the loose interpretations favored by most constitutional scholars.
    Now, if the question was one merely of legality, I would find this convincing. However, when did legality mean morality to a libertarian? We’re almost exclusively whining about all the things that the state does which infringe on our rights. Yes, when something is both immoral and unconstitutional that is worse, but mere legality should never be sufficient justification to a libertarian (or indeed, anyone of moral standing).

    Arguments Against Open Borders: National Sovereignty

    I also call this one the practicality argument, and I am sympathetic. My ideal world would crib some notes from Mr. Lennon:

    Imagine theres no countries
    It isn’t hard to do
    Nothing to kill or die for
    And no one but Catholics too
    Imagine all the people living in peace

    Okay, but we all know that isn’t going to happen, right? At least not in the immediate future. The National Sovereignty argument says that we don’t have a country if literally anyone can enter. It is entangled with the fact that we are a democracy and thus, anyone living here will likely be able to vote eventually. I also feel it is closely related to a different, but similar, argument that we are culturally different from other areas of the world, and that letting unlimited immigration would effectively destroy the American culture (cue references to ‘magic dirt’). Proponents of both these arguments worry that immigrants will destroy the country either through their foreign cultural practices or their bad voting habits.

    Typical concerns related to new immigrants are their attitudes towards: religious tolerance, free speech, voting for the public purse, gun rights, pot, ass sex, and well, not Mexicans.

    The problem with this argument is that it flies in the face of our previously stated principles. Some will say that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, I will admit to never understanding the appeal of this statement. Yes, smart people can use convoluted logic which induces cognitive dissonance, it is rather a question of should you? People who hold inconsistent or non-existent principles are normally called SJWs and we rightly make fun of their lack of principled thought (If they didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all). This position is also dangerously consequentialist or utilitarian, both things typically abhorrent to libertarians who base their moral and political views primarily on principles and reason. Of course, if you are the type who is a libertarian because of your utilitarian calculations, I think this is probably a pretty solid argument for you to use, if one can safely assume that (some) immigrants do have a negative effect on the country, and that you want to be collectivize the populace, aka be a nationalist (to be clear, I am not using this as a slur).

    There may be other routes to a similar conclusion, I’ve heard some people float the idea of a national HOA, whereby it is assumed all property owners agreed not to let in certain people based on whatever the law may be, when the land was acquired. This is little more than an argument for the social contract, which I reject out of hand. No one really signed on to that, with the potential exception of the signers of the declaration of independence.

    Conclusion

    I cannot reasonably cover any and all arguments for or against open immigration here, but I think I’ve done a fair job presenting a few positions which I chose not only because I’ve heard them on this site or elsewhere, but also because I have held such views in the past. I wrote this up not because I am certain about my position (pro-open borders), but rather because I find myself torn in multiple directions on this issue. My gut says that our borders should be practically closed except to exceptional candidates, as this would have several net beneficial effects for the country (raise wages of lower income earners, reduce demand on food, power, water and housing, depressing the cost of living, reduce pollution, reduce welfare state, increase national cohesion, etc.), but I also am willing to let the consequences of supporting freedom be the deaths of tens of thousands in order to retain individual rights in other areas (gun ownership for one). As such I cannot with good conscience support unfettered restrictions on immigration, maybe some sort of process to screen out diseased people and those with obvious ill-intent would be moral. I am also not sure what a reasoned, rights-based argument in favor of such immigration enforcement looks like.

    References:
    http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/28/chapter-5-u-s-foreign-born-population-trends/

    https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/foreign-born/cps-2016.html (Table 1.1)