Ken Schoolland
Why Open Immigration?
(Transparency
0—Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery)
I am not
the kind of guy who relishes confrontation. I get nervous when I espouse ideas
that are so controversial that people get angry. I imagine that many of you
know the feeling, since it’s common fare for champions of liberty. We encounter
this kind of confrontation not only with strangers, but also with family
members, with co-workers, even with the best of friends.
Some
people love the confrontation. They thrive on it. But others, like myself, take
it uneasily.
So
here we are, a room full of freedom lovers, where it is safe to cheer for
freedom and to denounce repression. Yet even in such a room of fellow
travelers, there is one topic that is sure to stir up anxiety and even
hostility.
That’s the topic
of “immigration.” Immigration can divide a room faster than almost any other
topic. So when I get nervous about addressing a group on the topic of
immigration, I take courage from immigrants, themselves.
COURAGE
(Transparency
1—Desperate Refugees Seeking Freedom)
I
think of the amazing courage that it takes to flee oppression, to leave behind
everything that is familiar, and to chance the hostility of a completely alien
culture in order to find freedom, opportunity, and a better life. When I think
of that courage, I am greatly emboldened. How much easier it is to speak to a
friendly audience, than to risk one’s life in a rickety boat facing storms,
pirates, and sharks. Or to risk one’s
life by crawling under fences and trudging for hours or days without water
across a desert in temperatures of 120°.
I
can’t fault those who try. I admire them. It’s probably what some of my
ancestors, very long ago, did and it benefited me. I can only hope that I would
have the same measure of courage if I were in their shoes.
(Transparency
2—Swiss Rejects Went to Death Camps)
If I had been a
German or Polish Jew in the 1930’s, I’m not sure that I would have had the
courage to flee an increasingly hostile Nazi regime. Would I have defied the
authorities and tried to sneak into Switzerland or the U.S., even though those
nations declared that the quota for German and Polish Jews was full?1
Or would I have seen my family die by extermination?
If I had been a
Cuban or Haitian in the 1990’s, would I have had the courage to hand over a
lifetime of savings to the novice captain of a crowded, leaky boat in the
Caribbean to chance the dangers of the open sea? Or would I have accepted the
tyranny of a communist or military dictator to enslave and impoverish me and my
family for decades?
I hope I never
have to make those decisions. But there are many who still do.
FEAR
What
about those who argue against open immigration? Aren’t any of the arguments
valid? I say “no.”
Of
course there are problems that arise when people move around the planet. I
don’t deny that.
But
whenever there are problems to be solved, I don’t blame those problems on
liberty. I look to see if the repression of liberty is the source of those
problems. It usually is. To solve problems I don’t ask “What can the government
do?” Instead, I ask, “What has the government done to cause or contribute to
these problems in the first place?” Undo that and you have a solution.
Behind
every argument against the movement of people to freedom is an underlying fear.
Those fears are sometimes openly expressed, but more often those fears are
veiled and disguised. The fear of immigrants is the absence of courage.
Courage
is to welcome competition. Fear is to shut out competition. Courage is to
embrace the newcomer. Fear is to expel the newcomer. Courage is to champion
liberty. Fear is to strangle liberty.
When
I think of this fear, I think of the official term for immigrants. Authorities
call immigrants “aliens” who are given “alien registration” cards.
I’ve
seen a few movies about “aliens.” Many of you may have seen some of these:
Alien, Aliens, Aliens 3, and Alien Resurrection. The movie books show more that
twenty listings about aliens, usually from outer space.
Such
movies are very popular because they tap primal xenophobic fears. The alien
movies are typically about hideous foreign creatures who disguise themselves or
invade the bodies of beautiful and loving Hollywood humans and their children.
All
of this is done with the purpose of gaining strength and power from the host,
then suddenly breaking out, conquering and devouring all of life as we know it.
This also approximates the subconscious fear that people everywhere have of
immigrants.
Actually,
my favorite alien movie is Mars Attacks. Because this movie makes it crystal
clear that the only thing that prevents the destruction of the planet is really
bad music. I hope this is true.
So
what are the fears that immigrants arouse? The basic fears are of race,
culture, change, livelihood, security, and crowds. The rationalizations are
disguised in many forms.
One
of these rationalizations, offered by an individual at the Center for
Immigration Studies in the U.S., is that immigrants should be stopped because
they are likely to vote for more government. This turns liberty on its head!
This is using "liberty" as a justification for collectivist
repression.
Should
we deprive others of liberty because of speculation on how they might vote in
the future? Would we expel native citizens or newborn children for this reason?
Certainly not! Nor should immigrants be treated in this manner. Immigrants are
human beings and, as such, they have the same right to liberty as all other
human beings.
WELFARE MAGNET THEORY
Another
rationalization has been expressed by Hans Hermann Hoppe and Milton Friedman
who commented on immigration at former ISIL World Conferences in Berlin and
Costa Rica, respectively. I regard them both highly as champions of liberty in
most ways, except on the subject of immigration.
Interestingly,
Hoppe is an immigrant himself and Friedman is the son of an immigrant family.
Yet they both espouse the “welfare magnet theory,” that other immigrants move
for the purpose of collecting welfare.2
They
express the fear that people will give up everything that is familiar to them,
take all the risks of the journey, and face all the hostility of a new culture,
because they are too lazy to work.
Those
who attended my talk at the ISIL conference in France last year heard my
refutation of that argument. Part of this was the mass of evidence compiled by
economist Julian Simon. Simon demonstrated that it is a misconception that immigrants,
as a group, are a welfare burden on taxpayers. Immigrants do so much to
contribute to the economic health of a country, and they pay more in taxes than
they absorb in benefits, so the continuation of welfare benefits for citizens
may well depend on their contributions.3
(Transparency
3—Welfare/Migration)
I
also presented evidence that the existence of welfare is not the determining
factor in the movement of people. If this is true, then people in the U.S.
would be moving from states with low levels of welfare to states with high
levels of welfare. Just the opposite is true.
Of
the 10 states that give the most welfare, 9 of these experienced net domestic
out-migration in the decade of the 1990’s. The one exception is Virginia, and
that is due to the extraordinary exodus of people from the government’s poorly
managed, showcase capitol next door. Look how attractive Washington D.C. has
become, with 24% of the domestic population leaving in the 1990’s. Conversely,
of the 10 states giving the least amount of welfare, 9 of these experienced net
domestic in-migration.4
There
are some high profile exceptions, but most migration results from a desire for opportunity,
not for welfare. People who are too lazy to work are also lazy to leave
everything that is familiar to them to go to a place that is unfamiliar and
potentially hostile. This is even more true of people who move across national
borders at great personal risk.
In
refuting the “welfare magnet theory,” the ethical argument is far more
appealing than the practical argument. To say that immigrants are responsible
for welfare in the U.S. is a collectivist notion. The ethics of individual
liberty oblige us to hold people accountable for their own actions, not for the
actions of others. Immigrants are no more responsible for oppressive welfare
laws in the U.S. than they are responsible for oppressive tyranny in the
country that they are fleeing.
(Transparency 4—Welfare
Reduction)
And
it seems we are fortunate that U.S. politicians are beginning to take hold of
the runaway welfare system of recent decades. The share of the U.S. population that
is living below the poverty line has fallen to a 21-year low, the number of
people on welfare and the percent of the population on welfare have both been
cut in half.5
The
welfare system is not a given. Welfare need not be an excuse for prohibiting immigration.
A system of welfare that was created by politicians can be changed by
politicians.
Some
opponents of immigration say that refugees ought to stay in their home country
to change the political and economic system at home rather than to move away. I
reply that the best judge of this option is the immigrant himself or herself.
Sometimes
refugees, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises, Fredrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand,
do more to change their homeland from a distance than if they had remained to
be killed or to rot in the dreary confines of some dungeon or to slave away at
backbreaking toil for pennies a day. The immigrant is the best judge of his or
her own options, as was the case of all immigrants who preceded them.
TROJAN HORSE?
Another fear is for national security. This has
certainly commanded a lot more attention since the September 11 terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center. Some have cried out for an end to immigration
as a means of keeping terrorists far away. Every ship, barge, and airplane is
perceived as a potential Trojan Horse.
Ben
Best raised a good question last year in France. What if an invading army
decides to send its soldiers to the U.S. as immigrants? Should they be openly
accepted?
No,
they should not. To the extent that government has any legitimate function, it
is to protect against a conquering invasion and it should be intelligent enough
to figure this out.
I
have no problem with denying visas to an invading army. Though I suspect that
if the North Korean government gave orders to invade the U.S. in this manner,
virtually every starving soldier would become a defector the instant he crossed
the border.
(Transparency 5—Comparative
Defense Spending)
It is
understandable that, in the aftermath of such a tragic crisis as 9/11, people
will, and must, clamor for protective measures against terrorists. But reason
must prevail over collectivist repression in order to gain real protection.
The
U.S. Government has had no shortage of defense expenditures, “spending more
than the next seven defense powers combined.”6 Nevertheless, the U.S. intelligence and
security agencies, with the abundance of wealth, personnel, and technology at
their disposal, came up short in a decades-long effort to root out a terrorist
network with global tentacles that originated in some of the poorest nations of
the world.
(Transparency 6—Clinton let
bin Laden get away)
The
villains had long said they wanted this attack. The villains had attempted
attacks before, even on some of the same targets. The villains are reported to
have been within the U.S. government’s grasp on earlier occasions, but were not
pursued.7
This
was a shortcoming of government at its primary security function. This
incompetence was aptly demonstrated when officials still issued visas to
Mohammed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi for flight training school months after it
was known that these two men had already flown airplanes into the World Trade
Center.8
Will
such attacks in the future be forestalled by stopping all immigration? I think
not. Asking for a sweeping end to all immigration sidesteps responsibility for
the necessity of good intelligence and effective police work. It scapegoats the
very refugees who are also the victims of terror.
HUMAN TRAFFIC
The Australian
Prime Minister, John Howard, won a landslide re-election last year by the swell
of public sentiment favoring the rejection of desperate refugees who were
mostly fleeing Afghanistan. When one refugee ferry began to sink off the coast
of Australia, Howard ordered commandos to prevent anyone from coming ashore.
The government of
the small Pacific island of Nauru agreed to hold the refugees in exchange for a
$17 million jailor’s fee. Not counting the cost of the commando operation, this
payoff amounted to nearly $40,000 per refugee. Nine months later the UN High
Commission for Refugees announced that only 32 of the 251 individuals being
held, will qualify for official “refugee” status. The rest will have to go back
to a war-torn region that has been termed the center of the “Axis of Evil.”9
There are
currently a hundred thousand escapees from North Korea, another part of the
“Axis of Evil.” They have been hiding out in China for fear that they will be
deported to certain imprisonment or death in their homeland. Only a handful of
these refugees have been able to escape to South Korea.
(Ironically,
today the Swiss government is being reviled by pundits world wide for returning
Jewish refugees to Hitler in the 1930’s and 1940’s.)
This is not only
a problem for Australia or China, today. Most governments would offer sanctuary
if it was clear that refugees would be swiftly welcomed in North America or Europe.
But these governments still have their quota systems. I charge that preventing
refugees from escaping tyrants, is a form of collaboration with those tyrants.
(Transparency 7—Human Trafficking)
According to the
U.S. State Department, there are also thousands of slaves in the United States.
Unbelievable? The Economist magazine
reports, “Every year, on State Department estimates, about 50,000 people, the
vast majority women and children, are forcibly trafficked into the United
States from all over the world—Eastern Europe, Asia, Central America,
Africa.…They are forced to work as virtual slaves, for the traffickers’ profit,
in the sex industry, on farms and in factories.”10 Beyond that,
there are an estimated 4 million slaves world-wide.11
Why don’t these
slaves in the U.S. today just run to the police for protection? That’s what the
police are for, aren’t they? No. As enforcers for deportation, the police
unwittingly collaborate to empower black market slave owners. Black market
slaves don’t run to the police because the police will only deport them to a
nation-state where the official slave masters are perceived to be worse. It
isn’t an attractive choice.
It is for the same
reason that, during the 1850’s in the U.S., runaway plantation slaves would not
have gone to the police for protection. The police openly collaborated with
slave owners.
Runaway slaves
could be abused by employers, denied payment for work, beaten, or even raped.
The slave didn’t dare turn to the police for help because the so-called “help”
would be deportation to a plantation master where conditions were perceived to
be worse. That wasn’t an attractive choice, either.
This is why
slavery persists around the world today. It persists because immigration laws
provide collaboration with tyranny. These immigration laws should be condemned
just as the Fugitive Slave Laws of the 1850’s were condemned by abolitionists a
hundred a fifty years ago.
An excellent way
to weaken tyranny abroad is to allow immigrants to flee. A good example of this
came when immigrants fled the Soviet bloc in 1989. Shortly thereafter, an
embarrassed and weakened Soviet empire crumbled.
(Transparency 8—Student Visa
Program)
My
critics clamor for the opposite. They want newcomers banned. Would the U.S. be
more secure if this happened? Should tourist, student, and business travel be
stopped? Should people be prohibited from crossing state borders as well? No. This is as illogical as trying to
prevent future crime in the U.S. by banning births. Much more is lost than
gained by such collectivist measures.
To
paraphrase champions of the Second Amendment, “If you outlaw migration, only
outlaws will migrate.” Far better that individual, criminal conspirators be
effectively—effectively—tracked and
brought to justice.
(Transparency
9—Patriotism and profit)
One strategy
for bringing the market to this task was proposed by Nikolas Gvosdev and
Anthony Cipriano. They remind us that private defense measures have long been
part of our history.
Article
I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to “grant letters of
marque and reprisal,” which is to
license private companies to hunt down terrorists. This sanctions, rather than
prohibits, highly sophisticated, professional, and innovative bounty hunters or
privateers.12 It is certainly worth a try.
In addition,
home security could be enhanced by having governments stop some of the
belligerent things that they do abroad. As Will Rogers once said, during the
U.S. war to maintain colonial control over the Philippines, "When you get
into trouble 5000 miles from home, you've got to have been looking for it.12
AXIS OF EVIL
(Transparency
10—Thomas Jefferson & Entangling Alliances)
I am aware
that it has been a sensitive point in the U.S. this past year to criticize the
government for provocative foreign policy measures. But I think that George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson had it right two centuries ago when they
advised against entangling alliances. Jefferson declared in his 1801 inaugural
address, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all
nations-—entangling alliances with none."
What
entangling alliances might Jefferson have warned us against?
(Transparency 11—Most
Threatening Nations)
Let’s
take a look at the nations that people in the U.S. currently consider to be the
most serious threat in the war on terrorism.
Interestingly,
the two nations that top the list as the most threatening to Americans today
are the very Middle Eastern nations with which the U.S. government has
historically tried to forge entangling alliances—Iran and Iraq. These nations
are now considered the “Axis of Evil,” vehemently opposed to the U.S. Thus, the
fortune spent to promote U.S. interests in those nations was obviously not
money well spent.13
Equally
conspicuous is the complete absence of Saudi Arabia from this list of nations
that are a perceived threat. Of the 19 terrorists who attacked the U.S. last
September, 15 were from Saudi Arabia. Yet the Saudi government continues to
receive the greatest measure of U.S. support in the Middle East.
What
was the U.S. intervention in Iran and Iraq? It isn’t a secret. The masterminds
wrote books about it. Yet fewer people in the U.S. than in the Middle East are
aware that the CIA, in a 1953 mission code-named Operation Ajax, overthrew the
first democratically elected leader of Iran.14
The
popularly elected Md. Mossadegh had asked the British oil concessionaires for a
50/50 split of revenues. When the British refused, Mossadegh did to Iranian oil
what the British government had long before done to British oil: he
nationalized it. In response, western intelligence agencies engineered his
overthrow and replaced Mossadegh with Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Iran’s
oil revenues were then evenly split between U.S. and British oil companies.
Shah Pahlavi maintained his dictatorial rule for the next 25 years with the
support of the CIA and his own secret police, the SAVAK, that tortured and
killed up to 10,000 Iranian political dissidents.
I
don’t think that America’s George Washington would have approved of
overthrowing the first democratically elected leader of another country, the
George Washington of Iran.
After
25 years, Shah Pahlavi was finally overthrown by a fundamentalist revolution in
1979. Suspicion and hostilities were then very great between the governments of
the U.S. and Iran. Soon thereafter, the U.S. government commenced its support
of the 8-year long Iraqi invasion of Iran by supplying a billion dollars of
military support to Saddam Hussein.
I
don’t think that George Washington would have approved of sending a billion
dollars of military aid in the 1980’s to the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein.
Ironically, during that same time frame, the CIA also supplied much of the
military aid and training to Osama bin Laden and his followers.
(Transparency 13—U.S.
dealers dominating world arms market)
One
cannot separate security at home from interventionist activity abroad. The
Center for Defense Information15 states that the U.S. sells
weaponry, heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, to the political elite in 150
nation-states—4/5ths of these are undemocratic. Two-thirds of that number are
listed by the U.S. State Department as having governments that are abusive of
human rights.
Has
this money been well spent for worthy causes or has it contributed to the
exodus of refugees? I suspect the latter.
ECONOMIC & POLITICAL MIGRATION
In addition to
this welfare for tyrants abroad, wealthy nations contribute to poverty with
corporate protectionist welfare. Trade barriers against less developed
countries, especially in farming and textiles, retard development in rich and
poor countries alike.
(Transparency 14—Sugar
Futures)
The OECD says
that Europe’s agricultural protectionism increases food prices by as much as
20%. At the same time, farmers and textile manufacturers in poorer countries are
hobbled in their efforts to export, and they find subsidized commodities dumped
on their domestic markets.16
It is much the
same in the U.S. where trade barriers currently quadruple the price of sugar
for U.S. citizens, from the world market price of 5¢/lb to the U.S. domestic
price of 20¢/lb. To accomplish these high prices for US consumers, beet farmers
were recently paid to plow under 120,000 acres of growing sugar beets.
Immigrant farmers are forbidden from coming to the US. Lower income neighbors
abroad are banned from selling to U.S. consumers. And many U.S. food processing
companies are driven to move abroad.
This is not wise
policy. This is lunacy!
“If
rich countries were to remove the subsidies [to agriculture]…poor countries
would benefit by more than three times the amount of all the overseas
development assistance they receive each year.”17 This is equally true of textile barriers.
The politics of
protectionism contributes mightily to the economic troubles of poorer nations.
And since politics and economics are so intertwined, why are immigrants
separated into two categories: political immigrants and economic immigrants?
I
have no sympathy for this distinction. People have troubles with their economic
life not because they speak out against their rulers, but because they often
wish to act in the marketplace in
defiance of their rulers. One cannot separate politics from the economic
consequences of politics.
People
have a right to their own reasons for moving from one place to another. They do
not have to articulate their protest in political forums to be genuine refugees
from political repression. In this sense, voluntary economic behavior is a
political action that risks imprisonment, or worse, if one resists the long arm
of authority.
RUNAWAY SLAVES
Slaves
who ran from plantations in the antebellum South may not have articulated their
opposition to the political system, but they were political refugees
nonetheless, simply by their pursuit of economic freedom. And they had a right
to move from areas of low economic freedom to areas of relatively high economic
freedom.
(Transparency 15—Trade
barriers & broad related effects.)
It is
no accident that whenever trade barriers are raised against poor nations, there
is more poverty, more civil strife, more drug running, and more migration.
Whenever a U.S. president travels to neighboring countries asking for help in
fighting the drug war or for help in stemming immigration, he is always greeted
with the request for the U.S. to simply open its doors to trade, especially in
farming and textiles. But these requests fall on deaf ears.
The
wealthy nations of the world have it within their power to massively increase
prosperity and investment in poorer countries by simply practicing what they
preach about free trade, but they don’t.
When
a hurricane ravaged Honduras a few years ago, the wealthy nations raised great
fanfare and noise about the emergency relief aid they were giving. On the other
hand, these same wealthy nations have been stone silent about the decades of
trade protectionism against Honduran exports. These exports could have
increased earnings, investment, and prosperity so much that Hondurans could
have prepared themselves against such calamity with better roads and bridges,
better homes and hospitals, better flood control and civil defense warnings.
(Transparency 16—50
years of growth, Latin America and Asia)
This
is certainly not to say that wealthy nations are solely responsible for poor
growth in much of the world. Corruption, inflation, trade barriers, and
repression are among the political practices that have been crucial factors in preventing
many Latin American nations from achieving the extraordinary growth rates of
the Asian Tigers.
While
starting from roughly the same base in 1950, the Asian Tigers have grown much
more than the nations of Latin America. In fifty years GDP per capita has
multiplied 20 to 40 times in the Asian Tiger nations vs. 2 to 3 times in most
Latin American nations. Rigoberto Stewart and José Cordiero demonstrated that
freer economic systems can make the difference.18 And policies of
the wealthy nations can either be a help or a hindrance in doing so.
RESOURCE SCARCITY?
(Transparency
17—George Washington & Immigrants)
In 1783
George Washington proclaimed, “…the bosom of America is open to receive not
only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of
all nations and religions, whom we should welcome to a participation of all our
rights and privileges.”
My
critics say, “Okay, so George Washington would have welcomed immigrants two
hundred years ago. But in today’s world there’s not enough room and not enough
resources.”
This
is false.
(Transparency
18—Growth in World Per Capita GDP)
In a
free society, human beings produce a growing abundance of everything that they
need. Again, it was Julian Simon to the rescue. Simon demonstrated over and
over that resources are not running out, but are constantly becoming more
abundant and cheaper.
Michael
Cox wrote in the latest (August 2002) issue of Reason magazine, “Capitalism creates wealth. During the last two
centuries, the United States became the world’s richest nation as it embraced
an economic system that promotes growth, efficiency, and innovation.” Real GDP
per capita in the U.S. has now reached $36,000.19
Okay,
there’s growing wealth, but what about the land? Land is fixed. It doesn’t
increase. Isn’t the U.S. too crowded?
Indeed,
when people think of opening the borders north of the Rio Grande, my critics
imagine crowds of immigrants pouring in. “Where would they all fit?”
While
there are a lot of people trying to get into the United States, it is arrogant
to believe that everyone in the world wants to be there. Already there are as
many as 10 million U.S. citizens who have chosen to live outside of the United
States. Even though they live abroad, they have the security of knowing that
they could return during a time of danger.
Many
immigrants to the U.S. hope to return to their native country, as well, when
they have established a greater measure of prosperity and security in their
lives. People want the opportunities that freedom brings and most people would
be delighted to have that freedom in the land that is most familiar to them.
(Transparency
19—Declining Fertility)
Part
of the concern about immigrants is due to a frightening perception of the population
bomb. These fears are unfounded. The United Nations reports that fertility
rates in both rich and poor countries have been falling for 30 years and
continue to fall. In the rich countries, fertility rates are below the
replacement rate, which means that without immigration the overall population
would decline. One day this will be the case everywhere.
But
what about now? The critics say that no country could accommodate the vast
number of refugees in the world today!
The
earth is far more accommodating than people realize. There is plenty of room
for humanity.
For
perspective, let’s consider the 30 million refugees in the world today.
This
includes 12 million refugees who have fled across international borders as well
as 18 million more who are estimated to have been displaced within national
borders due to civil strife.20 Compare this with Hong Kong and just
one tiny U.S. state, Hawaii.
LIBERTY AND DENSITY
Hong
Kong is known as being one of the most densely crowded places on the face of the
earth with 17,500 people per square mile and a per capita income rivaling that
of the United Kingdom. Yet few people are aware that living conditions are only
as crowded as they are in Hong Kong because 40% of the land area is zoned by
the government as country park——where people are not allowed to live!
The
same is true in Hawaii. There isn’t a lack of land, but there is a lack of
politically approved zoning. In all of the Hawaiian Islands, less than 5% of
the land area is zoned for all commercial and residential use. There would be
plenty of room for newcomers on those tiny islands in the Pacific if only the
government stood out of the way.
In
fact, if people in Hawaii were willing to accept even a third of the population
densities of Hong Kong, then all the refugees of the world could live on the
Hawaiian Islands—and still 40% of the land area could be zoned as country park.
If those people were allowed to farm the agriculturally zoned sugar plantations
that have mostly all gone bankrupt in recent years due to high U.S. labor
costs, there is no doubt that diligent Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipino
newcomers could turn the land into abundance without a penny of government
subsidy.
Or
just take one portion of federal land in the U.S. that is 65 times as great as
the Hawaiian Islands, the lands of the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM
leases its 270 million acres of land to a few favored cattle ranchers at
one-seventh that of market rates. This means that for $1.43 per month, the
federal government provides them with enough land to sustain a cow and a calf.
21
Surely
there are a lot of people around the
world who would be willing to pay more than $1.43 per month to live on 10 acres
in a free country. Aren’t human beings worth more consideration than cattle?
This is especially true at a time when Western governments are paying
extraordinary sums to farmers not to
use their land.
(Transparency 20—The
New Americans)
Surely
each generation believes that living space is a problem. In 1800 there were 5
million people living in the United States, some of them complaining about the
crowds of newcomers. How could anyone in 1800 imagine a nation of 281 million
people living in the United States today?
The
nation isn’t poorer for having 56 times as many people as 200 years ago. It is much richer. People accept the changes
of the past much more easily than they accept the change that is yet to come.
The future will bring us ever greater riches, yet people are still afraid.
Afraid?
Why? Because, without confidence in the marvelous potential of a free market,
people will always be afraid of the unknown.
Donald
Boudreaux, who spoke at the ISIL conference last year, argues in a recent FEE article
that, by historical standards, the percentage of immigrant population is
relatively small and America is far richer and far more capable of absorbing
immigrants than ever before.
Compared
to 1920, America now has twice as many physicians per person, three times as
many teachers per person, and 50% more police officers per person than eighty
years ago. There is more food, more health care, more residential living space,
and there are more jobs than ever before. Says Boudreaux, “The fact is America
today is much wealthier, healthier, [more] spacious, and resource-rich than it
was a century ago. And we owe many of these advances to the creativity and
effort of immigrants.”22
For
those who fear a shortage of resources, they should not fear too many people
drinking or polluting the water. Instead, they should fear poor government
management of water and other resources. Government frequently sells water to
influential farmers at a fraction of the cost of delivery. So water is
wastefully used.
There isn’t a
lack of water. There is a lack of
rational management and market pricing. This can and should be fixed. But let’s
not scapegoat immigrants for this and other resource problems that have been
created by poor government policy. We must not fall for the oldest of political
tricks—that of blaming outsiders for the folly of politicians.
BOTH MORE CROWDS AND MORE SPACE
What
is the capacity of the United States in the “worst” case—or “best” case,
depending on your perspective—scenario?
The land area of
the United States, 30% of which is owned by the federal government, could
support ten times the current population and it would still be less densely
populated than Japan is today. If only one percent of that number were allowed
into the U.S., the country could accommodate the entire refugee population of
the world.
The fact is that,
aside from the fraction of federal land that is set aside for national parks,
the bulk of federal land is managed for the benefit of a very few, privileged
citizens. What was once taken from Indians does not now belong to me or to all
U.S. citizens. It effectively “belongs” to whoever has power in the councils of
government: foresters, cattlemen, miners, and environmentalists.
A study of one
national forest found that the government spent $13 building logging roads for
every $1 of revenue earned from the sale of timber. This isn’t frugal
management, this is plunder of the taxpayer.
I would much
rather see governments give greater respect to the private ownership of justly
acquired land, rather than taking lands by force with the condemnation powers
of eminent domain. And where the
government holds land, it should be open to those with a just claim or to
homesteading. If this means a livelihood for millions of people instead of cows
and prairie dogs, then so be it.
Do U.S. citizens
prefer open space to cities? Do they need rolling hills and great expanses
between each other? For some, yes. And there is more and more of both types of
living, cities and open space, for all.
Generally
speaking, Americans are like people everywhere and they prefer to live and work
in cities or suburbs, which account for less than 3% of the land area of the
contiguous 48 states.23 Most people like crowded cities or they wouldn’t
go there. That’s where the action is.
That
explains why, in the decade of the 1990’s, the population of New York State
declined, while the population of Metropolitan New York City increased.
Likewise, the population of California State declined, while the population of
Metropolitan Los Angeles City increased. So there is both more open space in the countryside and more action in crowded cities.
As anyone who has
flown across the United States can affirm, the population is highly
concentrated in certain regions. One can fly for hours across vast expanses of
land which are virtually uninhabited. Even the most desolate of land becomes
inviting when the law permits freedom.
The number one
travel destination for residents of Hawaii is to the deserts of Nevada, not for
the open spaces, but for the crowded casinos of Las Vegas where gambling is
allowed. Legalizing games of chance has made Las Vegas one of the fastest
growing regions of the country.
When
these cities have troubles, it isn’t because of the number of people, it is
because of the failure of governments to provide the primary protection
services that politicians so often promise. Washington D.C., the crime capital
of the U.S., is a prime example.
We
shouldn’t use poor government performance as an excuse for excluding newcomers.
Instead, we should seek to improve performance with market alternatives
wherever possible.
THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY
(Transparency 21—Declaration
of Independence)
Every Fourth of
July, the people of the United States proudly reaffirm the bold words of Thomas
Jefferson that, “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men Are
Created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Jefferson’s words
are as true today as when first written.
To
reiterate, I wish to say in the strongest terms I can muster, emboldened by the
courage and fortitude of immigrants throughout the world and throughout
history, that we should not be devising schemes and rationalizations for the
restriction of liberty.
Rather,
let us take part in the fight against fear, prejudice, custom, and law to
champion freedom. This is practical, humanitarian, and, above all, ethical. Let
us be a part of the drive for liberty today. Let us champion the millions of
immigrants who are seeking liberty in the same manner that we would if we were
in their shoes.24
This
is the transcript of a conference given on July 29, 2002
at
the International Society for Individual Liberty World Convention,
Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico
_________________________
Footnotes:
1. Horberger, Jacob G., “Locking
Out the Immigrant,” The Case For Free
Trade and Open Immigration, p. 93, The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Fairfax, Virginia, 1995, “Nostra Culpa,” The
Economist, March 30, 2002, pp.27-28
2. An excellent presentation of various arguments can
be found in The Journal of Libertarian
Studies, 13:2 (Summer 1998), www.vonmises.org. Hans-Hermann Hoppe presents
his case with “The Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration.” Walter
Block’s essay, “A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration,” is the best defense of open immigration that
I have seen anywhere. Also excellent is: Horberger, Jacob G., "Locking Out
the Immigrant," The Case for Free
Trade and Open Immigration, Future of Freedom Foundation, Fairfax,
Virginia, 1995, www.fff.org
3. Simon, Julian, Immigration: The Demographic and Economic
Facts, The Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., 1995. Another excellent source
is Population: The Ultimate Resource,
edited by Barun Mitra, President of the Liberty Institute, New Delhi, India,
2000
4. Moore, Stephen, “Why Welfare Pays,” Wall Street Journal, September 28, 1995
and population data from U.S. Bureau of the Census for decade of the 1990’s.
5. “An End to Poverty?” Investors Business Daily, October 19, 2000
6. “Seeds of Resentment,” Investors Business Daily, February 21, 2002
7. Ijaz, Mansoor, “Clinton
let bin Laden get away,” Honolulu Advertiser, December 7, 2001
8. “Inept National Security,” The Economist, March 23, 2002
9. “Refugee status denied to 219,” Honolulu Advertiser, June 13, 2002, p.
A2
10 “A cargo of exploitable souls,” The Economist, June 1, 2002, p. 30
11. Shapiro, Treena, “Conference to spotlight
trafficking in humans,” Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, June 13, 2002, p. A6
12. Gvosdev, Nikolas K. & Cipriano, Anthony, “Patriotism
and profit are powerful weapons,” Honolulu
Advertiser, July 21, 2002
13. “How Americans See The ‘Axis of Evil’,” Investors Business Daily, February 13,
2002
14. “Iran coup mastermind Kermit
Roosevelt dies,” Honolulu Advertiser,
6/11/00, see also, Solberg, Carl, Oil
Power)
15. Center for Defense Information, America's Defense Monitor, Washington,
D.C., www.cdi.org. The data cited in the text of this article was derived from
their film, "The Human Cost of America's Arms Sales," Nov. 8, 1998,
Omicinski, John, “U.S. dealers dominating world arms market,” Honolulu Advertizer, April 17, 1994
16. “Europe’s Farms,”Economist, 7/13/02, p 42
17. “Patches of Light: Special Report on
Agricultural Trade,” The Economist,
June 9, 2001
18. Stewart, Rigoberto, Ph.C., Limon Real: A Free and Autonomous Region,
Litografia e Imprenta LIL, S.A, San Jose, Costa Rica, 2000, drawing from the
excellent research of José Cordiero of Venezuela, including The Great Taboo: A True Nationalization of
the Venezuelan Petroleum, 1998.
19. Cox, W. Michael and Alm, Richard,
“Off the Books,” Reason, August 2002,
p 48
20. “Refugees: Exporting misery,” The Economist, Apr. 17, 1999
21. “Subsidized cow chow,” The Economist, March 9, 2002, p. 39
22. Boudreaux, Donald, “Absorbing Immigrants,”
Ideas on Liberty, Foundation for
Economic Education, June
2002, p. 54
23. Ibid,
p. 54
24. Schoolland, Ken, “Immigration: An Abolitionist
Cause,” Ideas on Liberty, January
2002.