Lew Rockwell on immigration
This is what I've been waiting to hear: The emphasis was Lew's.Caller: What do you think of securing our borders? I'm reading in the Constitution right now, in [Article 1,] Section 8, "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Simply put, our nation is being conquered by illegals coming over the border, and OTMs -- Other Than Mexicans. So what do you think of border security?
Lew Rockwell: Well you know it's a very interesting point. The immigration policy of the country was deliberately changed in 1965 by a law that Johnson signed, that Hubert Humphrey and Teddy Kennedy (who's still around) wrote to change the demographics of the country.... This is not a coincidence this all happened ... they actually set out ... and there were many think tanks writing papers about why this should happen ... to change the demographics of the country. I don't know if it's a huge social experiment we're undergoing, but you know ... this is the way the government has designed it. I'll make that point.
The second point is that unfortunately the people who are advocating border control tend to want to put businessmen in jail for hiring an illegal. They want to give more power to the federal prosecutors, more supervision by the federal government, put more people in jail, more cops, more spies and so forth. You know, I don't think that's the way either. I must say I'm not entirely sure what to do.
One thing I think we should all be able to agree on is that nobody should be able to come here and go on welfare.
Caller: Exactly!
Lew: Nobody should be able to come here and go to public school, be allowed to have Medicaid, get AFDC and all the rest of these either state or national healthcare programs. That should help some.
On the other hand, a lot of people come here to work. People want to hire them. I wish that we would do a lot to make the cost of doing business here in this country lower so there'd be more people hired, more businesses started, more profits made and more prosperity, but ... even though I think you're making a legitimate point, I worry about the idea that we should further empower the federal government. I don't think there's any excuse ever to give the federal government more power for any reason whatsoever! I don't care what the excuse is. We need to be focused on decommissioning them.
I will just add also in the original American Constitution -- the original American Constitutional setup until the Supreme Court changed it in the 1840s and especially after the Civil War -- citizenship and immigration were matters for the states. It wasn't a federal matter at all. So I think that again, the federal government messes up everything it touches and I guess that includes immigration as well.
Host: That is a great answer!
And I repeat:
"I don't think there's any excuse ever to give the federal government more power for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER! I don't care what the excuse is. We need to be focused on decommissioning them."
6 Comments:
Right. The paleolibs have always had a more nuanced (and more libertarian) position on immigration than the impression that they themselves often give.
Glad you caught that. I was going to recommend that you listen to Lew's comments on immigration because I thought you would be pleased. I was staunchly free immigration most of my life, (I gave a pro-immigration speech when I was 12 well before I knew anything about libertarianism).
Only two things have really changed for me: Recognizing that there is no carte blanche right to immigrate, (because there is no natural right to enter someone else's property), and that the 1965 law that Lew alludes to wasn't a simple matter of moving in a more libertarian direction (which would mean less government involvement in immigration and more power to private individuals to do what makes sense to them) but was another bit of modern social engineering.
As with so much else this simply means that the modal libertarian trap must be avoided... One can't simply observe a person going from one country to another and hail it as a great libertarian moment. Is the person entering the country as a military invader? Are they trespassing (perhaps with government support) on private property? Are they reclaiming property that was stolen from them? Context and history cannot be dropped.
Recognizing that there is no carte blanche right to immigrate, (because there is no natural right to enter someone else's property),
There's a problem with that...
Since "public property" is in actuality "unowned property" (as a bandit gang can't legitimately "own" anything), that argument doesn't apply unless the immigrants are literally trespassing on some particular persons property.
Now, suppose a shopping mall in Des Moines, Iowa puts up a sign saying something like...
"People originating from areas outside the conventionally accepted borders of the United States who have not secured permission to cross those borders from the designated officials of the US Government are not allowed on this property and will be considered trespassers."
Yeah, okay. Fine. I have a problem with that -- not in terms of my libertarianism but in terms of subordinate values. I want to make it clear, though, that such ought to be the property holders natural right, even though I find it a repugnant way to exercise that right and worthy of criticism.
At that point, you have a trespasser on your hands -- but merely a trespasser.
Is kidnapping, extended detention and forcible transportation of hundreds or thousands of miles back to a place you had already made a point of leaving appropriate for trespassers in high traffic commercial areas?
Or just -- ahem -- certain trespassers???
Is government property actually unowned, or has it been homesteaded by private citizens? Perhaps it is merely an academic question. Anyway, it strikes me that there is something twisted about the idea that local people can't use "public property" that they've lived near their whole lives to impede migration, while other people, coming from far away, are allowed to use that property specifically because they have been invited by the same bandits who have been keeping the locals from homesteading it in the first place.
This might be acceptable in the case of empty land, but I find it farfetched that anything useful, like a road, wouldn't have become someone's property a long time ago in the absence of the state. So, from this perspective, the potential problems for immigrants begin not at the border but as soon as they get anywhere worth being at.
Having said the above, I am totally against the current system of immigration control as a giant federal program. Moreover, I think lots of people would find ways to work around problems, such that there would be a lot of population movement into America under a libertarian system.
"Is government property actually unowned, or has it been homesteaded by private citizens. . . ."
Especially when discussing such issues, I think it best for libertarians to completely abandon the nonsensical and statist concept of citizenship. I don't mean that Mr. Kerner necessarily meant to refer to citizenship in using the term "citizen," but I personally think that a state's granting of membership into its club should have no bearing whatsoever on questions of what rights people have and should have respected.
Mr. Spangler read into my comments someone else's position. I said "there is no carte blanche right to immigrate". Then he went on about the status of public property. I didn't say anything about that and don't have a firm position on that. I'm just saying that relative to my earlier position I have changed at least that much... I realize that there is no simple right to immigrate as I once imagined it. It depends on where you are immigrating to. I'm glad for Spengler that he has it all worked out to his satisfaction.
Post a Comment
<< Home