Border Control Bogey
What's next? Internal passports?
As if we weren’t already aware, the current occupant of the White House yesterday proved himself every bit the social engineer his predecessors were. Health insurance, energy, the financial industry, education, nation building – in each area and more the head of the executive branch, Barack Obama, has embraced the dominant bipartisan doctrine which proclaims that government planners know best and mere people — interacting according to the principles of consent, cooperation, and competition — know nothing. What would we do without our “leaders”?
And so it comes as no surprise that we see the same doctrine applied to nullify the right of people to move freely – that is, immigration.
Obama gave his first big speech on the issue yesterday in which he tried to satisfy everyone. More than likely he satisfied almost no one. Count me among the dissatisfied. He rhapsodized about hardworking immigrants in America while boasting he has made great strides in “securing” the border. He read Emma Lazarus’s poem about the huddled masses yearning to breathe free while proclaiming, “Today, we have more boots on the ground near the Southwest border than at any time in our history. Let me repeat that: We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history.”
Nice image for America.
Obama’s message: You want to come here? You’ll do it on my terms (if at all). “We should make it easier for the best and the brightest to come to start businesses and develop products and create jobs,” he said. There’s the pretense of knowledge in action.
And to show that you can’t violate some people’s freedom without the violating other people’s freedom, he said:
[B]usinesses must be held accountable if they break the law by deliberately hiring and exploiting undocumented workers. We’ve already begun to step up enforcement against the worst workplace offenders. And we’re implementing and improving a system to give employers a reliable way to verify that their employees are here legally.
So our “free enterprise system” will not tolerate employers being free to hire whomever wishes to work for them. That’s hard to square with limited government. Note the sly juxtaposition of “hiring and exploiting.” Is Obama saying that any hiring of an undocumented worker – translation: a human being without government-issued papers – is exploitation? He would prefer you not realize that it’s immigration law which makes exploitation possible. When workers are afraid to protest conditions or quit because they might get turned in to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are ripe for exploitation. Yes, employers who take advantage of these workers are scoundrels. But the politicians and bureaucrats who write and enforce the restrictions that enable the exploitation are worse. It couldn’t happen without them.
By going after employers the government interferes with desperately poor people trying to make better lives for themselves. Obama acknowledges that that’s what they are doing – but he wants them thwarted anyway. “[U]ltimately,” he said, “if the demand for undocumented workers falls, the incentive for people to come here illegally will decline as well.” Compassion stops at the border.
Let’s not overlook Obama’s phrase “a reliable way to verify that their employees are here legally.” That’s an ID and a database.
Demanding Responsibility
He went on: “Finally, we have to demand responsibility from people living here illegally. They must be required to admit that they broke the law. They should be required to register, pay their taxes, pay a fine, and learn English.”
Yes, how dare they not present themselves at once to the government? Do they think this is America? Oh wait. It is America. Well, never mind. Just confess that you broke a statute that violates the natural law, register (!), pay your tribute, and learn English. Why must they learn English? Does not knowing English violate someone’s rights? (As if there weren’t already some incentive to learn English.)
“They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship — not just because it is fair, not just because it will make clear to those who might wish to come to America they must do so inside the bounds of the law, but because this is how we demonstrate … what being an American means.”
Wasn’t there a time – once long ago – when “being an American” meant that the government operated inside the bounds of the natural law? (At least that was the theory.) It’s different now. The politicians arbitrarily make up the “law” as they go along, and rest of us are expected to live within its bounds as though its our civic duty. That’s what being an American means now
“Being a citizen of this country comes not only with rights but also with certain fundamental responsibilities,” Obama said.
And don’t be so naive as to think that your fundamental responsibilities are confined to respecting other people’s rights and taking care of your family. The government has a long list of other things you’ll have to do.
The politicians can give you lots reasons to “secure the border.” But they’re rationalizations, and each one might one day be used to justify issuing internal passports and securing the state borders. Even if it never came to that, contemplate how powerful government would have to be to prevent unauthorized movement across the 2,000-mile Mexican border, not to mention the Canadian border and the coastlines. It’s not doable, but a lot of power would be accumulated — and liberty destroyed — in trying.
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Comment by michigander on 2 July 2010:
As with any nation, we’ve had border controls for a very long time. It’s only been in the past couple of decades that we’ve been unwilling to enforce these legal controls, resulting in a huge increase in illegal immigration, mainly from south of the border. Eisenhower enforced “Operation Wetback” in the 1950′s without internal passports, let alone the threat of such a thing. Milton Friedman had it right: you cannot have open borders in a welfare state. We’ve seen too many of the results, i.e., a volume of immigration that undermines assimilation and our very own workers, underpriced by the illegal alien workers. You cannot merge Mexico with the United States and expect to have the same country, but such is the state of libertarian utopianism these days.
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Comment by Bob on 2 July 2010:
Michigander see here(http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2008/02/what-milton-friedman-really-said.html) for more of what Milton Friedman said on immigration. Also, where do you get the impression that libertarians believe the United States would stay the same with open borders? I personally believe we would see major changes not only to the United States but other countries as well….
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 2 July 2010:
“you cannot have open borders in a welfare state.” And you’ll never get rid of the welfare state if you save it from all stresses and strains. Anyway, are Mexicans coming for welfare or for jobs?
“you cannot merge Mexico with the United States and expect to have the same country,…” You can’t expect the same country under any circumstances.
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Comment by Pat on 2 July 2010:
“Anyway, are Mexicans coming for welfare or for jobs?”
That’s an important question. I suspect the answer is both. It’s the welfare component that troubles most folks, including me.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 2 July 2010:
Just because “we” maintain a welfare state is no reason to violate the rights of other people by denying them the freedom to move.
Comment by michigander on 2 July 2010:
To Bob: First off, I believe Friedman made the remark (the one I paraphrased, rather than quoted) to an interviewer, which means that it is probably not the same as in your link, where it sounds like he’s addressing an audience. As for his support of illegal immigration, I think it is fanciful and misguided. “They take jobs that most residents of this country are unwilling to take” is the standard cliche trotted out in support of the illegals, but the actual dynamic is that they underbid American workers to a point where Americans will refuse work for nothing. To the Mexican it’s a great enough improvement over his prior circumstances that he doesn’t mind. Finally, you misunderstood what I said about America remaining the same. I said “you cannot…expect to have the same country.” To Mr. Richman: we’ve seen the voting patterns of the third-world immigrants and they overwhelmingly trend Democratic. Obama is doing a marvelous job of increasing the “stresses and strains” on the welfare state and now we have Obamacare, government ownership of Chrysler and GM, and a couple trillion dollars more in deficit spending. The worse the better, I guess. The Mexicans are coming for jobs, but a very generous social safety net does much to mitigate the risks they take. Yes, the country is always in a state of change, but why would you want to radicalize that process by opening the borders and fundamentally merging Mexico with the United States? We are two separate countries, with different languages and different cultures, which most Americans would like to maintain. As I said earlier, what nation does not control its borders?
Comment by michigander on 2 July 2010:
Mr. Richman, they have the freedom to move, but no freedom is unlimited. There is an orderly process which they may take, but unfortunately for them, we cannot take them all.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 2 July 2010:
Michigander, they don’t have a bona fide freedom to move. They have to wait (a very long time, usually forever) for government permission. That’s not freedom. Today’s flow of immigrants is historically smaller that past flows as a percentage of population. All the fears expressed today were expressed in the past about other groups. They don’t hold water.
As a liberal (in the original sense) I abhor attempts by politicians to design the society or culture. I also see no grounds for calling the presence of Mexicans a “radicalization” of the culture. Native-born Americans haven’t been shy about voting for big spenders and wealth distributionists. So I’m not going to single out immigrants on that count. People from outside the country are likely to value freedom more than most people who were born here and think that’s what we have. Let’s work on limiting the power of the State — not expanding it.
Comment by John Kelly on 2 July 2010:
As a 19th century Liberal, I still find it hard to understand the ‘so called’ libertarian ideal of allowing people to move freely across borders, especially when we are under the threat of Islamic terrorism. If the US government cannot police it’s own borders, then how is the nation to be secure against enemies foreign? How?
Further, an Illegal Immigrant is still doing something illegal. Now, one of the basic tenants of Real Liberalism is the adherence to the “Rule of Law”. If these immigrants are not following the law, how can we justify our beliefs in Individualism by turning our backs on one part of the law, yet claim to follow the rest? How?
And one other thing, the illicit drug traffic is causing a safety hazard to law abiding citizens. Now, I realize that the official position is that we should not have any laws against drug use, and I agree. But I do not believe in the legalization of drug use. Rather I believe in the “Decriminalization” of that use. The two are different, in that in the former, the government condones, and with the later, the government is ambivalent. The later is far better, because it is not making a moral judgement.
So, if we want to have drugs decriminalized then we should undergo a mature campaign and get the laws passed making it so, not whinning about it. AND, until the law is passed, then honour the Rule of Law, for Heaven’s Sake.
Dr, Richman, you are a brilliant man, and I thoroughly enjoy this site. But there is something fundamentally wrong with the L.H. Rockwell side of the agrument here. And by that I am talking about the “all or nothing”, “take no prisoners” approach to true Liberal application. If you, or others think you are going to change this country back in one ‘fell swoop’, you are living in La-La land.
Again, if you wish to have free flow across our borders, then work on the things that would help us get there.
Comment by michigander on 2 July 2010:
You can refuse to acknowledge or “single out” immigrants on counts of spending and wealth redistribution, but the Democratic Party sees it very plainly and pushes hard for the admission of greater numbers of immigrants. These people come from statist countries, and upon arriving in the U.S., now an unofficial multicultural state, see much incentive to live as they have been accustomed and little pressure brought to bear to see they assimilate. Moreover, being admitted in the numbers they are, our social safety network is compelled to build more hospitals, schools, and prisons to cope with the newly arrived masses who, it has been determined, are legally entitled to a very expensive variety of public services. The open-borders dream winds up being a nightmare of government-subsidized mass immigration. Concurrent with that is the ongoing population displacement which our leaders, by their failure to enforce immigration law, have pretty well demonstrated is their objective. Certainly the American people have never expressed an interest in being overwhelmed demographically by a third-world invasion. With Spanish being spoken in greater numbers than English in many parts of the country; with births to the foreign-born in America representing 49% of all births last year; and with the Hispanic population having risen from the low single digits in the 1960s to 15% today and projected to rise to 35% by 2050, I find it hard to believe you can make the claim that this immigration wave is no different from others in our history. The much-vaunted free flow of goods and people, in this case, represents the forerunner of a much larger and ultimately oppressive welfare state (and as an aside, what are “hate speech” laws but a reaction by our multicultural government to reign in dissident opinions regarding our budding utopia?). No, in the end this is an immigration invasion, and too many libertarians are wearing rose-colored glasses.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 2 July 2010:
For the record, I am not a Dr. “Sheldon” will suffice.
More fundamental than the rule of law is the principle that no statute that conflicts with the natural law is worthy of the descriptor “law.” Follow the Lysander Spooner link in my article and follow the links to Spooner’s articles there. It was against “the law” for the Dutch family to hide Anne Frank and for the operators of the underground railroad to help slaves escape from the South. Did they disrespect the rule of law?
As for terrorism: Timothy McVeigh crossed several state lines on his way to bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City. Should we have internal passports and checkpoints at state lines? I don’t think so either. Should we shut down tourism? I didn’t think so. There are things we can do to reduce and perhaps eliminate the threat of terrorism, but they are all in the foreign-policy area. Border control is a distraction that will beef up government and harm innocent people.
Comment by michigander on 2 July 2010:
Sheldon, I own several bound volumes of the Freeman dating back to the 1950s, when our immigration laws were more strict and much more strictly enforced. I am sincerely wondering whether FEE during those years ever published anything on immigration, because offhand I can’t recall.
Comment by Neera Badhwar on 2 July 2010:
Sheldon – I love your article. And i agree that there is no cultural threat to our values from Hispanic immigrants. But there is a theoretical issue about large numbers of immigrants from repressive cultures that I haven’t seen a good libertarian discussion of. Suppose we were next door to a poor but radical Islamic country like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, and most of the people immigrating were radical Muslims who wanted their children to have an Islamic education. Is there really no threat to our freedom? Freedom ultimately rests on cultural attitudes (which is why we’ve never had full freedom [and never will, in my opinion!]). If 30% or more of the population had repressive attitudes, wouldn’t the country change quite drastically? The influx of Europeans did change the lives of the Indians, didn’t it?
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Comment by Steve Osborne on 3 July 2010:
I have three minor comments:
1. Actually, we could absorb Mexico. It would be an easier process than West Germany absorbing East Germany. By some accounts, we already have as much as 20% of Mexico’s population in this country.
2. My wife is a naturalized citizen. I have brought her into the country twice as a non-citizen. [As an aside, the U.S. makes it very difficult-to-impossible for a natural born citizen to leave the country to work without leaving his wife and child behind. The alternative is to take the wife and child with him and then re-immigrate the wife. No one can tell me the U.S. immigration process is acceptable as is.] The process of legal immigration is very long and somewhat expensive (both times). It should be no surprise that people wanting to better themselves and their families can afford neither the time nor the cost. And virtually all those immigrating “illegally” are doing so to make better lives by doing something productive, not to live off welfare. Almost all studies confirm this.
3. The numbers of terrorists in the world is actually quite small. Yes, they may do grievous harm to a few people and they may do some physical damage to facilities. The most damage results from panicked overreaction to the events. However, on the whole, the harm is not great, though truly grievous to those involved. In the final analysis, as noted for the McVeigh case, we have so many home-grown terrorists that a few foreigners are proportionately of little consequence, 2001.09.11 notwithstanding.
Comment by Norman on 3 July 2010:
Hey Sheldon, in reality the walls are being built to keep Americans in, but according to government propaganda some of you think it’s to keep out the Mexicans. See what happens when you retire in Mexico. You’ll still get a 1040 form with an expected voluntary tax contribution. Go ahead and tell the IRS you don’t live here any more.
If you want to emigrate you better take your shoes off and not have more than $10000 on you. Also thanks to Bob Bowe for the freestudents link. When I read this 2 days ago, I did not think there would be much comment or controversy. Saw it again on FFF.
Comment by Gus S. Calabrese on 3 July 2010:
Hurray to Steve Osborne
Opening the borders would change the USA. It is hard to know how. It is the moral thing to do. Eliminating USG theft by taxes is the moral thing to do. Eliminating USG Welfare, Wars, and most regulations is the moral thing to do.
Not only are morals involved….. the joy of living in the USA is involved.
Gus S. Calabrese in Denver
Comment by Gus S. Calabrese on 3 July 2010:
Off the subject….
Police in the UK arrested a youth for shooting at them with an air pistol. Care to guess what would happen to the youth if he did this in Denver, CO or Chicago or N.Y. ?
Gus S. Calabrese in Denver
Comment by MarkZ on 3 July 2010:
Michigander wrote: “We are two separate countries, with different languages and different cultures, which most Americans would like to maintain.”
What, exactly, does this mean? There are hundreds of different cultures in the united states, including various forms of “mexican culture” (if we’re going to label it as such).
Neera Badhwar wrote: “If 30% or more of the population had repressive attitudes, wouldn’t the country change quite drastically?”
Haha, nope! Actually, 30% would be quite an improvement, in my view.
Comment by michigander on 4 July 2010:
MarkZ, it means that America’s predominant culture is Anglo-Saxon based and its first language is English. The “hundreds of cultures” you speak of vary in sigificance. The Mexican sub-culture has grown enormously to the point where Spanish is now a competing language with English. Then there are other Mexican sub-cultures which don’t even speak Spanish. And then there’s the rest of the world. All have the effect of undermining the use of English as the language of the United States. Perhaps you feel this is a good thing. I don’t. What’s interesting to me is this libertarian convergence with multiculturalism, the favored tool of the Left, but then I’ve seen examples in the past where libertarians would sniff out the ZEITGEIST and trot out libertarian principles to support them and curry favor with those in support of the fad of the day. Needless to say, I no longer consider myself a libertarian, though I like many things they say.
Gus Calabrese says: “Opening the borders would change the USA. It is hard to know how. It is the moral thing to do.” “Moral” to smash into pieces any resemblance of the U.S. to its original conception? As the Beatles said: “You say you want a revolution…we’d all love to see the plan.” For without a plan we’re playing craps, and I don’t think it’s wise to play craps with the future of a nation.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 4 July 2010:
Michigander, the Cooley/Poirot pamphlet “The Freedom to Move” was published in 1951, I believe.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 4 July 2010:
Neera, I’m not sure what to say beyond: the price of liberty is eternal ideological vigilance. The ultimate protection of freedom is the ideology of freedom. (Jeff Hummel has written on this in various places.) But legal restrictions on people’s movement undercuts that philosophy and hence our ideological protection.
Comment by MarkZ on 4 July 2010:
Michigander, I don’t see how it’s any of your business which languages people choose to speak (or not), or how anglo-saxon the culture is. Anyone who claims to favor limited government should be strongly opposed to any forms of social engineering that aim to actively impart particular cultural attitudes to the populace. This, in my view and in most libertarians’ views, is not a valid function of government.
As for Gus’s quote… I would LOVE to “smash into pieces any resemblance of the US to its original conception”! I consider this a good thing… something that any freedom-loving person should aspire to. The US has an absolutely horrid history when it comes to human rights abuses and interventionist economic policy, and yes this stretches back to the nation’s inception.
Comment by michigander on 4 July 2010:
MarkZ, our government policy since 1965 has actually encouraged the situation where 90% of our immigration comes from the third-world. Moreover, this immigration is heavily subsidized by U.S. taxpayer-paid benefits providing a safety net which minimizes the situation of the early 20th century where many immigrants wound up returning home. I could go on, but I get the sense that you and several other commentors here don’t really even believe in the concept of the nation–that there should be no strings attached to whatever we wish to do, so long as it causes no harm to others. Unfortunately, our immigration policy does not pass that test, as there is a higher criminal rate among our new entrees from south of the border, and a massive disruption of life in small towns which residents of these towns never asked for. But hey–there are fundamental issues of principle here! No, sorry–this is government-subsidized mass immigration, designed for god-knows-what-reason, though I suspect a libertarian devotion to freedom of movement is not one.
The second part of your comment is just too nightmarishly reminiscent of the excesses of the New Left in the 1960s, which the Beatles, of all people, poured a bucket of cold water on in their song “Revolution.” Check out the lyrics. You set America to a standard impossible for any real people to measure up to. If our country was as bad as you claim, why do we attract the majority of the world’s immigrants?
Sheldon, thanks for the reference. Having once met Paul Poirot, I will check it out. I still wonder, however: if immigration restrictions are as oppressive as many here make them out to be, why was so little written about it in the Freeman during the era of our most restrictive immigration laws (prior to 1965)? Could it be that people were actually comfortable with these laws and saw little reason to change them?
Comment by MarkZ on 4 July 2010:
I don’t know what “New Left” means, though I suspect it’s a group that wouldn’t have me.
Anyway, a couple points need clarification. First of all, there’s no evidence that criminal activity is higher among illegal immigrants than native-born citizens (presuming we’re not including the crime of illegally being here, which would be circular…). In fact, the numbers indicate that they’re less likely to be behind bars than native-born americans. But even if there was a higher incidence among that group than other groups, that doesn’t give the government carte blanche to persecute that group, Minority Report style. Most people believe that government should punish folks AFTER they commit a crime, not stereotyping them into a group and punishing them before they’re guilty of committing the crime.
Second, I fail to see how immigration is government-subsidized when, in fact, the US government spends many billions of OUR money each year in the (failed) attempt to prevent them from immigrating. If you’re referring to the welfare state, then yes, illegal immigrants sometimes take advantage of it. Though it’s worth pointing out that the number of illegal immigrants who don’t pay a dime in income taxes but receive welfare benefits is a small percentage of the total group of people who don’t pay a dime in income taxes but receive welfare benefits. It’s not clear to me why the distinction between the two groups of “freeloaders” (for lack of a more succinct term) is important to you.
Finally, I never claimed the US was bad, at least not relative to many other countries out there (especially the ones that most of these illegal immigrants are leaving…). I said that there are certain things to which we shouldn’t aspire. The line you quoted seemed to place virtue in returning to an attitude and government policy of a couple hundred years ago. That would be a freakin’ nightmare for the reasons I mentioned.
Comment by William Hendricks on 6 July 2010:
Michigander, you wrote, “The open-borders dream winds up being a nightmare of government-subsidized mass immigration.”
Libertarians do not believe in “government-subsidized” anything. Of course it would be a “nightmare” operating under the current political state, –we believe in freedom not free handouts.
Belief in ‘open borders’ coincides with the belief in free markets, since human labor is no different than any other economic resource. To believe in any alternative to open borders, invariably, means belief government can determine what an economy needs in terms of labor pool –which is, according to free market economists, an impossibility. The very existence of illegal immigrant labor only exhibits this point. Labor laws artificially inflate the cost of labor, combined with a welfare state, drive demand for cheap, illegal, labor. The issue, I hope you agree, isn’t peaceful people crossing an imaginary line –it’s the laws that promote it (immigration law, labor law, welfare). In a free society there would be no such thing as ‘illegal’ immigration, since all labor would be governed by economic laws, not bureaucrats.
You wrote, “All have the effect of undermining the use of English as the language of the United States. Perhaps you feel this is a good thing. I don’t.”
-Empirical data doesn’t support your claim. A 2006 UC-Berkley study on immigration (titled, “Immigrant America”), found that “Census data show that more than 95 percent of the residents in one-half of all counties are English monolinguals, and that a vast majority of the population, more than 215 million, speak only English (p.219). Nearly two-thirds of children immigrants ultimately learn English. (p.224). Also, “The vast majority of first-generation immigrants who come to the United States as children speak English well;” (2) “Bilingualism is most common among second-generation children who grow up in immigrant households and speak a foreign language at home but who are almost all proficient in English;” (3) “English-only is the predominant pattern by the third generation (pg.230).”
The threat to the English language is unfounded and irrational. The wisdom to even attempt to ‘protect’ a language is irrational. George Washington did not write or speak as you and I do, his contemporary language is no longer in use, yet it was called English just the same.
English is widely spoken in the U.S for the same reason most Europeans learn to speak it –economic necessity. Although, there is no doubt that perhaps in the future Americans may find themselves looking to expand their vocabulary (i.e, learn another language) in order to expand their economic opportunities, this would not mean they would ‘lose’ their ability to speak English. On the contrary, Europeans, who are highly diverse culturally and live with open borders (Euro Zone), are renown for their multilingual abilities all the while retaining their native tongue.
Your statement illegal immigrants have a “higher criminal rate” is also unfounded by the research. On the contrary, several studies not only refute this but, remarkably, reveal a gradual decline in crime for the past 40 years – all while illegal immigration increased dramatically. Here is a link to one study published recently, “http://www.cato.org/pubs/papers/Griswold-HigherImmigrationLowerCrime.pdf”.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 6 July 2010:
“why was so little written about it in the Freeman during the era of our most restrictive immigration laws (prior to 1965)?”
I can’t speak for the pre-1997 Freeman. But why does it matter?
Comment by michigander on 6 July 2010:
Sheldon, it suggests that the language you’ve used to describe our immigration laws, that they “violate the rights of other people by denying them the freedom to move,” along with its sentiments, might not have been used (or shared) by the Freeman editors of that time. From 1951 to 1965 (earlier too, but I believe the Freeman wasn’t around in its present form until then) America was living under far more restrictive immigration laws than we have at present–and enforcing them! Surely if these laws were such a violation of freedom we might expect the Freeman to have written more about it. My guess is that they didn’t because they simply didn’t view it in that way. Once again, can you name one country in the world that has an open borders policy? Do we, as Americans, not have the right to be ourselves? Or the right to be a nation? Do you even believe in the concept of a nation? America prior to 1965 was, in my opinion, a better and happier place than it is today, and I think most Americans of that time would have been aghast at the idea that in order to improve our country and make it more free we needed to open our borders to huge numbers of third-world immigrants.
Mr. Hendricks, I’m working this week, as opposed to last week when I was off, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to answer your points. Clearly we have significant philosophical differences. However, I will add that I have read studies containing different results concerning the facts you describe. Just remember, “press one for English.”
Comment by William Hendricks on 9 July 2010:
Michigander, one example of a nation with ‘open borders’ was the United States for first 100 years of our existence, if you recall there was no such entity as the INS. With the exception of racist legislation banning the Chinese, anyone could immigrate to the U.S if they could make (there was virtually no welfare state to protect).
Colossal amounts of immigration inaugurated and fueled the industrial revolution in this country towards the eve of the 19th century –filled by the other ‘bogey’ men of the day, ie, Italians, Irish (who were never really accepted in this country until the 20th century), Germans -many of which built autonomous colonies here in Texas where I live and who didn’t fully assimilate into Anglo society until WWI & WWII where they faced massive discrimination (who are currently the largest ethnic group in the U.S -not Anglos), freed Blacks, Chinese (who built the railroads), and yes, the bogey men then and now –the Mexicans (considering the US took over all of N. Mexico in 1848). Twenty years from now, we’ll blame some other poor, ‘strange’ group, for everything we’ve done, and the list will just grow -and we’ll be speaking English doing it.
This “happier” country, that you claim existed prior to 1965 was built, and continues to be built, on the backs of these bogey men, these ‘undesirables’ –who immigrated to the US under an ‘Open Border’ policy. Also, keep things in perspective, there were more foreign born Americans between 1860 to 1920 then ever in our history, no other immigrant body comes close, including today (here a link for more info: http://www.cato.org/pubs/ftb/FTB-029.pdf)
Comment by michigander on 10 July 2010:
Mr. Hendricks, thank you for your posts. I will sleep much better tonight knowing all the evidence I see around me is apparently a mirage. That at root we are really an open borders nation; that the ubiquitous “press one for English” is merely a false alarm, for Mexicans are assimilating and changing our nation for the better (they just haven’t taken the time to learn our language–oops, bad me–”our” language?); that the free market we generally agree upon will be enhanced by the arrivals of peoples from non-European countries, even if they do bring with them, largely, the political experience of dictatorships; that the Mexicans are really unconscious carriers of libertarian ideology, despite their overwhelming support for America’s socialist party, the Democrats; that in spite of this era’s (1965-present) huge expansion of government, this influx of the third-world bodes well for limited government. And hey–even a little Marxism thrown in the mix, i.e., America built on the backs of the exploited (Ayn Rand would have loved that one, I suspect). And that’s not even getting into the price we’re paying regarding freedom of speech, where the concept of “hate speech” has come into existence to contain and suppress the inevitable conflicts brought about by multiculturalism. Yup, it’s looking really good out there!
Let me not forget Mark Z., or “The US has an absolutely horrid history when it comes to human rights abuses and interventionist economic policy, and yes this stretches back to the nation’s inception.” In his next post we learn “Finally, I never claimed the US was bad, at least not relative to many other countries out there…” Talk about cultural relativism!
Life is too short to spend the time needed to sort through this stuff. I have intruded upon your space, not fully aware of how things have changed. I read the Freeman in the late 1970s and 1980s, even visited Irvington several times (I lived in NYC then), and must question whether this is the same FEE I first encountered. Paul Poirot and Oscar Cooley’s essay posits that immigrants come respecting our laws, yet clearly the illegally-entering do not. No problem for today’s FEE.
Ideology has its benefits, and libertarian ideology has its appealing aspects, but in the end I’ll go with experience.
Comment by William Hendricks on 16 July 2010:
Mr. Michigander,
Having to ‘press 1′ for English pales in comparison with the German language newspapers that were once sold in numerous German communities here in Texas (prior to WWI), for the ‘real Americans’ to see newspapers written in German had to of been terrible. You seem to harbor a hatred that is beyond rational persuasion. You continue to make comments that are not only refuted by empirical evidence (ie, reduced crime rates of immigrants vs. citizens & their acquisition of English), but is irrational thinking void of evidence.
Your comments virtually mirror the irrational fears of past generations. I strongly urge you to read a history of US immigration, to see just how often a ‘real American’ made the claim that the ‘strangers’ were destroying the country – the scenario really is a broken record that continues to repeat itself.
As I mentioned previously, the largest foreign born population existed prior to 1965, between 1860 and 1920, (in 1860 alone, one out of every 8 Americans was foreign born). The plurality of them were Irish, who were poor, illiterate, and Catholic. The latter fact cannot be stressed enough concerning the fear this invoked in the ‘real Americans’ who were mostly Protestant and who believed Catholics were incapable of allegiance outside the Pope. This fear culminated in the ‘Know Nothing Party’ who gained massive political power prior to the Civil War on the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic stance. They harbored your same sentiment –that some part of their ‘real American’ Protestant culture was under attack –was it??
You spoke of illegals having overwhelming support for socialist or the Democratic Party (as if immigrants haven’t always sided with one particular party), this was the same fears espoused over the Italians during the early 20th century. In fact, this prejudice was applied against all Eastern Europeans who were often viewed as conspirators of anarchy and socialism (all unfounded, of course). Also, let’s not forget it was the great German leader, Bismark, who established the first real socialist country.
Furthermore, unless you’ve been living on another planet, the most socialist countries in the WORLD happen to be in Europe! So, going with your logic, European immigrants are actually more of a threat to our politics than Mexicans, don’t you agree?
Either you believe in freedom or you don’t. A free society doesn’t mean that we will always speak English, eat apple pie, and worship Jesus Christ every Sunday. It means we each pursue our own happiness, persuading others to our beliefs, culture, language, etc., by virtue of example, not by coercion (the State). If you want life to remain the same, and never change or progress, than there are two places in history to think about: Medieval Europe (i.e the Dark Ages) and the Soviet Union.
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