Georgia’s law requires private and government employers to use E-Verify, a federal program, to ensure that workers are eligible to work in the United States. The law also increased the penalties for using fake documents to obtain jobs; offenders now face up to 15 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Moreover, the law makes it a criminal offense to intentionally transport or harbor illegal immigrants, authorizes local and state law enforcement officials to arrest illegal immigrants and house them in state and federal jails, and requires documentation verifying legal status before people can apply for food stamps or government housing.

Alabama’s law goes even further than Georgia’s. It not only clamps down on illegal immigration, it also prevents illegal immigrants already in the state from establishing themselves. The law requires public schools to verify students’ residency status with birth certificates, bans illegal immigrants from state colleges, and outlaws transporting, harboring, employing, or renting property to undocumented immigrants. The bill also requires law enforcement officers to detain and investigate anyone they reasonably suspect is an illegal.

Opposition to the new laws emerged immediately in both states. In Alabama, churches and charities thought the wording so stringent that they worried about being implicated simply for ministering to illegal immigrants. Episcopal, Methodist, and Catholic church officials in Alabama sued Governor Robert Bentley and Attorney General Luther Strange. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama and Georgia, as well as other civil liberties advocacy groups, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, also brought forward lawsuits because the new law will likely result in racial profiling.

While the specific methods of implementation for Alabama’s and Georgia’s immigration laws could be altered in the hope of minimizing their social consequences by, for example, randomly checking people for citizenship instead of profiling people who look different or out of place, the negative economic results cannot be avoided or minimized unless the laws are ignored. New business paperwork, law enforcement, and incarceration will impose steep costs. All industries will suffer some negative effects, and the fortunes of a number of industries, such as agriculture, restaurants, landscaping, catfish and poultry processing, and construction, will be seriously compromised. Jeffrey Passel estimated in a 2006 study that across the nation, illegal immigrants make up 24 percent of the agricultural workforce, 17 percent of the cleaning industry workforce, 14 percent of the construction workforce, 12 percent of the food preparation workforce, and 9 percent of the production workforce.

The effects of the new laws are already being felt throughout the agricultural industry in both states. Illegal immigrants are now so afraid of imprisonment and deportation that they have stopped supplying their labor during harvest seasons. And it’s not just illegals who are fleeing the state. Green-card carrying immigrants also quit their jobs in protest and are leaving Alabama.

Wasted Crops

Alabama Live reports that central Alabama farmers requested an emergency suspension of the law because millions of dollars of crops were at risk of not being harvested due to labor shortages. In the Wall Street Journal, Alabama Deputy Commissioner for Agriculture and Industry Brett Hall was quoted saying: “We have a big problem on our hands. . . . [F]armers and business people could go under.” Economists say the law will hurt Alabama’s economy, but politicians such as State Sen. Scott Beason (a Republican) called their arguments “absolutely, positively wrong”. He also called the Alabama law “the biggest jobs program for Alabamians that has ever been passed.”

Meanwhile Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Georgia’s law has already caused a severe enough labor shortage that farmers are at risk of leaving up to $300 million of crops rotting in their fields.

The construction industry, which has relied on immigrants in recent years, is also being hit hard. Despite the remaining slack from the housing crisis, delays in Alabama and Georgia are common. Nowhere is the story more tragic than in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where residents and businesses downtown were hit by a tornado last April. Cheap, efficient labor was desperately needed. Yet reconstruction in Tuscaloosa has been slow and has lagged behind Joplin, Missouri, which was hit with a much more severe tornado a month later. While some of the delays in Tuscaloosa can be blamed on red tape, the harsh immigration law certainly has not helped matters.

Unambiguous Benefits

Despite politicians’ ill-informed rhetoric and pro-law rallies by Tea Party groups, the economics of the issue remain unambiguous: Immigration, whether legal or illegal, is a net general benefit for the people of a state or country. The argument is an easy extension of David Ricardo’s argument for free trade; blocking immigration hampers the free operation of an economy in much the same way that blocking trade does. It prevents resources, including labor, from being reallocated to those industries and locations where consumers most urgently want them.

The evidence shows that immigration does not take away jobs or even decrease wages for native workers. Julian Simon in a 1995 study found that immigration does not increase unemployment for U.S. citizens, even among minority and low-skilled workers. George Borjas and Lawrence Katz, in a study published in 2007, found that the only group adversely affected by immigration in the United States was high school dropouts, who saw a long-run 4.8 percent reduction in wages.

Borjas and Katz assumed that immigrant and native workforces do the same work, an assumption that does not bear out empirically. Even with that assumption, however, Borjas in 2008 estimated the net economic gain to native workers from immigration to be around $22 billion annually. When Gianmarco I. P. Ottavanio and Giovanni Peri corrected for this assumption in a 2006 study, they found immigration actually increased natives’ wages in the short and long runs because immigrants complement the native workforce.

More Workers, More Prosperity

As coauthor Luke points out from his farm experience, Americans usually don’t want the jobs that immigrants are willing to take.

The number of jobs in an economy is unlimited because our wants are unlimited. The more people working, the further down our list of wants we can get. Moreover, the more people working, the more potential customers—and hence business opportunities—we have. Immigrants buy or rent houses, purchase food and goods, and dine at restaurants. This is why the United States did not suffer mass unemployment as our population drastically increased over the last few decades, and why there wasn’t a jump in unemployment when women joined the labor force. (See graph.)

Another common argument for the Alabama and Georgia laws is that immigrants will flood U.S. cities beyond capacity in search of higher living standards. If people migrated en masse to those areas with the highest wage rates, one may wonder why all U.S. citizens don’t flood Malibu, California. The reason is that real estate values adjust upward to act as a natural brake on migration. In addition, while there is much need for immigrant labor in the United States, workers will come here only as long as the expected wage exceeds their domestic wages plus the costs of relocating. As more immigrants resettle, the relevant wage will drop, decreasing their main incentive for coming in the first place.

The Welfare Argument

A third justification for legal restrictions is to prevent immigrants from living off government programs. Anyone concerned about this should ask why the Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia laws focus almost all enforcement efforts on preventing immigrants from working. Although immigration laws have provided strong incentives for immigrants not to work, Simon’s 1995 study calculated that on net they paid more into government programs than they took out.

The justifications for Alabama’s and Georgia’s laws fail to pass the test of basic economics. Not only do these laws not bode well for the economy, they also tar the civil rights images of two states that historically have suffered poor reputations in that department. In a country founded on open immigration and the basic freedom of human association and commerce, laws of this nature are a travesty.

You can see what I mean in most of the commentary about what is prejudicially called the immigration problem. By that I don’t mean such real dangers as migrant-exploitation and migrant-smuggling, which are products not of thelack of border control but precisely the opposite. No one would choose to cross the border at a cost of thousands of dollars and squeezed into a gas tank if he could walk or take a bus.

No, the problem that we presumably must solve is that too many of the wrong kind of people are coming here. Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer writes, for instance, Do liberals [he means Democrats] believe that the number, social class, education level, background and country of origin of immigrants — the kinds of decisions every democratic country makes for itself — should be taken out of the hands of the American citizenry and left to the immigrants themselves and, in particular, to those most willing to break the very immigration regulations the American people have decided upon democratically?

I’m sure Krauthammer doesn’t think of himself as a collectivist, but could his question be more saturated with collectivism? What does he mean when he says a democratic country should decide what kind of people may move to the United States? An abstraction, such as a country, doesn’t make decisions. It requires prodigious evasion to take the self-serving, log-rolling, rent-seeking, voter-pandering, incumbent-protecting activities of a gaggle of legislators, who don’t even read the bills they vote on, for the decision-making of The Country. Considering the long and winding road from an election of a congressman to the passage of an immigration bill, it’s laughable to claim that the decision over who may enter the country lies in the hands of the American citizenry. Textbook political cliches can’t change the facts.

Krauthammer goes on: There are tens of millions of people who want to leave their homes and come to America. We essentially have an NFL draft in which the United States has the first, oh, million or so draft picks. Rather than exercising those picks, i.e., choosing by whatever criteria we want — such as education, enterprise, technical skills and creativity — we admit the tiniest fraction of the best and brightest and permit millions of the unskilled to pour in instead.

Imagine that. We’re giving up a golden opportunity to engineer the composition of our society. It’s this sort of thinking that attracted many respectable people to eugenics in the early twentieth century. Krauthammer presumably would oppose central planning in other respects. But he’s all for centrally planning the migrant component of the U.S. population. It’s hard to see how centralized decision-making is bad in most matters but good in this one.

Bad Rights Drive Out Good

The synthetic right of The Country or Citizenry to decide who comes here nullifies the real, natural rights of flesh-and-blood individuals — those very rights that we believe set us apart from the rest of the world. Judging by the discussion, migrants have no rights to speak of; the Bush administration even demands that the Mexican government block its people from leaving Mexico. Forbidden entry requires forbidden exit. An American whose land borders Mexico apparently isn’t entitled to think of that boundary as his border and to invite people from the other side to live or work on his property. Instead, it’s our border, with our including people thousands of miles away. Then there’s the popular view that if migrants couldn’t find jobs here, they wouldn’t come. Thus the Lou Dobbses of the country want to imprison employers who have the gall to hire migrants not in possession of tamper-proof government papers. So much for freedom of association and contract. So much for free and private enterprise.

Americans, we apparently are in need of reminding, are not the only people with rights, which are universal and natural, not national. As Robert Higgs says, [T]he Bill of Rights makes no mention of anyone’s citizenship status. (FEE has been saying this from the beginning. See The Freedom to Move, 1951, by Oscar W. Cooley and Paul L. Poirot.)

And a country is not a country club. What separates a true liberal from everyone else is his or her belief that freedom is not a luxury for some, to be enjoyed only when they approve of the outcome, but a necessity for individual human flourishing.

MEN: Don’t lose benefits! Use this to register with Selective Service.

Benefits from (or through, or with) Selective Service? When I turned 18 several years before the Vietnam era I registered for the draft with Selective Service and served nine years in the U.S. Navy. Although I received many benefits, I never regarded the experience as a net benefit.

So I considered the possibility that the benefits of being in the military might not be (all) the benefits referred to in the enigmatic exhortation on the little red, white, and blue pen. What other benefits, then, might men lose by not registering with Selective Service? The answers surprised and disheartened me—and struck me with a vision of 51 predatory governments endlessly revolving around the draft-age (18 to 25) male in ever-tightening circles. Among those governments, it turns out, are the 50 once-sovereign states whose own powers and prerogatives are steadily being absorbed by the black hole of the federal government, which runs the Selective Service System.

Much of what I learned about the benefits of registration, and the consequences of not registering, are outlined on the Selective Service website. The benefits one “gains” in many states include the “privilege” of operating a motor vehicle on the government roads. That’s right—in at least 41 states the law denies any male 18 to 25 the right to apply for issuance or renewal of his driver’s license if the SS computer doesn’t confirm that he’s registered.

The denial of benefits can go even deeper. Many states refuse to issue a government identification card to males who can’t prove they’ve registered with the draft board. In those states if Selective Service doesn’t know who you are and where you sleep, you’ll have no official identity. You might never become able to order a drink in a bar, for example, unless you look old—or fly on a commercial airline.

Of course, as Selective Service literature constantly repeats, registering for the draft (provided you haven’t yet reached 26) is as simple as checking a box on practically any of the many government forms on which you disclose your name, date of birth, and address. And it may be easier than that. Many people, such as my draft-age son, don’t even know whether they’re registered. They may have been registered by stealth, as the young customers of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour famously were in 1983.

But I checked (that’s easy, too—just go to www.tinyurl.com/ywh5oq and check on the men in your family), and it turns out that he is registered, which is a “good” thing, since it became impossible for him to register when he turned 26 last July.

That’s right—as simple as it is to register between the ages of 18 and 25, it becomes utterly impossible once your birthday cake sports 26 candles. And from this arises a Catch-22 that Joseph Heller could be proud of: Federal benefits for males of any age require proof of registration—and if you pass 25 without having registered, you’re out of luck unless you can prove either that you somehow weren’t required to register or that you somehow never heard that you were supposed to. This is, of course, all spelled out on an extensive website, though the title of Heller’s novel isn’t used there.

And in this age of the welfare state, in which sustenance itself may soon be unobtainable without the favor of the State, the benefits denied may not be trivial. With some exceptions, noncitizen males are also required to register. So citizenship itself, if you didn’t inherit it, is denied those who fall afoul of the Catch-22. Depending on what other citizenship(s) you may have access to, this can be a big benefit indeed to lose, since the governments of the world have banded together to make statelessness a parlous condition for anyone who wishes to live outside a correctional facility.

Immigration Statistics

The statistics of the Department of Homeland Security (immigration is now chiefly a security issue to the grantor of citizenship) reveal what must be primarily the effect of the registration requirement on the male/female ratios of naturalizations. Since 2005 the lowest percentages of males have been in the 30–34 age bracket and the second-lowest percentage have been in the 25–29 bracket—every year. In the younger bracket, would-be American males have the option to cure their nonregistration in their 25th year. In the first two years of the older bracket (through age 31), as well as in the last four years of the younger, applicants must prove that they weren’t required to register, the most common reason being that they had not yet entered the United States. Some applicants simply failed to register: Ineligible. Others weren’t required to register, but can’t prove it: Ineligible. Others weren’t required to register but don’t care to go to the considerable trouble and expense that can be required to prove it. They also don’t become citizens—ever, in many cases. (Forgiveness is possible after 31.)

From 2002 to 2009 about 2.9 million women were naturalized, while about 2.4 million men were, roughly 21 percent more females than males. Obviously, external factors can affect the gender ratio of those who apply for citizenship and who complete the often lengthy, expensive, and demanding process. But the requirement to register for the draft, or to have registered for it, is the only citizenship requirement that impinges differently on each gender. In the world population men outnumber women in the four age brackets spanning the critical years 18–31, but over half the shortfall of about a half-million men is in these four age brackets even though only 37 percent of the women naturalized were in those brackets (compared with 34 percent of the men).

Further Limits

Failure to register also denies people access to many government aid programs that provide loans and grants to students for attending college or vocational schools. Yes, if you passed your 26th birthday without registering, you’ll never qualify for this benefit. This denial is echoed among the state laws with the added bite that unregistered males are barred from admission to state colleges and universities if they happen to live in Colorado, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, New Hampshire, South Dakota, or Tennessee.

Of course, these so-called benefits should not exist in the first place, but these rules demonstrate how military considerations set the boundaries.

Perhaps the most lucrative “benefit” withheld from the unregistered is the right to prey on fellow citizens through government employment. The federal government and a large number of states bar you from employment if you aren’t registered. If you’re over 26 and didn’t register, you’ll need a lawyer if you wish to render “civil service.”

Involuntary service in the military may be the greatest abrogation of civil rights that can be imposed on the citizens of “free” countries without judicial process, but registration with the draft board, particularly the “stealth” registration that seems to be stipulated in the driver’s-license laws of many states, is yet another violation of a dwindling civil right—of privacy. Of course, failure to report a change in one’s address—or in other words to perform self-surveillance—is also a violation of the law, though so far such a violation seems unlikely to lose you your benefits short of an “activation”—that is, the issuance by Congress of a draft call-up.

The draft, as well as registration for a future draft, violates natural rights, the 13th Amendment forbidding involuntary servitude, and every possible conception of equal treatment before the law (in this case, on the basis of gender), notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision to the contrary. This is the answer to those who would ask why the State can’t require military service in return for its various “benefits” or even citizenship. The dozens of state laws enacted in support of this system merely extend this trampling of civil rights, simultaneously broadening and deepening it.

The controversy surrounding immigration is not limited to Arizona, of course; many states have wrestled with the issue. But something about this is confusing: Almost all Americans are the descendents of immigrants, and the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty seems to give an explicit welcome message to immigrants. So why should anyone be concerned about the “problem” of immigration in the first place? What underlies the anxiety? I am not a psychiatrist, of course, but from reading both print and web discussions I think there are several reasons, each of which I believe is unfounded, though I will make a concession for one. In many cases, the anxiety and self-contradiction are due to conceptual confusion about rights and economics.

One of the concerns I see expressed frequently is that immigrants will come here and go on welfare. This argument has traction even among people who would otherwise be sympathetic to a libertarian open-borders position: It’s bad enough we have to subsidize people who don’t work, so why increase the number of people we subsidize?

This argument grants the idea that open borders would be fine as long as everyone were working. People who make this argument recognize that immigrants in the past came to the “land of opportunity” to make a better life for themselves. Proponents of immigration like to point to the Ellis Island experience, in which people came to America from the old world, found jobs, and by the third generation were solidly upper middle class. Here opponents of immigration will note that there was no welfare state to speak of, so the immigrants had to work to succeed. The fear now is that immigrants can skip that step. They will come to make a better life, sure, but that just means they will soak up our generous welfare benefits.

Is this argument to be taken seriously? On the one hand, there’s the counterargument that no one has the right to stop anyone from moving anywhere or prevent anyone from employing anyone. On this view, borders must be open regardless of whether some people come here for welfare. Proponents of this position are sometimes accused of taking libertarian purity too far. I am not sure what it means to be “too pure”—either one has principles or one doesn’t. In any case, if it turned out that immigration did put more pressure on the welfare system, that might help in the effort to roll it back.

On the other hand, though, there is no evidence that illegal immigrants are a net drain on the welfare rolls. First, illegal immigrants can’t just move here and file for welfare checks. Second, while they may get some benefits of the welfare state, they are a net gain for the economy. The majority of them do come here to get better jobs than they would have been able to get at home—in some cases they take jobs that native-born Americans won’t take. Keep this in mind as we examine the next bogeyman.

Taking Whose Jobs?

Another argument is that immigrants will take jobs away from “real Americans.” The first thing we notice about this argument is that it contradicts the previous one. Make up your mind: Are they coming to take your job or to go on welfare? But more substantially, competition is supposed to be good not bad. When one company competes with another, they are obliged to improve service or lower prices. It is the same thing with labor: If there are other people competing for your job, you’ll have to get better at it. (This would be true even if we had hermetically sealed borders. If you are that uncompetitive at your job, it will be outsourced.) Individual workers, like companies, have no right to be free from competition. Anticompetitive policies impoverish everybody. Lastly, this argument presupposes a fixed number of jobs, such that if one worker is replaced by another, he will never again be able to work at all. In a free market, where resources are scarce and demand is open-ended, there is always work to be done and thus no shortage of jobs. Protectionism is just as bad for workers as it is for companies.

Some fear that since many immigrants are coming from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, increased immigration will lead to increases in the drug trade. This argument is predicated on several mistakes. First, immigrants cannot move their climate with them. I don’t think you can grow coca plants in Wisconsin. If it’s not a matter of moving the crops, then the concern must be that there will be more places to send drugs. But that’s an argument for allowing immigration and normalizing immigrants’ status as Americans with kids in school and jobs in the community. How many of your neighbors and coworkers are drug dealers? Of course, if there were no prohibition, this would be a non-issue. But again we see a contradictory set of fears. Those who think drugs should be illegal, and are worried that increased immigration will increase the drug trade, are undermining their own position. Assimilated, productive, middle-class immigrants won’t be nearly as likely to be drug mules or abettors of illegal activity.

More broadly, some fear that increased immigration will produce more crime. (In one sense this is tautologically true: Increased illegal immigration by definition is increased “crime.”) There’s no way to predict whether immigrants from Guatemala are more or less likely than immigrants from Italy or Ireland to commit crimes, but burglary, robbery, and assault are already illegal. So we have a system in place to respond to crimes regardless of the ethnicity of the criminal. Some argue that this creates added burdens on the penal system, but that’s not a reason to curtail immigration. Of course, the penal system would be considerably relieved of its burden if it were rid of victimless crimes, and in any event violent immigrant offenders could be deported rather than sentenced to American prisons.

No Irish Need Apply

I am afraid that one additional fear about increased immigration is a generic dislike of those of darker complexion. (I hasten to add that I understand that not all anti-immigrant sentiment is so motivated, but it’s myopic to deny that any of it is.) This concern requires some historical perspective. There was a time in the history of American immigration when the Irish were, for all intents and purposes, nonwhite. They were openly discriminated against. Later, when the Irish had been here for a couple of generations, the Italians, Poles, and Jews became the new aliens. Now we think nothing of seeing a Jewish-American or Italian-American CEO or Supreme Court justice, or an Irish-American president.

Today, seeing waves of immigrants from Latin America, South and East Asia, and the Middle East, perhaps some people are concerned about America becoming less white. I can’t say that I feel the need to take this concern too seriously. It seems hypocritical to think that your ancestral homeland has made a great contribution to the American melting pot, but that no new homelands should be able to add to the mix. Nevertheless, for those who are concerned about their neighbors being culturally different, again the solution is to have a completely open stance on immigration. Earlier generations of “foreigners” who emigrated freely were relatively quick to assimilate to the prevailing cultural norms, even while simultaneously changing those norms. The best way to keep new immigrant subcultures alien, mysterious, and possibly hostile is to marginalize them and drive them underground. They can’t assimilate if they can’t get jobs and send their kids to school. Ultimately, “assimilation” is a two-way street: As new groups settle in, elements of the new cultures become part of the ever-changing norm. If you asked a fourth-grader to name four “regular American foods,” you will surely hear “pizza,” and probably “tacos.”

The one point I will concede to the anti-immigration contingent is the worry about voting. Will large numbers of (presumably legal) immigrants vote to make changes antithetical to the American ideal? Well, they might vote for reductions in the welfare state. It turns out that assimilated and upwardly mobile immigrant groups don’t support expanded welfare programs any more than indigenous groups do. If they voted to roll welfare programs back, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. More worrying, will they vote in such a way as to chill speech by, for instance, pressing for bans on cartoons depicting Mohammed? I would be concerned if trends like that started to emerge. Fundamental constitutional principles are not supposed to be subject to majoritarian whim, but I realize they sometimes are. So rather than think of solutions to the problem, it might be better to think of ways to avoid it in the first place. The best way to do that is to help the immigrants to become Americans. That means allowing them to seek work and find ways to contribute to the economy; it means allowing them the freedom to assimilate into, even while subtly changing, American culture—the very same freedom your grandparents had.

Careless language (or, even worse, verbal legerdemain) often turns words or phrases with positive connotations into Trojan horses that sneak mistaken, vague, or confusing notions into our thought processes.

A familiar example is the word “fair.” By definition, “fair” denotes something desirable. So by attaching the word to any noun or verb, a speaker anoints the thing as something good. The speaker is subtly instructing the listener simply to accept without question that the thing described by the word is good. A careless listener, then, is at high risk of accepting a conclusion that, with careful thought or without having heard the word “fair,” he might not accept.

Consider the frequently heard phrase “fair wage.” If Sen. Jones explains his support for raising the legislated minimum wage, he’s sure to insist that his goal is for low-skilled workers to receive a “fair wage.” Scholars seeking to explain the consequences of minimum-wage legislation objectively then have to overcome the emotional bias that the word “fair” smuggles into the conversation.

Another example is the phrase “secure our borders.” Opponents of open immigration frequently allege that illegal immigrants are proof that America’s borders aren’t “secure” and that those of us who wish to abolish numerical limits on immigration are insensitive to the need for government to “secure our borders.”

Such allegations, however, sneak in so many implicit presumptions that rational discussion becomes quite difficult.

The very phrase “insecure borders” conjures an image of government failing at its most fundamental responsibility—namely, protecting citizens from invading marauders. People see in their minds’ eyes an America increasingly at risk of being conquered by foreigners, leaving Americans at the mercy of invading rapists, plunderers, and murderers.

Immigrants, however, aren’t invaders, much less warriors in a conquering army.

Reasonable people can disagree over what kinds of national-security protections should exist on America’s borders and what sorts of screening of would-be immigrants should be done to reduce the risks of terrorist attacks on American soil. But it is not reasonable to imply that immigration is chiefly, or even mostly, an issue of national security. Unfortunately, such an unreasonable implication is precisely what people who frame immigration as a matter of border security sneak into the discussion.

For perspective, ask if America’s borders were insecure until 1921 when, with the Emergency Quota Act, Uncle Sam first began seriously to restrict the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. Were Americans, until just 90 years ago, living in peril of their lives and livelihoods because U.S. borders were “insecure”?

Or ask this question: Does the fact that Uncle Sam imposes no numerical limits on foreign visitors to the United States mean that American borders are insecure? Short of the U.S. government’s imposing draconian restrictions (to be enforced with draconian measures) on visitors—say, admitting only 1,000 visitors annually, each of whom must first get a high-security clearance from the State Department—it’s almost impossible to see how numerical restrictions on foreign visitors would make America’s borders more secure. Therefore, anyone who would now seriously suggest that the lack of numerical restrictions on foreign visitors to America is evidence that U.S. borders are “insecure” or “broken” would justifiably be ridiculed.

Keep these points in mind when you encounter debates over immigration policy.

My proposal is to return to the policies under which anyone who wanted to immigrate to America could do so as long as he or she had no serious communicable disease and was not a terrorist.

That policy was much like the one we have today for foreign visitors to the United States: Anyone may visit America as long as he or she likely poses no serious threat to Americans. So, too, before 1882 anyone could immigrate to America as long as he or she posed no serious threat to Americans. (This policy actually continued largely unchanged until 1921, with the horrid exception of would-be immigrants from China. Starting in 1882 Uncle Sam imposed severe restrictions on Chinese people’s ability to immigrate into America.)

In fact, the security of American borders—if by this phrase we mean genuinely decreased risks to Americans’ persons and property—would almost certainly rise with open borders.

Points of immigrants’ entry, such as Ellis Island, would be reestablished. All peaceful persons immigrating to America would flow in through these points, be checked for communicable diseases and for ties to terrorist organizations, and, if cleared on both fronts, enter the United States. Uncle Sam would no longer spend hundreds of millions of dollars policing the borders, catching “illegal” immigrants, deporting them back to Mexico, and monitoring employers who might have hired “illegal” immigrants. Those resources could be used instead to seek out and to apprehend terrorists.

Because all legitimate steps to secure the borders would aim only at reducing Americans’ risk of being violated in their persons and property, government’s policing efforts would—with the open-borders regime I recommend—focus on this goal. Such worthy efforts would not get mixed in with, or be confused with, efforts to prevent peaceful people from coming to America and finding gainful employment here.

With government enforcement efforts concentrated on securing us from criminal violence and theft, we would be more secure than we are now with so many resources and so much manpower instead concentrated on “protecting” us from people whose only crime is to seek out better economic opportunities.

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.

Introduced in 2005 to combat the waves of terrorists thronging our shores, REAL ID was supposed to thwart the bad guys by transforming our drivers’ licenses into a national ID card. We’d have submitted this card on demand to government’s agents—as do the victims in totalitarian regimes. Never mind that “almost no empirical research has been undertaken to clearly establish how identity tokens can be used as a means of preventing terrorism,” according to Privacy International, or that “terrorists have traditionally moved across borders using tourist visas,” unless they “are equipped with legitimate identification cards.” The 9/11 hijackers and the Madrid bombers, respectively, provide two recent examples.

Any Pretext Whatsoever

Governments itch to tag their subjects like so many cattle, on any pretext whatsoever. Ours thought it had a dandy excuse in the attacks of 9/11, and who can blame it? Many Americans would eagerly sell their few remaining liberties so long as a politician assured them that said sale secured the homeland. Ergo, the feds invented a bogus link between terrorism and America’s freedom from a national ID. They swore they’d prevent another 9/11 so long as we followed orders to carry “enhanced” drivers’ licenses.

Surprisingly, rebellion bloomed—and this among states that have supinely obeyed any number of anti-constitutional decrees since 1865. Fifteen passed legislation prohibiting their DMVs from turning licenses into a de facto national ID; another ten officially denounced REAL ID.

No matter: The feds slapped an alias on their failed legislation—PASS ID—and reintroduced it. But in case such cosmetics can’t con us, a couple of senators are aiming at the same goal via another American bugaboo: immigration.

Increased Workplace Patrols

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) propose to “reform” yet again the feds’ cruel and unconstitutional policies on immigration. Their national ID card piggybacks on Social Security cards rather than drivers’ licenses.

“The plan calls for a big increase in immigration agents patrolling workplaces,” the New York Times reported. The Bush administration already tried such raids; their inhumanity devastated whole towns, not just immigrants, and Obama’s government supposedly discontinued them. But senators seldom boast an enviable learning curve. Graham and Schumer would also “require all workers, including legal immigrants and American citizens, to present a tamper-proof”—that is, biometric—“Social Security card when they apply for jobs.”

In propaganda the Washington Post obligingly published, the senators wrote, “A tamper-proof ID system would dramatically decrease illegal immigration, experts have said, and would reduce the government revenue lost when employers and workers here illegally fail to pay taxes.” But, “there’s no such thing as a foolproof ID system,” as experts have also said. And “reducing lost government revenue” as a reason for national ID adds insult to injury. We should pack papers so the government can keep more of what it loots from us?

The senators also promise that though “we would require all U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who want jobs to obtain a high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security card,” we’re safe from bureaucratic prying because “no government database would house everyone’s information.” If you believe that, you no doubt believe as well that these politicians have only our best interests at heart, have studied rather than exploited this topic, and are competent to decide for us who our future neighbors, friends, and relatives will be.

Certainly, Graham and Schumer don’t have immigrants’ best interests at heart. Indeed, whether immigrants can live here is determined solely by whether we can use them to “ensur[e] America’s future economic prosperity.” Ergo, the senators’ “legislation would award green cards to immigrants who receive a Ph.D. or master’s degree in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. university. It makes no sense to educate the world’s future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able to contribute to our economy.”

Nationalist Agenda

Forget about those hungry, tired, and poor yearning to breathe free; the persecuted; and the tortured. If you can’t advance politicians’ nationalistic agendas, you won’t find a toe-hold here.

The senators aren’t content to menace only immigrants; they also threaten and penalize Americans who, unlike themselves, are productive: “Prospective employers would be responsible for swiping the [national ID] cards through a machine”—and who pays for the gizmo?—“to confirm a person’s identity and immigration status. Employers who refused to swipe the card or who otherwise knowingly hired unauthorized workers would face stiff fines and, for repeat offenses, prison sentences.”

Our rulers have spent the last 150 years ginning up fear of immigrants, pitting established Americans against newcomers, contriving a hobgoblin from which they squawk about rescuing us. They’ve succeeded so well that modern Americans happily don chains so long as it means immigrants wear them, too. National ID, raids on offices and factories, a wall on our southern border: Nothing is too dictatorial when it comes to controlling migration.

Schumer and Graham are betting Americans’ fear of immigrants outweighs their love of liberty. Tragically, that looks like a winning wager.

People immigrate to the United States for many reasons, though typically to seek economic opportunity.  Those who do so legally are also eligible, like everyone else, for government subsidies for education and medical care.  Some claim these benefits attract too many immigrants, who then also “take” jobs away from native-born Americans.  But the last straw that has apparently driven a large majority of Arizonans to support the new legislation is the perception that illegal immigrants have been taking advantage of social services at the expense of legal residents.  The legislation can be seen as an attempt to more effectively prevent illegal aliens from competing with legal residents for jobs and these government benefits.

Economics teaches us that market exchanges take place only because both parties expect to gain.  Economists sometimes call this a positive-sum game.  This profit-motive is responsible for creating new goods and services as well as the jobs that produce them.  In a free market the number of these jobs is limited only by entrepreneurial ingenuity (much of it coming from immigrants, by the way).  Thus concern over foreigners taking a fixed number of jobs is utterly misplaced.

On the other hand, immigration may become a concern when the gains to illegal immigrants come at the expense of legal residents, which is indeed the case with government’s redistributive benefits – a zero- or negative-sum game.  The government is effective in redistributing wealth by taxing and spending — not creating — it. So every dollar of tax revenue spent on one person is a dollar someone else doesn’t get.

Interventionism Leads to Nationalism

Others have weighed in on the Arizona legislation and, while I have my own opinion about it, that’s not my primary concern here.

Rather, the situation reminds me of a passage from F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom in which he says:  “[S]ocialism, as long as it remains theoretical is internationalist, while as soon as it is put into practice … it becomes violently nationalist…” (p. 141, 1976 Chicago Press edition).  Internationalism here denotes inclusiveness, even liberality; while nationalism denotes the opposite.

I’m not suggesting that the Arizona government and its supporters on this issue are socialists – I’m sure they would be appalled by the suggestion.  But the logic behind Hayek’s assertion in this case extends to the interventionism of the capitalist mixed economy, which does characterize the political economy of Arizona and the rest of the country.

According to Hayek, socialism tends in practice to become “violently nationalist” for a number of reasons, besides the zero-sum factor already mentioned. A tried and true way for the political class to unite citizens around an otherwise irksome set of policies is to create a common enemy. An us-against-them mentality, which we see in times of war, can make people accept drastic restrictions on freedom and other privations that they would otherwise find intolerable.  (The same is true in other contexts, including so-called “economic warfare,” such as, Detroit versus Japan or Main Street versus Wall Street.)  To keep independent-thinking individuals from thwarting government intentions, any benefits accruing under theoretical socialism must be restricted to those under control of the State.  Nonconformists would be a nuisance, including unwanted foreigners.

It’s well-understood how legal, and especially illegal, immigration is to a certain extent the unintended consequence of welfare-state capitalism.  But my point is that what we see happening in Arizona is the “nationalist” response to interventionist policies intended, by men and women of good will, for the welfare of all.  Education and health care have been extended to illegal aliens not only because screening legals from illegals is onerous, but also because education and health care have been deemed “basic human rights.”  Of course extending these kinds of “rights” — essentially claims to the property of others — means increasing the burden to taxpayers (many of whom, by the way, are illegal aliens), and there’s the rub.

High-mindedness in theory, whether socialism or interventionism, always meets the zero-sum calculus in practice.  The reaction is predictable.

That opponents of big government would support immigration control is surprising on its face.  Enforcing such laws requires governments, federal or state, to exercise powers that small-government advocates should reject.  It’s not that immigration law requires enormous expenditures, or that it dramatically increases the size of government.  But it does increase the scope of government power.

This distinction between scale and scope is made by Robert Higgs in his masterful Crisis and Leviathan.  The real damage to freedom comes not necessarily from government growing bigger but rather from Big Government.  The former is about scale, the latter about scope.  So much of the Tea Party talk seems to be about scale:  how much government spends, taxes, and borrows.  Little of it has been about scope:  the powers that government has to interfere with the rights of individuals.

The Arizona law will cost little and will not necessarily require more police, but it gives a great deal more power to the existing government.  The same is true of building border fences or stricter labor regulations.  Their direct expenses are not that large (compared to bailouts and stimuli anyway!), and they often get passed on to firms and consumers.  But they expand State power in way that should concern those who oppose big government.

Anti-immigration laws restrict the freedom of at least two groups.  One is American employers who want to hire immigrant workers.  Laws that restrict immigration to officially approved people or that punish firms for hiring those who aren’t approved limit the economic freedom of employers.   (By doing so, they also limit cost-cutting competition by firms, which lowers prices for American consumers.)  Tea Partiers who wave Gadsen flags might consider the ways in which immigration law treads on the freedom of their friends and neighbors who are employers.  If one really supports free enterprise, one should support the right of voluntary contract among any and all consenting adults, regardless of which side of an arbitrary political border they were born or live.

Immigrants’ Rights

Too often forgotten in these debates are the rights of immigrants.  Libertarians believe in human rights, not just citizens’ rights or Americans’ rights.  People everywhere have, or should have, the right to travel where they wish and to contract for work with whomever they wish.  On what grounds do those who profess a belief in freedom prohibit them from doing so?  (To anticipate a possible objection:  Illegal immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes, and the U.S. crime rate has fallen since the 1987 amnesty program.)  People who break the law to look for work in America are mostly trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.  Why risk life and limb to come here to go on welfare when they can do the same thing at home without risk?  And by what right do we prevent them from trying to make better lives for themselves, just as we would wish for American citizens?  The reverence with which supposed opponents of big government treat the artificial lines governments draw is yet another puzzle.

Enforcing immigration laws, including the new Arizona law, often requires encroaching on constitutional rights.  Tea Partiers claim devotion to the Constitution, but those who support the Arizona law apparently missed the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy.  Again, asking people for proof of citizenship is not going to add anything noticeable to the Arizona state budget, or the federal deficit if done on a national scale, but it does expand the scope of government power in a way that turns it from just being “big” to being “Big.”

Tea Partiers need to decide just what they are worried about.  Is their opposition to big government coming from a principled objection to the larger scope of government power at all levels to interfere with the freedoms of all people (that is, Big Government), or are they just upset about the growth in federal giveaways that don’t benefit them?

“Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a bill that would require the police to ask people about their immigration status if officers have any reason to suspect that they are in the country illegally.”