A Matter of Priorities

‘Tis the political season, which means the season to bash immigrants. This goes especially for so-called “illegal aliens,” that is, residents without government papers. (As if that’s a big deal.) Candidates and others who are set on securing the Mexican border—the Canadian border seems of less concern—and expelling those who had the audacity to come [...]

The Nation Is Not a House

Let’s reflect on the rhetoric used by those who oppose greater freedom for people to move back and forth across political borders. Opponents of the freedom to move frequently analogize a nation to a house. “You lock your house, don’t you?” these anti-immigrationists ask—implying that what makes sense for a home makes equally good sense [...]

Free to Migrate

No matter what the advocates of free immigration say about the natural individual right to move without government permission, many people remain unconvinced because they expect theory and practice to diverge. Open borders may be good in the abstract, we're told, but the theory doesn't reflect what happens in the real world. To begin, we ought to be suspicious of any claim that a good theory and practice part ways. More . . .

A NEW article by Sheldon Richman

Natural, Not National, Rights

Somewhere in my reading about immigration I encountered the deceptively simple point that it’s not immigration we should be talking about but migration. That’s another way of saying the focus has been on “us,” when it should be on the people coming to the United States. The discussion has proceeded as if they have no [...]

Can We Tell Those Huddled Masses to Scram? Immigration and the Constitution

In 1873 some Presbyterians in Kentucky invited a young Canadian to be their pastor. Tensions in the border state were still high following the War of Southern Independence, and the congregants hoped that a neutral outsider could pacify folks not only within their own church but even across denominations. Rev. A.B. Simpson succeeded so well [...]

Twisting Economics Against Immigrants

P. Gardner Goldsmith is an independent journalist and screenwriter in New Hampshire. On January 7 President Bush announced what appeared to be a sweeping plan to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens working in the United States. In fact, it was little more than a long-term worker-visa program that barely increased the ability [...]

The Inhumanity of Population Control

Once again the Bush administration has come under fire for a decision that runs counter to conventional wisdom. Undeterred by widespread denunciations after opposing the Kyoto Protocol, it announced that funds appropriated by Congress to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) would be cut back. With all the hue and cry about the dangers of [...]

Immigration: An Abolitionist’s Cause

One of the most frequent arguments used against opening borders is that it would add to the welfare burden of the state and that innocent taxpayers will be compelled to pay for slothful immigrants. Slothful immigrants? Students in my international trade and finance classes always get a good laugh at the notion of “slothful immigrants.” [...]

The Return to a Global Economy

If we want to understand the current advance of global capitalism, it is worth remembering that a liberal international economic order has actually arisen twice, first at the end of the nineteenth century and now at the end of the twentieth.[1] In many ways, the world economy has simply caught up to where it was 100 years ago, prompting prominent economists to question whether the level of international integration is as high now as it was before the interruptions of two world wars and the Great Depression.