Immigration: A Libertarian Solution

[Aquila]

Is anyone concerned about the rather vitriolic speech concerning illegal immigrants in America today? I've been thinking about it and I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with expanding the powers of the government to round up illegals. Nor am I very comfortable with the notion of massive walls with barbed wire spanning our boarders. It almost sounds like East Berlin to me.

I fear that we're becoming more and more of a police state. I don't think combating the issue of illegal immigration in this manner is wise. Nor do I think that addressing immigration in this manner is worth what we would be losing.

Honestly, I prefer a more libertarian approach:

Immigration

Immigration Law Should Reflect Our Dynamic Labor Market
By Daniel T. Griswold
source: http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration

Among its many virtues, America is a nation where laws are generally reasonable, respected and impartially enforced. A glaring exception is immigration.


Today an estimated 12 million people live in the U.S. without authorization, 1.6 million in Texas alone, and that number grows every year. Many Americans understandably want the rule of law restored to a system where law-breaking has become the norm.


The fundamental choice before us is whether we redouble our efforts to enforce existing immigration law, whatever the cost, or whether we change the law to match the reality of a dynamic society and labor market.


Low-skilled immigrants cross the Mexican border illegally or overstay their visas for a simple reason: There are jobs waiting here for them to fill, especially in Texas and other, faster growing states. Each year our economy creates hundreds of thousands of net new jobs — in such sectors as retail, cleaning, food preparation, construction and tourism — that require only short-term, on-the-job training.


At the same time, the supply of Americans who have traditionally filled many of those jobs — those without a high school diploma — continues to shrink. Their numbers have declined by 4.6 million in the past decade, as the typical American worker becomes older and better educated.


Yet our system offers no legal channel for anywhere near a sufficient number of peaceful, hardworking immigrants to legally enter the United States even temporarily to fill this growing gap. The predictable result is illegal immigration.


In response, we can spend billions more to beef up border patrols. We can erect hundreds of miles of ugly fence slicing through private property along the Rio Grande. We can raid more discount stores and chicken-processing plants from coast to coast. We can require all Americans to carry a national ID card and seek approval from a government computer before starting a new job.


Or we can change our immigration law to more closely conform to how millions of normal people actually live.


Crossing an international border to support your family and pursue dreams of a better life is not an inherently criminal act like rape or robbery. If it were, then most of us descend from criminals. As the people of Texas know well, the large majority of illegal immigrants are not bad people. They are people who value family, faith and hard work trying to live within a bad system.


When large numbers of otherwise decent people routinely violate a law, the law itself is probably the problem. To argue that illegal immigration is bad merely because it is illegal avoids the threshold question of whether we should prohibit this kind of immigration in the first place.


We've faced this choice on immigration before. In the early 1950s, federal agents were making a million arrests a year along the Mexican border. In response, Congress ramped up enforcement, but it also dramatically increased the number of visas available through the Bracero guest worker program. As a result, apprehensions at the border dropped 95 percent. By changing the law, we transformed an illegal inflow of workers into a legal flow.


For those workers already in the United States illegally, we can avoid "amnesty" and still offer a pathway out of the underground economy. Newly legalized workers can be assessed fines and back taxes and serve probation befitting the misdemeanor they've committed. They can be required to take their place at the back of the line should they eventually apply for permanent residency.


The fatal flaw of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act was not that it offered legal status to workers already here but that it made no provision for future workers to enter legally.


Immigration is not the only area of American life where a misguided law has collided with reality. In the 1920s and '30s, Prohibition turned millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans into lawbreakers and spawned an underworld of moon-shining, boot-legging and related criminal activity. (Sound familiar?) We eventually made the right choice to tax and regulate alcohol rather than prohibit it.


In the 19th century, America's frontier was settled largely by illegal squatters. In his influential book on property rights, The Mystery of Capital, economist Hernando de Soto describes how these so-called extralegals began to farm, mine and otherwise improve land to which they did not have strict legal title. After failed attempts by the authorities to destroy their cabins and evict them, federal and state officials finally recognized reality, changed the laws, declared amnesty and issued legal documents conferring title to the land the settlers had improved.


As Mr. de Soto wisely concluded: "The law must be compatible with how people actually arrange their lives." That must be a guiding principle when Congress returns to the important task of fixing our immigration laws.

------

Daniel Griswold the is director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies. For a copy of the original article, please visit Cato's Web site here.

Thoughts???

[n david]

If you want to turn the US into a third-world nation within a generation, that plan would do it!

Sorry, but the "change the law" part just irks me. We've bent over backwards changing everything to suit illegals, it's ridiculous that now people are advocating to change the laws.

I'm not a "deport them all" supporter. Unfortunately, the US has allowed so many in we don't have a clue how many illegals are really in the US. So deporting them isn't really an option.

But here's my question for the people who want to legalize them with a guest worker program or other temporary program: What will happen when that visa expires and they refuse to leave?

I may be wrong, but from where I live, most here illegally do not want to assimilate into the US or become a citizen. So why should we change our laws when they'll just break them again anyway when the visa expires.

We're supposed to be a nation of laws. Trump is on point with this. We are not a nation of laws if we allow people to break those laws without any repercussion or consequence.

We're also a nation which has borders. Like every other nation on earth, we have borders and should control those borders. I know of no other nation, including Mexico, which doesn't enforce its laws or control its borders. We are the only dumb nation on planet earth which allows anyone to just walk, swim or drive across the border.

It has to stop. We cannot continue to allow this if we want the US to be a strong nation.

So while I'm not with Dr. Ben Carson, who believes we should use drone missile strikes on the border, I do believe we should do whatever we need to do; whether it's building a wall or a fence, using drones or remote cameras or trip sensors...whatever. Also take the stupid handcuffs off our Border Patrol and let them detain, arrest and deport the people coming across the border illegally. Like Mexico does. Like every other country in the world except the US!

[Esaias]

Deportation works if it is actually done. Building an Iron Curtain is not the answer, however. The border security is designed for Americans btw...

Anyway, we need to do the following:

End all welfare, food stamps, medicaid, etc for illegals.

Deport any we find.

Any illegals caught committing crimes will do regular jail time.

Anybody caught hiring illegals gets shut down and goes to jail, no exceptions.

No citizenship unless a parent is a citizen or one is naturalised.

No benefits of any kind for illegals (school enrollment, vouchers, business loans, bank accounts, etc etc).

It could work. It would work. But Deut 28 is in operation so the beatings will continue until morale improves...

[Aquila]

All statist solutions that will only make the issue worse. The system has clearly failed. We have to bring them into citizenship or the problem will not go away until the GOVERNMENT is empowered to put a big boot through people's doors and put people in jail. Of course... that will increase the number of shootouts.

But he-haw. Dis is Murica.

[Aquila]

What all of you fail to see is an empowered GOVERNMENT is more dangerous than people coming to our nation to work. The libertarians are right on this one. But you won't believe me until the GOVERNMENT is policing you and your family to ensure there are no illegals.

Statists... you're all becoming statists and you don't realize it.

[Esaias]

Originally Posted by Aquila

All statist solutions that will only make the issue worse. The system has clearly failed. We have to bring them into citizenship or the problem will not go away until the GOVERNMENT is empowered to put a big boot through people's doors and put people in jail. Of course... that will increase the number of shootouts.

But he-haw. Dis is Murica.

Nonsense. NONE of my suggestions require MORE of anything, just a REPEAL of failed policies. Government exists for a reason, anarchism is a pipe dream.

[Esaias]

BTW, gubbamint is already empowered to put a big boot thru anybody's door.

The real problem is Americans in general don't care about AMERICA anymore.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Esaias

Nonsense. NONE of my suggestions require MORE of anything, just a REPEAL of failed policies. Government exists for a reason, anarchism is a pipe dream.

Who said anything about anarchism?

The point is, we can actually do this in a manner that boosts the economy and establishes more tax paying citizens.

[Aquila]

They are trying to rile us into a frenzy with the issue of immigration. Don't let them get you going. Look at it logically from a long term perspective. Look at what will limit government and be best for the economy overall.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Aquila

They are trying to rile us into a frenzy with the issue of immigration. Don't let them get you going. Look at it logically from a long term perspective. Look at what will limit government and be best for the economy overall.

Please answer:
Should we be a nation of borders?
Should we enforce our immigration laws?
What should we do when illegals overstay the guest worker visa and refuse to leave?