Either the Cato Institute has moved far left in their Never-Trump status, or Libertarians are loons. Or they didn’t realize they had a far left moonbat in their midst, as Jeffrey Miron, director of economic studies at the Cato Institute and the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, calls for open borders. Though, this isn’t that out of bounds when it comes to official Libertarians, who also want all drugs legalized
Forget the wall already, it’s time for the U.S. to have open borders
President Donald Trump’s recent tweets against open borders come as no surprise. Indeed, even fervent immigration advocates worry that open borders would lower the wages of low-skilled natives, erode national security, and overburden the social safety net. Trump doubled down, tweeting that he would be “willing to ‘shut down’ government” unless Congress approves funding for a border wall with Mexico.
Trump, however, has it exactly backwards: The solution to America’s immigration problems is open borders, under which the United States imposes no immigration restrictions at all. If the U.S. adopts this policy, the benefits will far outweigh the costs.
If we have no borders, we have no country.
Illegal immigration will disappear, by definition. Much commentary on immigration — Trump and fellow travelers aside — suggests that legal immigration is good and that illegal immigration is bad. So, legalize all immigration.
Government will then have no need to define or interpret rules about asylum, economic hardship, family reunification, family separation, DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)Â and so on. When all immigration is legal, these issues are irrelevant.
See? It’s so easy. We could totally save money!
Expenditure on immigration enforcement would shrink to nothing, because open borders means no walls, fences, screening at airports, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), deportations, detention centers or immigration courts. A 2013 report estimated that immigration enforcement cost more than $18 billion annually, and standard indicators suggest costs have grown further since then.
And they’ll send their best!
The government’s fiscal balance could actually improve with more legal immigrants earning income and paying taxes in America. And under open borders, any added immigration will plausibly come from those with even higher skills and incomes, who faced weaker incentives to immigrate when faced with the burden of current restrictions.
And Jeffrey tells us that there won’t be any bad consequences. They won’t flood into America (though, since we have no borders, there’s no need to name the nation), the won’t put down roots, crime won’t skyrocket, terrorists won’t stream in, but,
Open borders are not without risks. Social safety nets might come under pressure, and natives will face added competition for jobs (though the evidence on this is mixed).
If it’s “mixed” now, when they’re streaming in, natives (notice he doesn’t call us Americans. Very telling) will lose, and social safety nets will crash. I wonder if Jeffrey locks the doors in his car and home? Does he have a fence?
Here’s another lunatic
I want to start a conversation about restructuring ice and granting amnesty to the 10 million plus people who are already here. Here’s the @courierjournal coverage:https://t.co/OFPwvXCPAg
— Hank Linderman for Congress KY-02 (@hank4ky) July 30, 2018
I propose a pilot project. First, we’ll remove all the walls from Miron’s house.
Your second choice, Libertarians are loons, is pretty accurate. Kathy Shaidle once opined, Libertarians are just low-tax liberal conformists obsessed with weed and embracing the latest p.c. fads.
However, this guy, Moron, has missed the last 50 years of Europe importing Moslems and the swell results they have.
And that doesn’t count all the goodies illegals have brought to us.
There are many shades of libertarians and to cast them all as loons based on one extreme viewpoint is dumb.
The idea about open borders that some libertarians hold isn’t crazy if you look at their complete (but completely unrealistic) philosophy about constitutional government. That is, if the country had no entitlements, no welfare, no free healthcare and education, etc, people would only cross the border to fill jobs that are unfilled. There’s no reason for them to stay permanently without free school and healthcare and public assistance, and of course with a sane government they wouldn’t be able to get citizenship without jumping through a lot of hoops. And in the libertarian world of strong property rights and little government land and no assistance, immigrants would have a hard time moving in without being self-sufficiency and job skills and language skills. So if you could hit the Restart Button and clean out all the government programs and pretend like it’s 1899, it could theoretically work very well. And we’d all be freer and more prosperous and there’d be no IRS and no trillion dollars worth or rent-seekers and lobbyists influencing our politicians with money and for entitlement money.
Too bad that’s all theoretical. And it doesn’t work at all in a world where there are islamists and communists who want to conquer the world. The super-geeky libertarians think that if we are isolationists and just mind our own business, no one will be our enemy. Which is as complete of a misunderstanding of human nature as our own socialists (we all know some) who think that Cuba is the model society because they have high literacy rates. The libertarians all (I think) believe in a strong national defense as called out in the constitution. But as has been said many times, you have to control your borders to be a sovereign country.
You cannot have open borders and a welfare state. When people can come in to your country and get public assistance at a value of 10X the median income in their homeland, they will come in droves. And they will not have to assimilate, learn job skills, language, culture, etc. Because they don’t need to do any of that with government assistance. See Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, California…
If you live in a place like Sudan where the per capita income is under $1000/year and you see that Germany is giving $250 – $450 month, plus more for kids, plus housing and food and school and medicine, why wouldn’t you run there as fast as you can? Why wouldn’t you run to the coast and hop a small boat out to a waiting NGO ship funded by Soros or Doctors without Borders, who will take you as “refugess” and dump you off in Italy to reshape the world in their socialist ideals?
I agree.
To add: It was explained to me that there are Right (sane) Libertarians and Left (insane) Libertarians.
I’ve found no difference in the beliefs of Right Libertarians and Constitutional Conservatives. Defending/Restoring our Constitutional Republic in a sensible manner is the common primary goal and the best fix for our nations ailments.
I am more libertarian than consertative, but it seems that the libertarian physiology on open borders require elimination of social welfare and the minimum wage. Thus labor contracts for work and is not mandated by government. This seems somewhat reasonable as labor is our greatest cost and labor cost reduce the ability of industry to compete in a global market. But I could get to Mars easier than get that policy change.
To be fair, we did have open borders for the majority of our history, and it’s difficult to argue that, “If we have no borders, we have no country,” because we most certainly did from 1781 through the early part of the twentieth century.
Nevertheless, immigration was desirable then, because we had a big, empty country to fill, and immigrants actually tried to assimilate. Things are different now.
Wow, this is brilliant! Eliminate immigration laws and then there’s no such thing as illegal immigrants. How has nobody ever thought of this before?
Now let’s work to make sure there are no illegal murderers, illegal robbers, illegal rapists, illegal arsonists, etc. Let’s get rid of all the laws that make those things illegal, too! We could be the first totally crime-free country in history!
And yes, of course, /sarc.