DemocracyThe God That Failed (34 page)

IV

To the extent that a high-wage area such as the United States engages in unrestricted free trade, internationally as well as domestically, the immigration pressure from low-wage countries will be kept low or reduced, and hence, the question as to what to do about immigration will be less urgent. On the other hand, insofar as the United States engages in protectionist policies against the products of low-wage areas products and in welfare policies at home, immigration pressure will be kept high or even raised, and the immigration question will assume great importance in public debate.

Obviously, the world's major high-wage regions—North America and Western Europe—are presently in this latter situation, in which immigration has become an increasingly urgent public concern.
⁷
In light of
steadily mounting immigration pressure from the world's low-wage regions, three general strategies of dealing with immigration have been proposed: unconditional free immigration, conditional free immigration, and restrictive immigration. While our main concern will be with the latter two alternatives, a few observations regarding the unconditional free immigration position are appropriate, if only to illustrate the extent of its intellectual bankruptcy and irresponsibility.

In order to put matters into proper perspective, it might be useful to supply some brief comments on these regions' free-trade and domestic-welfare records. These remarks concern in particular the situation in the U.S., but they apply by and large to the situation in Western Europe, too. Free trade means to impose neither import tariffs or quotas, nor to subsidize the exportation of goods or engage in any other export promotion schemes. In particular, free trade does not require any bilateral or multilateral agreements or treaties. Instead, free trade policies can be implemented instantaneously and unilaterally, and intergovernmental trade agreements, regardless of what they are called, must invariably be regarded as indicators of international trade
restrictions
rather than free trade. In light of this, the free trade record of the U.S. must be considered dismal. (See on this, for instance, James Gwartney, Robert Lawson and Walter Block,
Economic
Freedom
of
the
World
1
975-1995
(Vancouver: Frazer Institute, 1996), pp. 35f, 299,302.) A labyrinthine system of tariffs and regulation restricts the free importation of literally thousands of foreign goods, from raw materials to agricultural products, machine tools and high-technology products. At the same time, the U.S. government engages in a wide variety of export promotion schemes, ranging from simple export subsidies and foreign aid requiring the purchase of certain U.S. goods to massive financial bailouts of U.S. investors in foreign countries and open or concealed military pressure and threat. Moreover, with the so-called North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a document of about 2,400 pages (when free trade prescriptions can be summarized in two sentences!) the U.S. government, in collaboration with the governments of Canada and Mexico, has recently adopted another maze of international trade restrictions and regulations. In effect, NAFTA involves the upward-harmonization of the tax and regulation structure across North America (very much like the so-called European Union (EU) does for most of Western Europe). Similar strictures apply to the new creation, as the result of GATT's (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) recent
"Uruguay Round," of the World Trade Organization. See on this
The
Nafta
Reader:
Free-Market
Critiques
of
the
North
American
"Free
Trade"
Agreement
(Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1993), and
The
WTO
Reader:
Free
Market
Critiques
of
the
World
Trade
Organization
(Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1994). Clearly even more striking is the domestic welfare record of the U.S. (and similarly of Western Europe). The record in this regard is not uniform across the U.S. Public welfare assistance is higher in California than in Alabama, for example, which explains significant welfare-migration within the U.S. Suffice it to say, however, that U.S. welfare assistance, including cash grants as well as numerous in kind benefits such as food stamps, housing allowances, medicaid, aid to dependent children, and public education, etc., can easily reach a household net-income of $ 20,000 per year and rise as high as $ 40,000 per year.

According to proponents of unconditional free immigration, the United States
qua
high-wage area would invariably benefit from free immigration; hence, it should enact a policy of open borders, regardless of present conditions, i.e., even if the United States were entangled in protectionism and domestic welfare.
⁸
Surely, such a proposal must
strike a reasonable person as fantastic. Assume that the United States, or better still Switzerland, declared that there would no longer be any border controls, that anyone who could pay the fare might enter the country, and, as a resident, would then be entitled to every "normal" domestic welfare provision. Is there any doubt about the disastrous outcome of such an experiment in the present world? The United States, and even faster Switzerland, already weakened by protectionism and welfare, would be overrun by millions of third-world immigrants.
⁹
Welfare costs would quickly skyrocket, and the strangled economy would disintegrate and collapse, as the subsistence fund—the stock of capital accumulated in and inherited from the past (fathers and forefathers)—was plundered. Civilization would vanish from the United States and Switzerland, just as it once did from Greece and Rome.
¹⁰

⁸
Such a position has been advocated repeatedly, for instance, by the editorialpage editors of the highly influential
Wall
Street
Journal
led by the neoconservative Robert Bartley. See, for example,
Wall
Street
Journal,
July 3,1990, where a constitutional amendment is proposed: "There shall be no borders." Likewise, open border policies have been proposed by Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, Donald Boudreaux of the Foundation for Economic Education, and Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation. While these individuals and institutions typically refer to Julian L. Simon as their patron saint in this regard, Simon in fact does
not
advocate an open border policy. See his
The
Economic
Consequences
of
Immigration
(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1987), p. 309. Far more modestly, Simon recommends instead "to increase immigration quotas in a series of increments of significant size—perhaps half a percent, or one percent of total population at each step—to check on any unexpected negative consequences" (ibid., p. 348, also p. 310). More importantly, Simon suggests weeding out those potential immigrants who will become a "welfare burden" (p. 319). He recommends discrimination in favor of "educated" immigrants and those who demonstrate proficiency in English (p. 327), he suggests giving "preference to applicants with financial assets" capable of making a "direct investment" in the host country (p. 328), and he is particularly fond of the idea of "selling the right of immigration into the U.S. to the highest bidders" (p. 329, 335). In his last published article, Simon moves still further away from advocating an open-door policy. See Julian L. Simon, "Are there Grounds for Limiting Immigration?"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
13, no. 2 (1998).

⁹
Two useful figures may indicate the magnitude of the potential problem. For one, according to surveys conducted during the early 1990s in the former Soviet Union, more than 30 percent of the population, i.e., close to 100 million people, expressed the desire to emigrate. Second, during the 1990s the U.S. held an annual "diversity" lottery, offering visas to persons originating in "countries with low rates of immigration to the United States." The 1997 lottery attracted some 3.4 million applicants for 50,000 available visas.

¹⁰
A truly remarkable position is staked out by Walter Block, "A Libertarian Case for Free Immigration,"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
13, no. 2 (1998). Block does not deny the above predicted consequences of an "open border policy." To the contrary, he writes,

suppose unlimited immigration is made the order of the day while minimum wages, unions, welfare, and a law code soft on criminals are still in place in the host country. Then, it might well be maintained, the host country would be subjected to increased crime, welfarism, and unemployment. An open-door policy would imply not economic freedom, but forced integration with all the dregs of the world with enough money to reach our shores, (p. 179)

Nonetheless, Block then goes on to advocate an open-door policy,
regardless
of these predictable consequences, and he claims that such a stand is required by the principles of libertarian political philosophy. Given Block's undeniable credentials as a leading contemporary theoretician of libertarianism, it is worthwhile explaining where his argument goes astray and why libertarianism requires
no
such thing as an open-door policy. Block's pro-immigration stand is based on an analogy. "Take the case of the bum in the library," he states.

What, if anything, should be done about him? If this is a private library,... the law should
allow
the owner of the library to forcibly evict such a person, if need be, at his own discretion. . . . But what if it is a public library? ... As such, [libraries] are akin to an unowned good. Any occupant has as much right to them as any other. If we are in a revolutionary state of war, then the first homesteader may seize control. But if not, as at present, then, given "just war" considerations, any reasonable
interference with public property would be legitimate. . . . One could "stink up" the library with unwashed body odor, or leave litter around in it, or "liberate" some books, but one could not plant land mines on the premises to blow up innocent library users, (pp. 180-81)

Since unconditional free immigration must be regarded as a prescription for societal suicide, the typical position among free traders is the alternative of conditional free immigration. According to this view, the United States and Switzerland would have to first return to unrestricted free trade and abolish all tax-funded welfare programs, and only then could they open their borders to everyone who wanted to come. In the meantime, while the welfare state is still in place, immigration would be permitted subject to the condition that immigrants are excluded from domestic welfare entitlements.

While the error involved in this view is less obvious and the consequences less dramatic than those associated with the unconditional free immigration position, the view is nonetheless erroneous and harmful. To be sure, the immigration pressure on the United States and Switzerland would be reduced if this proposal were followed, but it would not disappear. Indeed, with foreign and domestic free trade policies, wage rates within the United States and Switzerland might further increase relative to those at other locations (with less enlightened economic policies). Hence, the attraction of both countries might even increase. In any case, some immigration pressure would remain, so some form of immigration policy would have to exist. Do the principles underlying free trade imply that this policy must be one of conditional "free immigration?" No, they do not. There is no analogy between free trade and free immigration, and restricted trade and restricted immigration. The phenomena of trade and immigration are different in one fundamental respect, and the meaning of "free" and "restricted" in conjunction with both terms is categorically different. People can move and migrate; goods and services of themselves cannot.

The fundamental error in this argument, according to which everyone, foreign immigrants no less than domestic bums, has an equal right to domestic public property, is Block's claim that public property "is akin to an unowned good." In fact, there exists a fundamental difference between unowned goods and public property. The latter is
de
facto
owned by the taxpaying members of the domestic public. They have financed this property; hence, they, in accordance with the amount of taxes paid by individual members, must be regarded as its legitimate owners. Neither the bum, who has presumably paid no taxes, nor any foreigner, who has most definitely not paid any domestic taxes, can thus be assumed to have any rights regarding public property whatsoever. See more on this in chap. 6 above, esp. the
Postscript.