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by Jacob G. Hornberger
September 11, 2024
A columnist for the Washington Post named Jim Geraghty recently chided me in his column for wanting to “abolish the Border Patrol and ICE and all controls on the free movements of people across borders.” With sarcasm dripping from his keyboard, Geraghty concluded, “I suppose that by declaring it to be legal for everyone to cross the border, you have technically solved the problem of illegal immigration. Yeah, that’s the way to handle the 2 million or so illegal border crossings each year over the past three years.”
While one might be tempted to think that Geraghty is a left-winger given that he writes for the Washington Post, such is actually not the case. He is actually a right-winger. In fact, in addition to his position at the Post, which apparently is trying to appear “fair and balanced,” Geraghty serves as a “senior political correspondent” for National Review, one of the nation’s oldest right-wing publications.
Given the fact that he is an ardent and devoted right-winger, it is, therefore, not surprising that Geraghty would oppose the concept of open borders. Like all other right-wingers, he is an ardent champion for America’s century-old system of immigration controls.
Geraghty’s criticism gives us an opportunity to examine the concept of open borders and the immigration-control system that right-wingers have helped foist upon our nation and have long supported.
Before proceeding, it is worth mentioning that left-wingers are also ardent supporters of America’s system of immigration controls. That’s an important point because right-wingers often criticize left-wingers for their supposed support of “open borders,” a critique that is seriously misguided. For the past 100 years, both right-wingers and left-wingers have supported the concept of government-controlled borders. They might differ on the manner in which their system is enforced, but they are on the same page with respect to the system itself.
Let’s begin with Geraghty’s observation that open borders would “technically solve the problem of illegal immigration.” While he’s being sarcastic, he actually is correct. With open borders, there is no such concept as an illegal human being, as there is with a system of government-controlled borders. Under open borders, everyone is free to cross borders without being stopped or detained. That’s because under the law, no one would be entering the country illegally. Thus, no more illegal immigrants.
Consider the domestic United States, which has open borders between the states. Suppose it had been otherwise. Suppose that the Constitution had authorized each state to impose its own immigration controls. No one from outside the state could enter the state without official permission.
In that case, you would have an illegal immigration problem domestically because there would be people entering states without official permission. Such being the case, if I proposed the system of open borders we have today inside the United States, people like Geraghty would be sarcastically saying, “I guess Jacob is saying that the solution to our domestic illegal immigration crisis is simply to legalize them all by opening all state borders.” And he would be right — that is precisely what I would be saying.
Free enterprise and socialism
Right-wingers have long been ostensible proponents of free markets and free enterprise. In fact, one of the favorite mantras of right-wingers has long been “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.” Stretching all the way back to at least the 1950s, when National Review was founded by longtime right-winger and former CIA operative William F. Buckley, Jr., the mantra has been regularly employed in right-wing speeches, articles, books, magazines, and websites. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it appears today on the masthead or the biographical sketch of National Review.
At the same time, right-wingers have long decried socialism. In fact, their screeds against socialism, in which they would quote free-market economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, formed a central part of what became known as the “anti-communist crusade” that right-wingers waged throughout the Cold War. That was the period of time when right-wingers were convinced that the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, North Vietnamese, North Koreans, and other Reds were coming to get us. It was also the time when right-wingers, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, were ferreting out communists in all parts of American society, including the military, and exhorting Americans to even look under their beds for commies who might be hiding there.
An irony, however, of this pro-free-enterprise, anti-socialism mentality is that America’s system of immigration controls is based on the core socialist system of central planning. Government officials plan, in a top-down, command-and-control manner, the movements of millions of people in one of the most complex labor markets in history. This central planning involves determining the overall number of immigrants who will be permitted to enter the United States, the number allocated to each country, and the credentials necessary for entry. One thing is for sure — the central planners do not give priority to the poor, tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free or to the wretched refuse of other nations’ teeming shores.
Why is this ironic? Recall that favorite right-wing mantra — “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.” And recall the antisocialist sentiments that right-wingers love to express. And yet here they are — ardent proponents of a system based on the core socialist principle of central planning that violates the principles of free enterprise, private property, and limited government.
Planned chaos versus a free market
The libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises observed that the result of central planning is “planned chaos.” And that’s precisely what we have had on the border for around 100 years, along with perpetual crisis, death, suffering, kidnappings, rapes, detention centers, criminal prosecutions, penitentiaries, deportations, raids, a Berlin Wall that was built using the eminent domain stealing of people’s property, concertina wire to cut people up, and a massive immigration police state that includes highway checkpoints, warrantless searches of property within 100 miles of America’s borders, and the criminalization of hiring, transporting, harboring, or caring for anyone who is here illegally.
All that is what right-wingers call America’s system of “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.” That’s why one often finds right-wingers singing to themselves, “Well, I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” As an aside, it’s worth pointing out that immigration controls are not the only socialist program that right-wingers have come to support. There are also such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and public schooling. In fact, just last February, Geraghty wrote an article in National Review lamenting increases in Social Security payments but of course not questioning the existence of this socialist program itself. In fact, in the previous month, National Review published an article detailing a new right-wing plan to save both Social Security and Medicare.
Compare central planning with the virtues of a free market. In a free market, economic activity is free of government control, regulation, and direction. The free market is what Hayek called “the spontaneous order.” It is a system in which everyone plans his own economic activities and coordinates his efforts with others. The means of communication in a free market is a sophisticated phenomenon called the “price system.”
For example, let’s assume that a farmer in Oregon desperately needs workers to harvest his crops. If he doesn’t get them right away, his crops will rot in the fields. Under a system of central planning, government officials would have already planned for the number of immigrants needed during that particular year. The plan would not have taken into consideration that farmer’s immediate needs. The farmer would lose his crop, just as many farmers have actually lost their crops owing to a shortage of farm workers.
Under a free-market, spontaneous-order system, all that the farmer has to do is announce that he is offering to pay, say, $50 an hour, plus transportation, room, and board. Immediately, a Mexican working on the farm calls his cousins in Mexico, who spreads the word. The next day, dozens of Mexicans are on the plane headed to Oregon. They make some good, quick money, and the farmer’s crop is saved. That’s how a genuine free-enterprise system works.
Immigration and citizenship
There is something else important to note. Under an open-border system, no one has to change his citizenship. The Mexican workers who head to Oregon to harvest that farmer’s crops remain Mexican citizens. They are simply foreign citizens living and working in the United States, much like American citizens who work in, say, France. I have a friend who is Japanese. She has lived here in the United States for some 40 years. She is still a Japanese citizen. Who cares?
And that’s one of the things to remember about open borders. Everyone is now dealing with everyone else as simply a human being. That is, there is no distinction between a legal person and an illegal person. Think about the situation today. There are an estimated 10-12 million people here illegally. Yet, how many Americans ask someone who speaks with an accent to produce his citizenship or immigration papers? I don’t know of anyone who does that. I’m willing to bet that right-wing immigration-control advocate Jim Geraghty doesn’t even do that. Instead, everyone, except ICE and the Border Patrol, treats everyone else as just regular human beings, not legal ones and illegal ones.
The welfare state and liberty
What about the old right-wing canard that you can’t have open borders with a welfare state? It’s wrongheaded. Of course, you can have both. Sure, it might mean the payment of higher taxes, but is that any reason to abandon one’s principles and, in the process, inflict harm on all the people who are not coming to get on welfare? Moreover, keep in mind that both right-wingers and left-wingers favor a welfare state. So they’re saying that advocates of liberty should join them in their support of immigration socialism until the right-wing, left-wing welfare state is dismantled, which might be never.
Instead of destroying the freedom that comes with open borders, how about devoting our efforts to dismantling the right-wing, left-wing welfare state? In the meantime, if right-wingers and left-wingers choose to give welfare to foreigners, let’s not be duped into joining them in their wrongdoing. Let’s just continue trying to end their wrongdoing.
And make no mistake about it: open borders is not just about bringing an end to death, suffering, rapes, kidnappings, deportations, a Berlin Wall, and a massive police state. Most important, open borders is about liberty. As Thomas Jefferson pointed out in the Declaration of Independence, everyone — not just Americans — has been endowed by nature and God with such fundamental rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s precisely what most people are doing when they cross political borders — they are trying to sustain their life with labor, entering into mutually agreeable arrangements with others, and pursuing happiness in their own way.
There is another factor to consider: People who are welfare-oriented are not the type of people who are going to pick up stakes and leave home, family, friends, language, and culture to go to a country where they are going to get insulted, abused, and humiliated, especially if welfare payments are not immediately available. And even if some of the welfare-oriented types do decide to come, the economic prosperity produced by the 99 percent who are trying to get rich will undoubtedly produce the tax revenues to sustain the 1 percent who are coming to get on welfare.
What if everyone comes?
What if the whole world were to come here? Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. Why doesn’t every American move to Jackson Hole? Should we enact a law prohibiting every American from moving to Jackson Hole? What about New York City. There are millions of Americans who consider it a wonderful place to live. What if every American decided tomorrow to suddenly move to New York City? Surely, we should have a law that prevents that possibility, right? For many years, people have been fleeing California and flooding into Austin, Texas. And then suddenly the flow has receded. The same for people moving from the Northeast to Florida — many of them stopped and settled in states along the way.
Why don’t we worry about all this? Because of the economic principle of subjective value and the economic law of supply and demand. The fact is that many people like living wherever they are. For people who wish to move, they have to factor in expense — that is, the cost of moving and living in a particular area. The fact is that Jackson Hole is a very expensive place to live. Same for New York City. As people flooded into Austin and Florida, prices started soaring, causing others to look elsewhere. The market system and the price system work for everyone, including foreigners looking to move to the United States. If it gets too expensive, people look elsewhere.
Forfeiting rights
There is another aspect of immigration controls that deserves mention. When Americans travel outside the country, they forfeit their rights to privacy when returning to their own country. When they land back in the United States, they are subject to full searches of their persons and their belongings. In fact, if immigration officials demand that they disrobe and order them to bend over for a body-cavity search, Americans must comply. Immigration officials also wield the power to search laptops and cellphones and to order Americans to turn over their passwords on pain of being incarcerated and fined if they refuse to do so. Why should anyone — American or otherwise — forfeit his natural, God-given rights simply because he has peacefully crossed a political line?
A national home versus private property
Right-wingers often claim that America is a national home and that the federal government can legitimately control who comes into the front door. They compare the situation to a private homeowner, who has the authority to discriminate with respect to who enters his house. The problem with this mindset is that it’s thinking of North Korea, where the state owns everything. In a totally socialist society, it’s easy for people to think of their country as a “national home,” one in which the government owns and controls the front door.
America, however, is founded on the principle of private property. In a private-property society, you have the right to decide who enters your home. If you don’t like foreigners, you can keep them out. But what you can’t do is prevent me from inviting into my home whoever I want. If I want to invite foreigners into my home (or my business), neither you nor anyone else, including the government, has the legitimate authority to interfere with my decisions.
Hope and responsibility
One of the things about right-wingers like Geraghty —and, for that matter, left-wingers like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders — is that they never lose hope that someone will finally — finally! — come up with a reform that will make socialism work. That’s undoubtedly Geraghty’s mindset with respect to immigration, just as it undoubtedly is with Social Security, Medicare, public schooling, and other socialist programs. Notwithstanding the fact that socialist central planning has clearly failed to prevent illegal entry into the United States for almost 100 years, Geraghty still thinks that it’s possible to make his immigration-control system succeed. When it comes to socialism and the right-wing, hope springs eternal.
Meanwhile, if one were to ask Geraghty and other right-wingers whether they accept personal responsibility for the death, suffering, mayhem, and destruction of liberty and privacy that their socialist immigration-control system has produced, they would answer in the same way that left-wingers answer when asked the same question regarding the consequences of the welfare state: “Oh, no! Please judge us not by the consequences of our socialist programs but rather by our good intentions.”
Only one solution
I’ve said it for more than 30 years, but it bears repeating: There is one — and only one — solution to America’s century-old right-wing, left-wing immigration morass: Abolish the Border Patrol and ICE and all controls on the free movements of people across borders.
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/right-wing-obtuseness-on-immigration/
