In light of this past weekend's massive demonstrations on the issue of immigration, I have updated my immigration webpage:

http://KevinCraig.US/immigration

I am an "open borders" libertarian, but I oppose any policy which opens borders by replacing individual nations with new regional governments.

I invite thoughtful comments and informed criticisms. I might delete comments which I think are racist, but that's just an invitation for any racists to replace overt racist remarks with more intelligent-sounding analysis.

I wouldn't call immigration my favorite issue. But it is certainly a pivotal issue. A lot of assumptions come to the surface in a discussion of immigration, and that presents an opportunity for clarification of thought.

When I decided to run for Congress, I debated over which Party to run under, whether the Libertarian or the Constitution Party. I like the pro-Christian rhetoric of the Constitution Party; the Libertarian Party is secular, with some strong anti-Christian elements among its supporters (e.g., the Objectivists). But in my opinion the Libertarian Party is more Christian in its policies than the Constitution Party, and the immigration issue was the issue that shifted the balance in favor of the Libertarian Party.

The Constitution Party is anti-immigrant. This stands in stark contrast to the Biblical position. It's a huge theme in the Bible: Israel emigrated to Egypt during a famine, had favorable status under one Pharaoh, but was oppressed by a later Pharaoh, becoming in a sense "illegal aliens" in Egypt. After the Exodus, God reminded Israel:

Exodus 22:21 Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.

Leviticus 19:34 The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 10:19 So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.

I could cite many more passages. It is a major Biblical theme, and the Constitution Party misses it! The CP's thinking is based on numerous unBiblical socialist and collectivist assumptions. David Chilton, in his book Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, has done a fine job of summarizing Biblical law on this issue:

http://KevinCraig.US/issues/immigration/chilton.htm

Socialist thinking runs deep on this issue. Every Candidate for office in the CP (and the LP) should be required to complete George Reisman's home study course in capitalism.

http://capitalism.net

Reisman's treatise on Capitalism is gigantic (1000 8x11 pages with two columns of 10-point [or less!] type) but eminently readable. One of my all-time favorite books. The retail price of $100 is worth the investment. A pdf version of the book is available for free on Reisman's website:

http://www.capitalism.net/Capitalism/CAPITALISM_Internet.pdf

Essential reading on this issue is in chapter 9, "The Influence of the Division of Labor on the Institutions of Capitalism," Part C, "Economic Competition," Section 6, "The Population Question," and Section 7, "Free Immigration."

Competition benefits everyone, even the one who is out-competed. Henry Ford out-competed the horse-and-buggy manufacturers. Obviously we all benefited, but even the displaced workers in the horse-and-buggy industry ended up living in a better world. They benefited from decreased transportation costs, and other benefits provided by their competitors. Unions and anti-immigrant forces are competition-phobic. They want their Big Brother the government to protect them from those mean ol' competitors.

More people is good. Hard-working aliens are good for America, as long as America follows God's Law with respect to aliens (which we are not at present). More aliens means more jobs can be created. More human potential will be unleashed. Specialization and economic development will increase. Reisman shows that arguments about America being unable to absorb immigrants into the economy reflect a crippled and stagnant view of capitalism. In 1880 there were 50 million people in America. Ask the anti-immigrant crowd in 1880 if America could possibly absorb four times as many people, and they would have said "absolutely not." But 100 years later, our population was four times as great (200 million). And our economy is 100 times larger. By 2080 the population will be 500 million. And if our economy isn't 1000 times larger than it is today, it will be the government's fault -- and the fault of socialist-thinking anti-immigrants, seeking government protection against growth and change. Christian Capitalism should give us clean, nuclear-powered cars, genetic engineering should make food almost free . . . who can even imagine the possibilities? And if we have immigrants mowing our lawns and hammering the nails, the rest of us can develop our specializations: curing diseases, programming computers, discovering free energy, and developing the capital infrastructure that will dramatically increase production and lower prices on everything. And the next generation of immigrants moves up the ladder of the division of labor as well.

La Raza claims there are 40 million immigrants in the U.S. In terms of capitalist economics, this is not a problem. It could be a cultural problem, and I'll discuss that in the next post.

Yesterday Jake asked about how murderers and rapists would be kept out under my utopian open-border proposals. I may be mistaken, but I'm hearing two things in the question. First, "the government" is keeping murderers and rapists out right now, and second, if we abolish government border police, we will have no way to deal with criminals who come from south of the border.

It's always good to remember that if I were elected, I would be the only Libertarian in Congress. That's 434-1. Republican Ron Paul votes libertarian, so ideologically the vote is 432-2. A libertarian society will not come about overnight. (Even Ron Paul is not as open-borders as I am.) For the next few years the government will still be in the business of granting visas and naturalizing new citizens, and murderers will kept out.

Or at least most murderers will be kept out; murderers with friends in high places or with buckets of drug money will still get through.

Then again, one wonders if any murderers are now being kept out by the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Salvatrucha

So perhaps the government is not keeping murderers and rapists out after all. One writer has moved from worrying about those who call themselves "Mexican-American" to those who call themselves "gang-American."

Perhaps we would be better off not depending on "the government" to deal with murderers. We must move in the direction of consistency. We should be true to our best assumptions. We have two alternatives: move toward (1) Christian libertarianism or move toward (2) statism. Statism says build a Berlin Wall around America. Turn America into a police state. The Christian answer was seen in the voluntary associations of the past, who met immigrants at the docks and converted them from criminals to Americans. This is the true "culture war," an offensive missionary-minded war, not a defensive statist war.

As Rushdoony pointed out in that essay, Europe literally emptied out their prisons and shipped their crimimal class across the Atlantic to the new world. But America did not become a criminal distopia. Voluntary associations preserved the godly character of the nation by evangelizing and converting the immigrants into Christians and Americans. In the 20th century, government stepped in to replace private charities, and America's Christian culture went into freefall.

The government is not keeping the murderers and rapists out. So the question is, do we want to strengthen the government so that it does, or should we create new solutions in a libertarian context?

I frankly don't want a government powerful enough and a Berlin Wall high enough to keep every murderer and rapist in the world out of America. America's Founding Fathers clearly opposed such a strong-arm state.

The Biblical promise is that all nations will be attracted to the prosperity and healthy culture of a Christian nation. Even if the immigrants aren't truly converted, they will act like it in order to assimilate and benefit from participation in a Christian capitalist economy.

We are dealing with a cultural problem, not a border problem. We can't build a Berlin Wall all around the U.S. Gang turf is usually "public" areas within the U.S. By "public" I mean not privately-owned, or not governed by private property owners who see themselves as soldiers in a culture war, but regulated by government, rent checks paid by the government, or lacking the influence of voluntary associations. "The City" tends to be anonymous and impersonal. "The Ghetto" is the creation of a government that tells private voluntary associations that "poverty is OUR job, not yours," and zones immigrants away from growing and healthy economic and cultural influences. In a Christian libertarian utopia there would be fewer zones of anonymous isolation, where gangs are now multiplying like a petri dish.

Where should we invest our energy and talents? In creating that libertarian utopia, or in strengthening the state to protect the status quo?

We should move in the direction of that "libertarian utopia" because the economic advantages of millions of hard-working immigrants vastly outweighs the harms of a handful of murderers. That may sound greedy and callous, but if you think about it, it's true. We can turn America into a police state to keep one murderer out, and then the standard of living of millions is dramatically reduced. If we open the borders and the murderer gets in, the statistical probability of YOU being murdered is very small, but you and millions of other people gain better lives through new jobs, specialization, and the effects of competition and the division of labor.

We should also move toward that "libertarian utopia" because it's the right thing to do, and we have no right to pray "God bless America" if we're not doing the right thing. A bureaucrat in Washington D.C. has no ethical or moral right to tell Jones in L.A. that he cannot hire Gonzales, or cannot rent to Garcia. These are basic God-given rights which Washington D.C. has no right to alienate, either from Jones or Garcia.

There are no immigration laws between Missouri and Oklahoma. How do we here in in Missouri keep murderers from Oklahoma out? Are fences and border cops economically justified? Are Mexican immigrants statistically more likely to be criminals than Oklahoma fascists? Is there evidence that people who want to come to America from Mexico are more criminal than people who were born in the American welfare-state? If America were more libertarian, how would all this change? What kind of immigrants would a Christian libertarian America attract? What kind of Americans could immigrants become if they were met at the border and welcomed by Christian libertarians? I say let the murderers in, and conquer them with the weapons of faith.