Should the U.S. Have Free Immigration?
The Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh and attorney Francis Menton debate immigration policy.

The Cato Institute's Alex Nowrasteh and attorney Francis Menton debate the resolution, "The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease."
Taking the affirmative is Nowrasteh, the vice president of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute, where most of his work has focused on immigration. He's the co-author (with Benjamin Powell) of Wretched Refuse?: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions. A native of Southern California, Nowrasteh received a master's degree in economic history from the London School of Economics.
Taking the negative is Menton, who writes at manhattancontrarian.com and was a litigation partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP before retiring in December 2015 after over 40 years with the firm.
The debate was held at New York City's Sheen Center and hosted by The Soho Forum, which receives fiscal sponsorship from Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this site.
Audio editing by John Osterhoudt.
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If only they fought half as hard to eliminate the welfare state and minimize the regulatory state, but they don't. So ultimately open borders is more government control and a new serf class of workers.
"a new serf class of workers"
You might be onto something here.
#CheapLaborAboveAll
You could pass all the laws you like to eliminate things, but that doesn't mean those things *stay* eliminated when the replacement population moves in.
When people immigrate to the US, their political culture immigrates with them.
The American conception of liberty is an extreme outlier in the world. Just for starters, I don't believe a single other country in the world has equivalent 1st and 2nd Amendment rights.
No. Does anywhere else?
We would cease to be a country.
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It creates a right for everyone but US citizens. Why should US citizens agree to that?
I am open to a conversation for open borders. However, there must be reciprocity or it's just a one sided open border which Americans cannot participate in. Liberals that promote open borders don't seem to understand this, or care.
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Some things never change
Mike Laursen 11 years ago
Flag Comment Mute User
Hope we can still use one-off spoof handles to support our comedic stylings.
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1684906947395407872?t=fFwsciWu8WXM4TowndzO9g&s=19
WAR: Evidence that General Milley (not Trump) engineered a full-blown invasion of Iran including the deployment of U.S. troops and assets into the region making an 'accidental' escalation possible if not likely was retained by President Trump. Biden's special prosecutor believes Trump was not allowed to retain the evidence.
FLASHBACK: General Milley claimed that Trump was pressuring him to attack Iran in the final days of his presidency. We now know, thanks to Trump's retention of his presidential records, that it was MIlley and not Trump who sought to attack Iran.
[Links]
What's Milley going to attack Iran with, a wrecking ball? Oh.... Milley not Miley. Never mind.
The dad jokes continue!
The BAD jokes continue.
Smiley Walrus wouldn't have pulled troops out of Afghanistan before evacuating civilians.
That reminds me of Ace Lyons, an admiral under Reagan who supposedly tried to engineer a war against Iran. He rearranged deployment schedules so that several battle groups would be in striking range at a certain time. It cost him his job.
Later he became a pet detective.
There are two main reasons to allow unlimited immigration into the United States: 1) it’s the right thing to do; and 2) government doesn’t regulate or limit immigration (or anything else) very well. It’s the right thing to do because liberty-loving people from all over the world are desperate to have a chance to succeed. We have lots of room for new people as long as they support themselves while here and there are LOTS of jobs for immigrants to do to support themselves. There would be a lot more room for them and more productive work for them to do if government actually maintained liberty instead of destroying it here. We would all be better off when immigrants can no longer be preyed upon out of fear of arrest and deportation. There has NEVER been an immigrant group in our history that took longer than one or two generations to become thoroughly American and there is no credible threat to “our culture” – whatever that is – by new immigration.
Government does everything very badly, including the most important tasks assigned to it by the Constitution. There is reason to believe government would do those few Constitutional tasks less badly if government wasn’t distracted by the hundreds or thousands of other unconstitutional no good very bad evil things they have accumulated over the centuries. Immigration seems to be one of those few tasks government should actually be trying to do, so it behooves us as citizens to INSIST that they do it better.
"We have lots of room for new people as long as they support themselves"
Which does not happen.
We have lots of room for new people as long as they support themselves while here and there are LOTS of jobs for immigrants to do to support themselves.
Raise your hand if your free healthcare system would cover illegal immigrants?
1. Immigration policy should be based 100% on what US citizens prefer that policy to be. Period. Not what foreigners want or what ideology says.
2. Fatalism about government incompetence is far worse than anarchism. Make it competent. It is a human institution and self-governance says you have a responsibility to make it work. It is not a magic evil alien. If you want to argue that govt should not be involved, then make a real argument for that not some wormy little whine.
JFree - if you enjoy daydreaming about impossible scenarios, be my guest. Immigration policy should be one hundred percent based on what WHICH US citizens prefer? 51% of all voters in a mass plebiscite? Or 51% of the representatives chosen in the last Congressional election? Who chooses the wording of the various policy options for them to choose from among? Or maybe you fantasize about a supermajority all agreeing to ban immigration whether it will achieve their preferred outcome or not?
"Make government competent" - ROFLMGDAO!! No, really ...
1) it’s the right thing to do;
So, according to you, openly allowing Russian agents to interfere with our elections is The Right Thing™ to do.
Understood.
If we let the Russians choose our next president instead of the voters, I'm confident they would do a better job.
Based on the past two elections?
Based on every election I can recall.
I forget what the logical fallacy is called when you attribute a silly belief to someone that they don't hold in order to call them silly ... well, never mind. Taking that seriously for the sake of argument: it depends on what you mean by "interfere." If you mean allowing Russian agents to bribe election officials to stuff ballot boxes or throw away ballots sent by voters from certain "red" precincts; or to hack into private accounts to promote a smear campaign, then "No, I don't think openly allowing" that is "The Right Thing to Do." If you mean allowing Russian agents and everyone else to try to influence voters with misinformation, disinformation or outright lies, then "Yes, I think the First Amendment guarantees that right." Personally, I don't think you have ever "understood" anything, but whatever ...
Yes, criminal activity is also considered a form of supporting yourself, especially in a wealthy country. So glad you are happy to inflict that on your fellow countryman.
That’s truly hilarious. I don’t know of anyone who considers armed robbery, for example, to be “a form of supporting yourself.” I do consider selling drugs to be a form of supporting yourself because drugs should not be illegal. That’s an example of how government has made things harder for all of us by stealing our liberty. Thanks for helping me make my case! For the record, the possibility that an immigrant might commit armed robbery while living in the United States is not a valid argument against allowing the millions of immigrants who never commit armed robbery to live here. It’s an argument that people – immigrants or citizens alike – who commit armed robbery should be punished under the law. Whether to deport immigrants found guilty of armed robbery is a different question.
"because liberty-loving people from all over the world are desperate to have a chance to succeed"
Liberty hating people are desperate to succeed as well, and there are a hell of a lot more liberty haters than liberty lovers in the world, while the US is an extreme outlier on the pro liberty side.
Or was.
Import Not Americans, become Not America.
freeloaders from all over the world are desperate to have a chance to get in on some of that free stuff
Quantity vs quality applies to everything. Even life
Free immigration? Why not. Also free food, free houses, free transportation, free sex changes, free weed, free wifi, and free euthanasia. Sounds like a free libertarian paradise.
I know you're being sarcastic, but "free" means two different things in those two contexts: "free" as in "someone else pays for your stuff; and "free" as in "unregulated or unlimited by government." Free immigration would mean no arbitrary limits on the number of people who can enter the United States from other countries. Food, houses, transportation, weed, WiFi and sex changes and euthanasia should all be unregulated. And each individual should pay for whatever they want, so not "free."
Well, if you know he's being sarcastic, then you know that our government does give out free, as in beer, food, housing, transportation, healthcare/sex changes, etc. and that your argument about "free as in beer vs. free as in speech" is either really, really stupid or a really, really stupid and transparently dishonest deflection.
mad.casual - Yes, the government should immediately stop giving our "free" anything. What's your point?
SUVs for all. Everyone deserves safe, comfortable transportation.
Libertarians need to decide, do they want open borders or limited government, because you can't have both (see Putnam).
False. You can have limited government without arbitrarily setting a limit on the number of immigrants. There is no such thing as open borders and we certainly don't have anything close to open border now. Even so, the policies of "open borders" and "extremely limited numbers of legal immigrants" are not the only two options.
Sure you can have both. Just don't give cash to vagrants.
The electorate likely does not want "free" immigration, so the answer is "no".
Shouldn't the debate be: Should America continue its free immigration?
I completely agree that our legal immigration system is completely screwed up and is the main cause for immigrants deciding to act illegally instead.
I completely disagree that the ‘solution’ to our broken legal immigration system is either ‘free immigration’ or ‘build a fucking moat’. The very act of defining those two as the only two options is what prevents us from actually fixing the system. In large part because the primary goal of those who argue for those options is to demonize the other side (argumentum ad hominem) not to address any particular broken issues. They are now part of the problem not part of the solution.
And why do the ‘open borders’ folks lie about our own history. We did NOT have ‘free migration’ before the 14th amendment. Migration itself was a STATE issue then with naturalization being the federal responsibility. With the big subtext to that being – how did those states then act in moving migrants to the frontier. That was actually a significant cause of the civil war. Would those frontier territories be free or slave? Entry into the ports (obviously the only entry point then) was a federal issue with controls on the ship owners and captains. Likewise, entry to/from particular countries was negotiated bilaterally with those countries by the state dept. Meaning that those bilateral agreements took the form of mutually free migration. Not unilaterally free migration.
Changed the headline from Open Borders to Free Immigration. We see what you did.
Open borders are super hunky dory until an undocumented tourist lands one foot on Martha's Vineyard. They it's a cunning stunt.
Both completely miss the underlying issue: Property rights.
The citizens en masse own the entire USA. They have the right to allow or forbid the entry of anyone to their property for any reason. They exercise this right through their representatives.
Why is this even an issue? If people want open borders they need to convince their representatives to vote for that.
If honestly presented this will never get even 1/3 of the vote.
The power elite want illegal immigrants. The want mass immigration, AND they want most of it to be illegal. They will do nothing to solve the illegal entry problem because they don't see it as a problem.
By the late 1960s cheap and available land began to become scarce. tierraproperties,a short history of los angeles
The land shortage is especially acute in coastal and mountainous areas like those around San Francisco and Seattle.
And recently, a study showed that children growing up in environments with lots of trees were mentally healthier than urban children. Nature relieves stress:
sciencedaily 2019 04 190404074915
Immigrants and Their Descendants Accounted for 72 Million in U.S. Population Growth from 1965 to 2015; Projected to Account for 103 Million More by 2065 - Pew research
How will more immigrants make land for real homes more affordable?
High density housing. Reason likes states mandating that, even on cities and towns and counties that don't want it.
Yes. Anyone who can show a means of financial support, and has no outstanding criminal warrants, and no deadly communicable disease should be free to move in and live where they want. And Americans should be free to employ them, or rent a house or apartment to them.
And to ensure that only such people enter, we would need dramatically improved border security and immigration enforcement.
The US should have free immigration--just after abolishing the social welfare state entirely.
Until then, we should select immigrants based on whether they can be expected to contribute more in taxes than they cost the government.
Right now, that means that we shouldn't admit people as immigrants unless they make more than about $150000/year/person. For families, the earners in the family need to cover all family members proportionally.
The nice thing about looking at it that way is that as the social welfare state is shrunk, the requirements go down, and when the social welfare state is near $0, we have free immigration.
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