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Immigration

"You Chose the Wrong Parents" - My "Speak Freely" Interview on the Case for Migration Rights

We covered many issues related to migration restrictions, arguments for and against them, and more.

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


Speak Freely recently posted, "You Chose the Wrong Parents," an interview I did with them on migration rights. We covered many issues relating to immigration, including the case for migration rights, how immigration restrictions are similar to medieval serfdom, causes of anti-immigrant sentiment, what I think are the strongest arguments for restrictionism, and how migration relates to broader dangers of nationalism, zero-sum thinking, and widespread political ignorance.

Thanks in large part to the great questions posed by Speak Freely website editor-in-chief Ogechukwu Egwuatu (herself an African immigrant to France), I think this was one of my best media interviews of the last few years. Speak Freely is a publication of European Students for Liberty, and we conducted the interview in April, during LibertyCon Europe (ESFL's annual convention). I wrote about my experience at LibertyCon here, outlining some similarities and differences between European and American libertarians/classical liberals. The transcript of the interview is here. I embedded the video below:

Ilya Somin is Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, Professor of Law at George Mason University, Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, and The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain.