Liberty Matters
David Boaz on Immigration
David Boaz did not write much on immigration. But what he did say on the subject indicates his understanding that breaking down harsh migration restrictions should be a high-priority issue for all who value liberty.
In David’s final public speech, “The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph,” he emphasized the enduring value of “equal rights for people regardless of color, gender, religion, sexuality or language. Equal rights based on our common humanity.” He warned that the liberal ideal of “inalienable rights” to a ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all people is “incompatible with political ideas based on 'blood and soil' or treating people differently because of race or religion.” In our time, there is no greater example of that incompatibility than immigration restrictions, which severely undermine liberty based simply on the fact that would-be migrants were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents, or are members of the wrong “race or religion.” Severe immigration restrictions, of course, are central to the ideology of “blood and soil” nationalists in the US and Europe, the greatest enemies of liberty in the Western world today.
In a 2006 article, David praised the immigration policy of pre-Chinese Exclusion Act America, in which “there were no restrictions on immigration and thus no "illegal immigrants". There were rules governing naturalisation and citizenship, but anyone who could get here could live and work here.” That is an ideal we should aspire to return to.
In David’s contribution to National Review's 2016 “Against Trump” symposium, he wrote that "From a libertarian point of view…. Trump's greatest offenses against American tradition and our founding principles are his nativism and his promise of one-man rule." He was right then, and remains right today. Nativism – the main source of support for migration restrictions – is indeed an offense against America’s founding principles, and those of liberalism, more generally.
Among the grievances the Declaration of Independence enumerates as justification for renouncing allegiance to King George III is the following:
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither….
This complaint against the King was aimed at a series of royal orders issued in 1772 and 1773, which forbade the colonies from naturalizing aliens, banned the passage of any laws facilitating that purpose, including laws promoting migration, and overrode a North Carolina law exempting immigrants from Europe from taxation for a period of four years. It's tempting to dismiss this as just a disagreement over policy. But it actually goes further than that, since it is one of the items on the list of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
The King's efforts to restrict immigration to the American colonies were not just a flawed policy, the Declaration claims, but a step towards the “establishment of an absolute Tyranny.”
Nor was it merely a tyranny over the colonial governments' supposed right to determine immigration policy for themselves. It was also a tyrannical action towards the would-be immigrants.
Many of the leaders of the American Revolution saw the new nation as a refuge for the oppressed of the world. In George Washington’s General Orders to the Continental Army, issued at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, Washington stated that one of the reasons the United States was founded was to create “an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions.” He expressed similar views on other occasions, including writing to a group of newly arrived Irish immigrants that ”[t]he bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions.” Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, similarly wrote, in 1781, that “It [has] been the wise policy of these states to extend the protection of their laws to all those who should settle among them of whatever nation or religion they might be and to admit them to a participation of the benefits of civil and religious freedom.”
As in the case of slavery and other issues, the founders and succeeding generations of Americans have not always lived up to the high principles of the Founding when it comes to immigration. But that doesn’t make those principles any less valid.
Today, immigration restrictions are among the greatest threats to liberty in America, and many other nations. Most obviously, they block the liberty of millions of would-be migrants, consigning many to a lifetime of oppression and poverty, under the rule of brutal authoritarian and socialist regimes, such as those of China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. For some, exclusion and deportation are the equivalent of a death sentence.
Immigration restrictions are also a grave menace to the liberty of native-born Americans. By blocking millions of potentially beneficial transactions between potential immigrants and natives who wish to employ them, purchase products they make, or benefit from their innovations, migration restrictions undermine the economic freedom of native-born Americans more than any other US government policy.
Economists estimate that eliminating legal barriers to migration throughout the world would roughly double world GDP, creating vast new wealth, much of which would accrue to native-born citizens of receiving countries. Immigrants also disproportionately contribute to entrepreneurial, scientific, and medical innovations, many of them literally life-saving – such as the development of new medicines and vaccines. The immigrant we keep out today might be one who would have saved your life tomorrow, if given the chance to do so.
Immigration restrictions also threaten the civil liberties of American citizens. Even under relatively conventional administrations, the weak due process protections in the immigration detention and deportation system lead to the mistaken arrest and sometimes even deportation of thousands of US citizens each year, before the mistakes are discovered. Such problems are likely getting more severe thanks to the Trump Administration’s efforts to ramp up deportation beyond previous levels.
Not only do immigration restrictions massively undermine liberty and economic growth, they also do so for terrible reasons. Historically, many immigration restrictions have their origins in racial and ethnic bigotry, as David Boaz recognized was true of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major US federal immigration restriction law, born of anti-Chinese prejudice.
Even immigration restrictions that are not motivated by racial or ethnic prejudice still restrict liberty based on arbitrary circumstances of birth and ancestry. State-imposed racial segregation is a grave injustice because it restricts people’s liberty based on morally irrelevant characteristics over which they have no control. Whether you are born black, white, or Asian is morally irrelevant and says nothing about how much liberty you should be allowed, including where you are permitted to live and work. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously put it, people should “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Immigration restrictions are much the same. Whether you were born in the United States or to US-citizen parents is a morally arbitrary characteristic that says nothing about the content of your character, or how much freedom you should have. Yet such arbitrary circumstances of birth determine the fate of millions, condemning most would-be migrants to lifelong oppression and poverty.
David Boaz knew immigration policy must not be an exception to our rejection of “political ideas based on 'blood and soil' or treating people differently because of race or religion.” Almost all of our immigration restrictions run afoul of these ideals.
For these and other reasons, curbing immigration restrictions must be a high-priority issue for all who value liberty and human happiness, especially libertarians. As David Boaz recognized, this issue is also central to promoting America’s “founding principles” in our time.
If David were still with us today, he would be proud of the work on immigration issues done by libertarians such as his (and my) Cato Institute colleagues David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh. But he might be disappointed that too many libertarians continue to underrate the significance of this issue or – worse still – actually defend harsh immigration restrictions based on dubious rationales they would reject in almost any other context.
For example, libertarian-leaning immigration restrictionists love to cite Milton Friedman’s statement that “[y]ou cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and free immigration”; we must keep out many or most immigrants, it is said, lest they increase welfare state spending. This argument simultaneously misconstrues Friedman’s position (ignoring his support for illegal migration), and ignores evidence that immigrants contribute more to the public fisc than they take out. Worse still, consistently applying this reasoning would justify destroying most other types of liberty. Elsewhere, I describe how a vast range of freedoms can be used in ways that might increase welfare state spending:
“You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and legalize alcoholic beverages.”
If alcoholic beverages are legal, some people will become alcoholics, and become unable to hold down a job. They could end up on welfare. Also, alcoholism often leads to health problems that increase government health care expenditures, in a world where we have programs like Medicaid and Medicare….
"You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and end the War on Drugs."
Like alcoholism and obesity, drug use often leads to health problems that in turn increase government spending on health care. Plus, some drug addicts end up on welfare because they can't hold down a job.
"You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and unrestricted reproduction.".
The children of poor people are disproportionately likely to use welfare benefits. Even those from relatively affluent families are likely to consume public education spending
Examples like this can easily be multiplied.
In my book Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom (which the Cato Institute co-published with Oxford University Press, thanks in part to David’s support), I describe how many other standard rationales for immigration restrictions have similar liberty-destroying implications. If, for example, governments can keep out immigrants because they have bad political views or harmful cultural values, that implies governments should also have the power to restrict free speech and regulate cultural development among native-born citizens. Otherwise, they too might develop bad views or values! I also outline how nearly all supposed negative side effects of immigration are overblown, can be addressed by “keyhole solutions” that do not require keeping people out, or both.
David Boaz should be remembered as a great champion of universal liberal values, what he called “equal rights based on our common humanity.” Immigration is now a central front in the struggle for the great principles to which he devoted his life.
Ilya Somin is a law professor at George Mason University, the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom.
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