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Vipul Naik founded the Open Borders website in March 2012. See also: Vipul Naik's personal statement Vipul Naik's description of open borders on his personal site Page about Vipul Naik on Open Borders

Update on Zuckerberg’s group: fwd.us

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On Monday, I blogged about Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform group, which had not been launched. The group was launched yesterday (Thursday, April 11, 2013), and most of the details were as expected in my previous blog post. The group is called FWD.us and has an eponymous website. The roster of supporters on the website reads like a who’s who of the tech industry Here are links to some news and commentary items related to the group that were published at and after launch:

Here’s a quote from Zuckerberg’s op-ed that reveals his vision for the immigration-related agenda of the group, and just how far it is from an open borders vision:

Comprehensive immigration reform that begins with effective border security, allows a path to citizenship and lets us attract the most talented and hardest-working people, no matter where they were born.

Some of the reactions from different people whom I’ve discussed this with include (note that some of the reactions are mutually contradictory, indicating the diversity of people I’ve discussed this with):

  • Zuckerberg’s op-ed is boilerplate text, i.e., it reveals nothing specific, and could be widely re-used for any future direction of the group.
  • Zuckerberg’s use of an overtly citizenist framing for the group’s ambitions is interesting, though not necessarily uplifting. The competitive angle to Zuckerberg’s citizenism is even more unfortunate, though he does pay lip service to migration not necessarily being a zero sum game.
  • Zuckerberg’s selectivity — attract the most talented and hardest-working people — suggests either a degree of selectivity even higher than that found in the modern immigration regime in the United States, or a serious degree of delusion regarding just how many potential migrants could be the “most talented” and/or the “hardest-working people.”
  • Zuckerberg’s putting securing the borders at the top of his agenda is puzzling.
  • Zuckerberg’s focus on a path to citizenship suggests a territorialist focus, which does not seem to resonate well with the open borders message. It’s not in conflict with complete open borders, but could conflict with some keyhole solutions such as guest worker programs.

Hopefully, we’ll publish more on this group and on other related initiatives as we get more information.

UPDATE: Here is a more detailed post from Nathan with his criticisms of Zuckerberg.

Mark Zuckerberg’s immigration reform group

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Mark Zuckerberg, the principal founder of social networking service Facebook, has of late been interested in influencing US politics. Zuckerberg was one of 100 tech executives who signed a letter urging the US Congress and White House to pass significant immigration reforms. His ambitions in the political arena seem to be bigger, consonant with Facebook’s lofty motto of making the world more open and connected.

Evelyn Rusli reported in the Wall Street Journal in the article Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Starting Political Group (March 26) that a planned political group by Zuckerberg would focus (initially) on comprehensive immigration reform. According to the WSJ:

The group, which so far doesn’t have a name, is aiming to raise roughly $50 million and has already secured commitments in the tens of millions of dollars from Mr. Zuckerberg and more than a dozen other tech executives including LinkedIn Corp. founder Reid Hoffman, said these people.

[…]

Mr. Zuckerberg has told confidantes that the new group will initially be focused on comprehensive immigration reform and making the pathway to U.S. citizenship less complicated for all immigrants, said people familiar with the CEO’s thinking. The group also plans to focus on issues including education reform and funding for scientific research.

The new group has also enlisted several consultants well versed in Beltway politics. Rob Jesmer, the former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is especially active on a day-to-day basis, said one person with knowledge of the matter.

Joe Lockhart, Facebook’s former vice president of global communications and a former press secretary under president Bill Clinton’s administration, and Jon Lerner, a Republican strategist are also involved, another person familiar with the matter said.

More recently, Politico claims to have obtained an internal prospectus (it’s multiple pages, so you may prefer reading the printable version) for the immigration reform group. The prospectus was drafted by Joe Green, a close friend of Zuckerberg’s who seems to be doing much of the legwork for the group. Here’s Politico describing and quoting the prospectus:

Under a section called “our tactical assets,” the prospectus lists three reasons why “people in tech” can be organized into “one of the most powerful political forces.”

“1: We control massive distribution channels, both as companies and individuals. We saw the tip of the iceberg with SOPA/PIPA.

“2: “Our voice carries a lot of weight because we are broadly popular with Americans.

“3. We have individuals with a lot of money. If deployed properly this can have huge influence in the current campaign finance environment.”

Joe Green has already backtracked from some of the assertions made in the prospectus. According to Politico:

“Several prominent leaders in the tech community, operating solely as individuals, continue to work on forming an issues advocacy organization that would seek to promote issues such as comprehensive immigration reform and education reform,” Green said. “However, some of the information contained in this email is outdated and not representative of the kind of work this organization will perform. Moreover, I regret some of the language in the email was poorly-chosen and could give a misimpression of the views and aspirations of this organization and those associated with it.”

The leaked prospectus confirms the bipartisan nature of the group highlighted in the WSJ article:

Signed on to be the Zuckerberg group’s campaign manager is Rob Jesmer, a former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Serving as political advisers are two Bush White House veterans: Dan Senor, who also served as Paul Ryan’s chief adviser during his vice presidential run, and Facebook executive Joel Kaplan.

The prospectus describes the group as a unique entity in the immigration fight. Listed among qualities that “we uniquely bring to this fight,” the prospectus says the Zuckerberg’s group is the “only well-funded bipartisan pro-reform group.”

“We have assembled the best people and most funding on this issue, and will win by focusing our activity in the districts of key members of Congress and senators,” the prospectus reads.

They also appear to intend to use standard political influence tactics of the same sort that restrictionists have successfully employed in the past:

Under a “tactics” section, the Zuckerberg group details plans for “grassroots and grasstops” organizing in targeted congressional districts, online advocacy campaigns, paid online and television advertising that will be “critical to creating the political infrastructure we need” and “earned media.”

“Given the status of our funders and quality of our team, we will drive national and local narratives to properly frame our agenda,” the prospectus states. The prospectus says the group’s support will provide cover for the “many congressmen and senators who want to vote for this but need the political space at home,”

The group’s listed “immediate” goal is to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which it calls “a unique opportunity to launch our organization. It is an issue that is critical to our community, that we can win, but where our help can be the difference maker.”

Elsewhere in the prospectus the group says its qualities include a “pragmatic focus on what moves votes, not talking about ourselves.”

On the apparent direction of the group

It’s too early to clearly say what direction the group will take, though “open borders” is probably not a phrase the group would associate itself with. I think it’s quite likely that it will be focused primarily on what is sometimes called “high-skilled immigration” and will advocate proposals similar to the startup visa. There is likely to be considerable overlap in goals and tactics with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group Partnership for a New American Economy and with the March for Innovation.

Zuckerberg’s group’s suggested focus (per the WSJ piece) on a path to citizenship suggests a somewhat different focus from that of hardcore open borders advocates, but more context would be needed for evaluation. From what I’ve gathered based on talking to some Silicon Valley people, most people in Silicon Valley are focused on free movement and the ability to work and found companies, and they do not place much value of the path to citizenship (though they are presumably not opposed to it). In this respect, Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on a path to citizenship (if the WSJ article is indeed correct about this) differs somewhat both from the focus of open borders advocates and that of Silicon Valley migration evangelists.

I doubt that tactics similar to those used to protest against SOPA and PIPA will be successful in a pro-immigration direction. In the case of SOPA and PIPA, the public was mostly indifferent, with no strong sentiment in either direction, and given that many people have probably violated copyright law intentionally or unintentionally, likely to be somewhat sympathetic to the anti-SOPA cause after hearing what it’s about. With the issue of immigration, a sizable minority of the population is deeply restrictionist, and a majority is moderately restrictionist. The use of tactics such as those used against SOPA and PIPA may well drive a nativist backlash similar to the backlash that accompanied Bush’s attempted version of immigration reform, and Obama’s original version of healthcare reform.

I’m not a political expert at all, so there may be many ways to pull off political activism of the sort that Green suggests without engendering a backlash — I just find it hard to think of them. It’s also possible that Green and the group at large may have already decided not to use SOPA-style tactics in their push for their version of immigration reform.

On the size and influence of the group

Given the importance of migration as an issue, it’s heartening to see a person as rich and influential as Zuckerberg devoting his attention to the matter.

$50 million sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not clear what fraction of it will be devoted to immigration advocacy, consider that the group also plans to focus on education and research issues. The timetable of how the money is to be spent is also unclear. It seems highly unlikely that a lot of money will be spent in the near future in order to bring about any significant change in policy direction. The bipartisan nature of the group suggests a potential for long-term influence.

Zuckerberg’s donation history

Zuckerberg, who turns 29 in a month, already has a fairly impressive donation history quantitatively speaking, but the cost-effectiveness and social importance of some of his past donations could be questioned. It’s not clear what impact his $100 million donation to the Newark public school system has had, and skeptics might question his $500 million donation to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (which, amazingly, does not appear to have a Wikipedia page at the time of writing of this article). Hopefully, Zuckerberg has learned from previous giving experiences and his efforts to kickstart the immigration reform group signifies his switch towards giving opportunities with greater potential upside.

UPDATE: The group launched three days after the publication of the post under the name FWD.us. More information is available in this follow-up post.

Fergus Hodgson on citizenism

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Fergus Hodgson recently wrote an article for the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation titled Nativism, the Citizenship Union, and Barriers to Movement. His piece offers an interesting critique of citizenism, the idea that national governments should design policies, and their individual citizens should support policies, that place substantially greater weight on the interests of citizens (and their descendants) compared to the interests of non-citizens. Hodgson does not use the word “citizenism” but instead opts for “nativism” to describe the citizenist position.

The word choice is interesting. I’ve noticed that defenders of citizenism rarely call themselves nativists but prefer to describe themselves as immigration patriots, while the more erudite among them may refer to themselves as citizenists. In contrast, their detractors, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) typically describe them as nativist. It’s interesting that, although I am not a fan of citizenism (see our blog posts tagged citizenism) I find that the word ‘citizenism’ feels like a nicer word than the word ‘nativism’ to my ears, although they describe approximately the same attitude. I don’t know whether this is an effect of the fact that “nativism” is used more by detractors and “citizenism” by supporters of the ideology, or whether this is the cause of that (in other words, perhaps supporters and detractors choose their words as a response to how people instinctively react to them).

Hodgson draws an analogy between citizenism/nativism and support for unions. This analogy is well-designed to appeal to an audience of liberty-minded individuals, principled meritocrats, and union-haters. Similar arguments can be constructed to appeal to, for instance, opponents of affirmative action. Unfortunately, I don’t think that these arguments will have widespread appeal. They may also backfire among other groups of potential supporters: many people on the political left, and some on the political right, love unions.

Later in the piece, Hodgson writes:

Perhaps without realizing, enforcement proponents are also facilitating the rise of an expensive police-state apparatus, and not just at the border. The reality is that one can only enforce strict movement controls and legal inequalities with police-state tactics such as inland checkpoints, encroaching surveillance, a militarized border, and the imposition of law-enforcement duties on private individuals.

I’m glad that Hodgson rejects extreme versions of economic determinism, which argue that it is not possible to curtail migration through enforcement. Instead, he acknowledges (like I do) that enforcement methods can cut down on migration, but also that these measures exact costs on citizens interacting with the migrants, costs that, if people thought more about, might make them less enthusiastic about supporting some enforcement measures.

Nonetheless, I am pessimistic about whether natives will be able to connect the dots between harsher immigration enforcement and the consequent reduction in their own liberties. I would cite for justification of my pessimism the lack of outrage over many forms of intrusion, kill lists, and erosions of due process that have occurred historically around the world, typically in the context of perceived threats of terrorism and foreign threats. Admittedly, there may be many liberties that people are willing to give up in the face of (perceived) threats of terrorism that they would be loath to part with merely to keep out immigrants, so some of my pessimism may be unwarranted.

My main disagreement with Hodgson is regarding his leading para:

The day is rapidly approaching when the epithet “nativist” will carry as much power as “racist.” Not only is nativism — the practice of favoring the established inhabitants of a country over recent immigrants — hateful and based on a fallacy; its destructive consequences are becoming more apparent by the day.

While I look forward to the day when citizenism is a fringe idea, I really doubt that the day is “rapidly approaching.” The arguments that Hodgson makes in his article do not show that citizenism is empirically becoming weaker. It may be that to Hodgson and FFF readers, the “destructive consequences [of citizenism] are becoming more apparent by the day” but I doubt this is the case among the masses at large. Joe Arpaio, a very public face of restrictionism in Arizona, has repeatedly won re-election. Even outside the immigration context, I haven’t noticed any decline of citizenist rhetoric in recent years, either in the US or elsewhere, though I certainly don’t follow political debates closely.

To be clear, I do think that over the long run (a scale of a few decades) citizenist ideas will become less popular. I do not, however, see evidence of its rapid decline. In the short run, I think citizenism is thriving, though the efforts of people like Hodgson may be chipping it away at the edges.

Cato’s March 21, 2013 immigration event

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The video is embedded below.

  • For the first twenty minutes, Shikha Dalmia argues for more “low-skilled” immigration, citing some of the studies discussed at the suppression of wages of natives and US-specific suppression of wages of natives pages.
  • For the next twenty minutes or so, Stuart Anderson makes the case for “high-skilled” immigration and discusses some of the politics and real-world constraints related to green cards and H-1Bs.
  • For the next ten minutes, John Tyler of the Kauffman Foundation argues that immigrants are entrepreneurial based on some studies. The studies and related stuff are discussed here.
  • For the last ten minutes, Alex Nowrasteh discusses the impact of immigration on native wages, repeating some of the material covered by Shikha Dalmia from a somewhat different perspective. His discussion here builds upon his blog post on the subject. On the subject of the welfare state/fiscal burden objection, Nowrasteh discusses a Cato bulletin (and working paper) that I blogged about here.

You can also view the event on the Cato page here.

Open borders versus no borders: my take

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The Open Borders site has a page on the distinction between open borders and no borders. The main proponent of “no borders” that I know of is Robert Higgs, who explicitly says:

I will say, in case anybody cares, that despite permitting my name to appear on the letter, it does not represent my own views accurately. I am not for (or against) open (or closed) borders; I am against borders and the organized criminal gangs who draw them in the dirt and then threaten with violence anyone who crosses the line. Of course, my ideal world is not about the erupt.

In various blog posts, my co-blogger John Lee has tangentially alluded to open borders as a moderate position compared to the radical idea of no borders. Probably unlike John and possibly also unlike my other co-blogger Nathan (see the note at the end), I self-identify as a philosophical anarchist, though I’m agnostic about the feasibility of anarchism.

Quick summary of the distinction: a philosophical anarchist is somebody who rejects the idea of the legitimacy of the nation-state. A political anarchist advocates for anarchism as a superior alternative to the nation-state. One can be a philosophical anarchist — in the sense of not viewing the state as morally legitimate — while still not being a political anarchist in the sense of believing that anarchism is necessarily an alternative worth expending effort to work towards or an alternative that will necessarily produce superior outcomes.

Note also that political anarchism comes in two flavors: “anarcho-capitalism” and “anarcho-socialism.” For the purpose of this blog post, I’ll stick to anarcho-capitalism, which is the philosophical stance of open borders advocates such as Bryan Caplan (see here) and Michael Huemer (see his book The Problem of Political Authority).

My personal take: I’m far from sure about the potential for anarchist orders that will perform a lot better than nation-states holding the quality of people roughly constant. I think it’s plausible, but I’d like to see a lot more evidence of anarchism in action at a small scale before I can sign on to political anarchism. Incidentally, Michael Huemer’s book The Problem of Political Authority (see also Bryan Caplan’s book review) offers an excellent case for the long-term potential of anarchism and a description of how the world could feasibly move towards anarchism. I think it’s a great case, and the main reason I’m not convinced is that it’s too far ahead for me to even trust my intuition as to how it might work out. It’s for roughly the same reason as the reason I approach claims about the technological singularity and its aftermath with skepticism.

But, where I differ from John is in the implicit stance that seems to be reflected in his writing that open borders is the moderate, sane position compared to anarchism, which is a crazy, straw-man position. Even if I don’t sign on to anarchism yet (for lack of evidence about it and for the very long time period that would be needed to bring it to fruition) I don’t think it’s an idea that deserves to be scoffed at or thrown out of the room. If for no other reason, because many forms of political organization (such as representative democracy with universal adult franchise) have passed from heresy and scoff-worthy curiosity to entrenched dogma.

Rhetorically, putting open borders as a “middle” position between the status quo on the one hand and “no borders” anarchism (of the sort espoused by people like Robert Higgs) on the other, will appeal to people on account of the Overton window phenomenon. Continue reading Open borders versus no borders: my take →