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The “No One Is Illegal” YouTube video

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A YouTube video by the No one is illegal group has been doing the rounds (if you have trouble playing the embedded video, access it on YouTube here). I’d like to thank John Roccia (here’s his blog) for sending me the link.

The video, which appears to have been shot in London, is set up as follows: the protagonist sets up an arbitrary barrier on a bridge and says that all those on one side of the bridge need to show their documents and prove their worthiness in order to cross over to the other side of the bridge, drawing on the idea that immigration restrictions are arbitrary and that there is a prima facie moral right to migrate. The people in the video whose bridge-crossing rights were denied seem to have been actual people, not stage actors, and there are some interesting verbal exchanges in the video.

Both sophisticated and unsophisticated restrictionists would be quick to scoff at the video’s arguably naive critique of borders. Certainly the video is not the final word on the matter, and there are any number of counterarguments that can be made to its implicit critique of borders. These counterarguments can be met with counterarguments, which can again be met with counterarguments … the game can go on indefinitely. In many ways, the video is a simplistic rendering of an argument that fails to acknowledge many complex issues.

Nonetheless, I think it is a valuable contribution as a beginning move in an argument for open borders. I believe that the right to migrate is presumptive, not absolute. But it is a presumptive right, which means that restricting this right arbitrarily requires a strong justification, a justification that should be at least somewhat stronger than a purely utilitarian/consequentialist argument. There are plenty of theoretical rights frameworks, such as Nathan Smith’s theory of the streets (details on the right to migrate page), that help make the case. This video, by blocking access on the literal street, makes Nathan’s point about the theory of the streets.

Moreover, while the counterarguments offered by restrictionists, mainly about the harms to immigrant-receiving countries, do offer some possible edge cases and exceptions to the right to migrate, they do not destroy the validity of the underlying idea of the right to migrate, which is put across well by the video. So, although the video is a simplification, it is still a simplification that is correct in essentials.

PS: Some commenters on YouTube and elsewhere have suggested that the protagonist of the video is an international socialist and/or holds other views that make him difficult to take seriously. I don’t know of the protagonist’s work in other areas (there’s only one other video on this specific YouTube channel, which seems to be on a similar theme) but my purpose here is to offer my thoughts on a specific video, not evaluate the protagonist’s overall political stance

Immigrants against immigration: the case of Peter Brimelow

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Peter Brimelow (here’s Wikipedia on him) is one of the most passionate anti-immigration advocates in the United States. He is the founder of VDARE (that has been described by many as a leading anti-immigration web journal) and helped set up other sites, such as Alternative Right, that take a negative view of many kinds of immigration (though Alternative Right is not as immigration-focused as VDARE). Brimelow was born and brought up in the UK. He migrated from the UK to Canada, and then, after that, to the United States through an employment-based visa. His wife Maggy was able to migrate to the US on a family visa, and their son, Alexander, acquired US citizenship on account of being born in the United States. Brimelow later acquired US citizenship by following the procedures for naturalization.

Brimelow’s fans and critics alike might be interested in knowing how he reconciles his own background as a two-time migrant with his anti-immigration views.

Although I am not aware of any place where Brimelow addresses this is great detail, he does make some passing remarks on his own situation in his book Alien Nation (you can see all our blog posts on the book here — those who know Brimelow mainly from his somewhat strongly worded donation appeals on VDARE might be pleasantly surprised at the relative moderation (in tone, not substance) of the book). A few choice quotes (the full text of the book is here):

On birthright citizenship:

The British used to have birthright citizenship, but in 1983 they restricted it — requiring for example that one parent be a legal resident — because of problems caused by immigration.

I am delighted that Alexander is an American. [Alexander is Peter Brimelow’s son, born after Peter Brimelow and his (then) wife Maggy migrated to the US but probably before the parents became citizens] However, I do feel slightly, well, guilty that his fellow Americans had so little choice in the matter.

But at least Maggy and I had applied for and been granted legal permission to live in the United States.

On family reunification (emphasis added, not in original):

Maggy and I benefited personally from the generous American policy on family reunification. She is a Canadian, and I was a resident alien in the United States when I married her. Then, because of our marriage, she herself was admitted as a resident alien.

But this was a legal right — hardly a moral right. It was a privilege granted by American policy. And the truth is that our lives would not have been destroyed if Maggy had not been permitted to immigrate. I would probably be writing a book on Canadian immigration policy right now.

On taking American jobs and lowering their wages through wage competition:

For example, I am arguably displacing an American-born worker as a senior editor at Forbes magazine. I naturally like to think that my employers would miss my unique contribution. However, I am fairly sure that they would survive.

A few more interesting passages can be found by searching for the phrase “as an immigrant” in the full text.

UPDATE: Here’s a self-reflective piece by Peter Brimelow.

Alex Nowrasteh’s new policy analysis of guest worker programs

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Alex Nowrasteh‘s latest policy analysis on guest worker programs has just been published by the Cato Institute and can be accessed here on the Cato Institute website (here’s the direct link to the PDF). Alex makes many similar points to what I made in a blog post a month ago replying to Daniel Costa, but he also includes some historical background and other details that make for more compelling reading. Among the historical precedents he references is the case of Metics in ancient Greece, which my co-blogger Nathan blogged about half a year ago. He also has an interesting description of how “worker abuses” have been carried out not just by private firms, but by government bureaucrats, and how more flexibility on the part of workers to change jobs and less government discretionary authority can help curb these abuses. Here’s how he puts it:

Abuse is not confined to firms. Some of the worst abuses of guest workers have occurred at
the hands of government employees. During the Bracero Program, Department of Labor (DOL) inspectors often slapped, berated, and cursed at Braceros for asking questions. According to one eyewitness: “Nobody had any patience. Immigration, Public Health, Labor Department—it’s all the same. Everybody curses at the Braceros and shoves them around.” Violence and abuse perpetrated by government inspectors and bureaucrats was endemic. The Braceros were frequently humiliated, but as one observer recalled, “migrants usually just stood there and took the abuse–what else could they do–they felt pretty bad about it. I must have seen a lot of Braceros cry after they were talked to in this way.”

Abuse by government bureaucrats has diminished over the years or become stealthy, but the entire problem could be removed by contracting out, licensing, or just relying upon private companies to carry out inspections, recruitment, health checks, and other guest worker functions. Visa portability that lets guest workers change jobs with a minimum of paperwork or notice to employers as long as the worker notifies the government after the fact deprives abusive employers of employees, incentivizes good behavior, and acts as an enforcement mechanism that punishes employers who do not treat employees as well as competing firms. Visa portability allows workers to regulate their own work environment or change it at will.

Read the whole policy analysis (direct link to PDF).

Citizens versus non-citizens and citizens versus rulers

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We at Open Borders have devoted lots of posts to critiquing citizenism, so one might suspect that we’d soon hit diminishing returns. But the theory of citizenism, in so far as it is the main normative ethical perspective that most restrictionists use to make their arguments, conceals a lot of assumptions behind a simple framing, and it’s worth picking these apart. In this blog post, I want to concentrate specifically on an argument that Steve Sailer and others have made: the constitutional/social contract origins of citizenism. The idea is that the constitutions and founding documents of the US and other countries explicitly attest that rulers must give primacy to the interests of citizens.

Co-blogger Chris Hendrix already considered some aspects of this in the context of the United States. Being less knowledgeable or curious about the specifics of history, and more interested in the common thread behind arguments across multiple nations, I wish to approach this issue from a different angle. To that end, I’ll quote Steve Sailer from his blog post, where he quotes the Preamble to the US Constitution:

It’s worth noting that the Preamble to the Constitution is rooted much more in my way of thinking than in Bryan’s:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [Emphasis mine]

Sailer is a US-centric citizenist, but citizenists around the world could point to comparable statements in appropriate parts of their nation’s founding documents that affirm something to the effect of the following social contract:

  • The people vest authority in the government.
  • In return, the government promises to put the interests of the people above its own, i.e., instead of politicians working for their private benefit, they work to serve the citizenry who have vested trust in them.

The theory behind this kind of social contract is that the citizenry are ceding something — giving the government a monopoly on the use of violence — and in exchange, demanding that the government work for the interests of the citizenry. Give up something, get something in return. Sounds reasonable. (There are many objections to social contract theory, but this is not the place to go into them).

What alternative arrangements have historically competed with this “citizenistic” social contract? The divine right of kings is in some ways the polar opposite theory — it says that rulers basically have carte blanche to do what they want, because they derive their authority from God. My reading of the citizenistic social contract is thus that it is a contract that seeks to move away from a divine rights of kings framework to a framework where the rulers are bound by the citizenry. In other words, it is a claim about the mutual responsibilities of citizens and rulers.

Under this reading, then, non-citizens don’t enter the picture at all. Thus, the citizenistic framing of various founding documents across the globe cannot be construed as directly implying Sailer-style citizenism which is about favoring the interests of (current) citizens (and their descendants) relative to non-citizens. These two forms of “citizenism” are not inconsistent, but they are far from equivalent.

The hardcore natural rights argument for migration would be that if, prior to the social contract, the (prospective) citizenry did not have the moral right to restrict migration, then the social contract — whereby the citizenry cede some rights to a government — cannot confer on this government the moral right to restrict migration. If the citizens didn’t have the moral right to restrict migration of non-citizens, how could their government acquire a right to do so through a contract signed between the citizens and the government? Continue reading Citizens versus non-citizens and citizens versus rulers →

The political tide

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It might be a good thing if Open Borders: The Case, in addition to provide an “attic,” so to speak, of economic, ethical, and philosophical arguments for open borders, could provide running pundit-style political commentary from an open-borders perspective. But political punditry is a full-time job in its own right, and it seems to require a kind of reading between the lines which one can’t do well unless one reads a lot of political news. There seems to be a lot of political momentum behind immigration reform right now, what with Obama’s speech in Nevada urging immigration reform earlier today, and a bipartisan group of eight senators— the Republicans were McCain, Rubio, Flake, and Graham– presenting a plan yesterday. I’ve got to respect Marco Rubio for taking the case to the conservative talk shows.

One change, it seems to me– but I could be wrong, I find it difficult to follow all the political proposals that come and go– is that everyone now seems to be talking about a pathway to citizenship for all the 11 million undocumented immigrants who live here, or nearly all. Up to now, attention has seemed to focus on the Dreamers. It made some sense to focus on them because they were the clearest case: the usual “enforce the law” arguments lose all moral credibility when applied to them, so Dreamers were a sort of wedge case, which left opponents of reform without any moral leg to stand on. But amnesty for Dreamers plus deportation for 10 million or so non-Dreamer undocumented immigrants would be atrocious, and it’s good that the conversation seemed to have moved on from the Dream Act to something more genuinely comprehensive.

A writer at The Guardian argues that Republicans are mistaken if they think they’ll earn political capital by supporting immigration reform, because Latinos are Democrats, and agree with the Democrats on other issues besides immigration, too. I’m not convinced. The Hispanic vote has swung a good deal as Republicans have gone more nativist. Republicans may not have a convincing strategy at the moment to win over Hispanics, but support immigration reform will open up new possibilities for coalition building. And I also think a lot of non-Latino voters will look more favorably on the GOP for this. Republicans will look less “mean,” and also more plausibly freedom-loving and anti-Big Government.

Immigration reform packages always come as mixed blessings, because with the concessions come demands for more enforcement, for employer verification of migration status, for greater effort to secure the border, for a general ramping up of the police state. E-Verify, if it worked, would needlessly make life difficult for a lot of people, not only undocumented immigrants but their employers, too. It would separate a lot of people from jobs where they were useful, people who badly needed the wages. More effort to secure the borders is expensive, for one thing, but it also has the bad effect of separating people from job opportunities or even family members. One can hope that the “enforcement” measures will be eviscerated, legally or via the operations of black markets (though that’s a problematic remedy), but I’m reluctant to wish on us the plague of more enforcement, even for the great benefit of amnesty. While I do want to see something pass and expect that it will be an improvement if it does, a lot of the arguments used by Rubio and others on my side (e.g., “back of the line”) are bogus. Ironically, the quote I agree with most is from opponent Lamar Smith:

“By granting amnesty, the Senate proposal actually compounds the problem by encouraging more illegal immigration.”

Yes, I think that’s true. And for me, that’s one of the strongest reasons to support it. Mexican migrant supply may have peaked, and demand is still down because of the bad economy, but if amnesty passes, and if the economy rebounds strongly at some point (probably not under Obama), then at some point I expect people from other countries– India, China, Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia, South America– will find ways physically to enter the country, even at great risk and expense, in anticipation of the next amnesty. If the process continues, that could move us a long way in the direction of open borders.