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Open borders and tolerance

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This post builds on a previous post where I was critical of conflating open borders with other migration-related beliefs. If open borders doesn’t rely too heavily on migration-related beliefs, what does it rely on? In other words, why might one have a prior in favor of open borders? By prior here, I mean a strong inclination to accept a position somewhat resembling open borders while being (as of that point in time) ignorant of large chunks of pertinent evidence. I will draw on my personal experience and belief system to answer this. These are purely my personal views, and I strive here to elucidate rather than advocate.

My own belief in open borders does not arise from any particular “pro-migrant” beliefs. Migrants are human beings, just like non-migrants (contra James Donald). There may be some systematic differences due to selection effects (which could go in a pro- or anti- direction), and the nature of these differences is likely to change if migration policy changes significantly. Ultimately, however, these differences aren’t what’s driving, or detracting from, my support for free migration in a meaningful way. So what is? Fundamentally, it’s the “commonsense libertarian” approach pioneered by the likes of Bryan Caplan. But formal libertarian theory can focus too exclusively on government and coercion. So I will step back to describe my broader philosophy.

For want of a better word, that approach is tolerance. The term has many different meanings, so I will try to sketch what I mean by it. I’m not trying to say that my usage is the correct one or that others should conform.

Tolerance

Image depicting tolerance, source Patheos

Tolerance as indifference

One can think of tolerance as indifference, or simply not caring. The threshold for not caring may vary. Here are some illustrative possibilites:

  • “I don’t care either way. I don’t know this person and what they’re doing isn’t affecting me (non-negligibly), so I don’t care.”
  • “I don’t care as long as it’s not tangibly harming the people involved.”
  • “I don’t care as long as they’re not harming innocent bystanders.” Such an attitude migh be tolerant of drinking too much but not of drunk driving.

What if I do care? What if a friend is drinking too much and ruining his life? What if somebody is eating unhealthily, or has some habits that I think harm other people? What authority, and what obligation, do I have to interfere? This way of thinking about tolerance doesn’t help address such questions, and insofar as such tolerance is elevated on a pedestal, it goes against a commitment to care for the world and make it a better place. Such tolerance isn’t virtuous. At best, it is tolerable.

Thin libertarian tolerance: a presumption against coercion

At minimum tolerance implies a strong presumption against coercive intervention, even if it is for the other person’s or third parties’ good, and even more so in cases where it’s just about promoting my own interests. Bryan Caplan proposes concerned tolerance in the case that people are doing something that’s not in their own or each other’s interests: inform and educate, but beware of coercion. Even if coercion seems to pass a naive cost-benefit analysis, the complexity of the world should give one pause. This is the “thin libertarian” concept of tolerance, and, at least on paper, one could “deduce” open borders from it, combining with some general beliefs about the prima facie right to migrate. But tolerance as I use the term goes beyond this thin libertarian version, and I think that the additional aspects of it really do add to our understanding of the moral need for open borders. (See here for a backgrounder on thick and thin libertarianism).

We influence each others’ environment (duh!)

Our activities influence one another all the time. Your choice of neighbors affects your quality of life in myriad ways even if you rarely have direct interactions with your neighbors. Recently, I asked the shopkeeper at the grocery store near my residence why he had stopped stocking eggplants (brinjals). He said that people don’t buy the eggplants, so he had to throw them away. My neighbors’ non-preference for eggplants was depriving me of easy access to eggplants. This is just one of thousands of ways that the tastes of one’s neighbors affect one’s quality of life. It’s tempting to call these “externalities” although mechanisms such as rents and housing prices internalize them to quite an extent.

As it happens, my desire for easy access to eggplants is not sufficiently strong for me to be too unhappy about my neighbors’ tastes. But it wouldn’t be intolerant of me to factor this, and many other considerations, in deciding where to live. People do this all the time. It’s not intolerant to try to live in places surrounded by neighbors who share one’s values and can therefore make one’s life more pleasant, as long as one is willing to pay the price. Neither is there anything wrong about choosing a place where one’s life is perhaps not that pleasant, with non-like-minded neighbors, if one wants to cut down costs. (Some people might luck out in finding that the things they value the most can be found at a relatively cheap place). People are looking at their own preferences, understanding how their neighbors alter the landscape for them, and making (partly) informed decisions based on that.

[Sidenote: As Bill Bishop and Charles Murray have pointed out, people residentially segregate based on socio-economic status, education level, and political beliefs quite a bit in the United States, with important social, economic, and political implications, some of which they deplore. But neither of them challenge people’s fundamental freedom to choose where to live, even if they think the consequences are not always pretty.]

Is it okay to coerce people to shape their influences on your environment?

On the thin libertarian conception, it would be intolerant to attempt to coercively restrict the choices of those neighbors. On a somewhat thicker conception, I believe that it’s intolerant to be vociferously critical, or create unpleasant situations, for these neighbors on account of these choices, even though those choices do in the aggregate reduce my quality of life somewhat. While it’s within my libertarian rights to put out pamphlets shaming people for not buying eggplants, I would consider such behavior intolerant (even if it had a chance of succeeding). It would be okay for me to request people to buy eggplants so that they stay in stock — as long as I’m honest that my main motivation is personal rather than doing this for their good.

I don’t particularly love or hate the people I meet on the street, nor do I aspire to such feelings. They are people — like all the people I may not meet. They have preferences of their own, that shape the environment I live in — sometimes to my benefit, sometimes to my detriment. If I am deeply inconvenienced, I could request them to change (while being honest about whether my request is selfishly motivated, and accommodating of the fact that they are not obliged to heed my request) — and pay them if that’s necessitated. And if it gets too intolerable, I can move elsewhere. If I am not inconvenienced enough to do this, I should shrug it off.

Such tolerance is not merely for the benefit of others, but also my own — I can feel more at peace if I combine ” the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference” (Bryan Caplan made a similar point here). In other words, tolerance is not just about resisting the use of coercion, but also resisting the impulses that make one want to use coercion — impulses that view others as means to ends or as creatures to be manipulated for one’s benefit. Embracing such tolerance would not merely make people support open borders (or something close), it would also lead them to feel that it’s the right thing. Note that tolerance alone doesn’t imply efforts to actively advocate for open borders — such efforts might require either a specific interest in the subject or a general altruistic character combined with some reasons for believing that open borders advocacy is worthwhile enough.

While the eggplant example might seem laughably trivial compared to the stakes involved with immigration, it’s worth noting that at least some of the complaints about immigration can seem equally trivial. Consider, for instance, that “press 1 for English” is a rallying cry for a number of complaints about immigration. See for instance here and here or just Google it. But then again, trivial inconveniences are not to be scoffed at. But more on the specific issues of language in a separate post. In the meantime, check out Nathan Goodman’s post.

[On a related note, the inconveniences that people impose on each other by living near each other is one of the ingredients in the anarcho-capitalist counterfactual. I don’t disagree with the premise that people affect each other. The premise that I do disagree with is that existing government policies force integration so heavily that we need to resort to immigration restrictions to maintain people’s freedom of association and mimic an anarcho-capitalist society. I admit this isn’t a very satisfactory response, so do read our page linked above, and for a more eloquent elaboration of my point, see Bryan Caplan’s post on association, exclusion, liberty, and the status quo.]

Tolerance of intolerance

The phrase “paradox of tolerance” has been used for the seemingly paradoxical idea that “tolerance” can include tolerance of intolerance. I don’t think it’s that paradoxical in this context. Let me elaborate.

In my view, true tolerance includes tolerance, and even empathy, for people who find open borders deeply unsettling, whether or not I agree with their particular concerns. Example: people who worry about a glut of languages being spoken around them as a result of too much migration, as discussed earlier in the post. Whether or not I share these fears, and whether or not I think that too many languages being spoken around is a good or a bad thing, there is no reason to shame people for holding the view that they find such behavior deeply unsettling. Migration liberalization as forced social engineering to change people’s preferences (for instance, to make them less racist, or more linguistically knowledgeable) is no more laudable than closed borders as forced social engineering to maintain the composition of society. It may sometimes be laudable to change people’s preferences, but such changes should be done through voluntary persuasion in an honest manner (i.e., being honest about my own motives and beliefs). My version of tolerance might strike many as too tolerant of intolerance — for instance, it is a priori critical of allegedly tolerance-increasing coercive measures such as forced desegregation (the prior may be overcome in specific cases via other arguments).

It’s valid to criticize a restrictionist’s embrace of coercion to make their own lives less unpleasant (e.g., restricting migration so that they don’t have to hear foreign languages spoken in the train), and also valid to criticize the restrictionist’s drawing incorrect inferences about objective indicators solely based on subjective experience (particularly when better sources of data are available; I believe such exaggeration has happened historically as well as contemporarily). However, a tolerant person would not extend such criticism to dismissing the restrictionist’s subjective experience of unpleasantness at hearing foreign languages as entirely irrelevant or a sign of moral degeneracy.

To what extent does factoring in people’s subjective concerns about open borders affect the case for open borders?

The next few paragraphs talks specifically of the attitude that somebody (like me) who is actively arguing for open borders should have. I don’t claim that every passive supporter of open borders needs to do what I think should be expected of somebody in my position. In particular, when I talk of moral obligation or responsibility below, I use it in the sense of the ethical imperative of professional excellence (for the self-chosen avocation of open borders advocate) rather than a basic obligation stemming from negative rights (per my three-tiered view, I’m talking about tier 3 rather than tier 1).

I believe that, in the calculus of determining whether open borders are the right thing, I need to account for the subjective experiences of people who find some consequences of migration deeply disturbing. But their subjective feelings enter the equation along with the subjective experiences — and rights — of many other people, including potential migrants and those who wish to invite them. I think that, when all is said and done, caring about people’s subjective experiences should lead one in an open borders-sympathetic direction. People who are unsettled by migration are neither numerically negligible nor morally inconsequential, but they aren’t utility monsters. And I do think that, even though their concerns are worth taking seriously, they should come to the table to discuss keyhole solutions or to provide some sort of reason to believe that the problems really are insurmountable.

That said, it is incumbent upon me to try to work hard to understand the objections and perform a fair and decent analysis of it, suggesting keyhole solutions where feasible and discussing the extent to which they may reasonably be applied. Even if I’m not the one responsible for existing migration restrictions (so the “blame” falls either on the restrictionist preferences of people or on some intrinsic structural reasons that migration poses dangers), I still need to work towards finding a solution (Bryan Caplan made a similar point here). To use a somewhat inappropriate drowning child analogy, the fact that I wasn’t responsible for the child beginning to drown, or the presence of other inactive bystanders, does not absolve me of the responsibility to rescue the child.

PS: Co-blogger Nathan Smith argued that it may be morally virtuous to be intolerant of some things, such as slavery, wife-beating, and mass murder. For activities that are coercive or significantly harm others, I support the use of coercion to prevent them (i.e., prevent something that has a very high probability of leading to significant harm). I also think there could be reasonable grounds for criticism and shaming of such actions, although I’m not convinced that shaming is always necessary. I think that, in general, open dissociation from corrupt or immoral institutions — the open use of exit — accomplishes more than trying to explicitly shame them (cf. exit versus voice). But that might just be semantics. One could consider the use of social pressure to end immoral institutions an example of “intolerance” done right. I believe that many aspects of the closed borders regime today are similarly worthy of intolerance. The fact that closed borders is justified by weak arguments relying on subjective preferences may deserve intolerance. But the preferences themselves don’t deserve intolerance.

PPS: To reiterate: I believe it’s legitimate and often laudable to non-coercively, consensually, and honestly help people “improve” their preferences in the direction of greater tolerance. This is not conceptually different from helping people overcome addictions or procrastination problems or anger management issues. If, however, you’re considering the use of shaming to pressure people into changing their moral views, then I believe (qua thick libertarian) that you need to clear a higher bar. And if you are considering coercion, then (qua thin libertarian) you need to clear an even higher bar.

PPPS: My co-blogger Nathan Smith has written two posts, No Irish Need Apply, and Private discrimination against immigrants is morally fine, and should be legal. The posts make the point that it is consistent to support open borders and allow private discrimination against immigrants, and in fact, allowing the latter may make the pursuit of migration liberalization more politically feasible. I am skeptical of the political feasibility point made by Nathan, but I do agree that my tolerance framework points in the direction of Nathan’s broader point.

Thanks to Sebastian Nickel, Nathan Smith, and Paul Crider for helpful comments

The Open Graph image for this post (the one you see if you share it on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter) is from Discover Nikkei.

November 2014 in review

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November 2014 has been a busy month for Open Borders: The Case. This post summarizes some of the most exciting developments.

Obama’s deferred action announcement sparks interest in migration

On Thursday, November 20, 2014, United States President Barack Obama announced his plans for deferred action for illegal immigrants. In the run-up to and immediate aftermath of the announcement, interest in migration peaked. One question many people had was that of the constitutionality of migration restrictions. Guest blogger Ilya Somin‘s blog post Immigration and the US Constitution, written back in March 2013, received a huge amount of traffic this month. Initially, the traffic was entirely from Google Search (via search terms such as “what does the constitution say about immigration”). Later, we also got traffic from Somin’s Volokh Conspiracy blog post and from Facebook shares of the post.

Our bloggers offered their own takes on Obama’s announcement. The most detailed review is lawyer and activist David Bennion’s blog post Executive Action, Not Legislative Reform, Is How U.S. Immigration Policy Gets Made Now. Michelangelo Landgrave, himself an unaccompanied child and undocumented migrant, offered Obama some unsolicited advice prior to the announcement, and later praised Obama’s actions as a small step in the right direction.

For more information on Obama’s announcement and responses from people with open borders sympathies, see our backgrounder page on the Obama November 2014 deferred action announcement. If you’re interested in open borders advocates’ responses to immigration-related developments in the US over the last few years, check out this page.

An in-depth analysis of Argentina’s Constitution

The case for open borders is universal, and the value of our site lies in how we connect the dots between the moral case and examples around the world. Given the interest in the United States surrounding the constitutionality of migration restrictions, Vipul Naik mooted the idea of doing a blog post or posts on what other countries’ constitutions have to say on the subject, citing old Open Borders Action Group posts on Argentina and Ecuador.

John Lee promptly wrote a blog post on how Argentina’s constitution had entrenched migration as a human right. This post, being of both topical and long-term interest, generated plenty of buzz. Bryan Caplan blogged about it, and charity evaluator GiveWell said they’ll look into the matter.

What part of “immoral” don’t you understand?

On our site and in our blog, we’ve covered the issue of “illegal immigration” from numerous angles. See for instance here, here, here, and here. One might think we’ve beaten the topic to death.

But a blog post by John Lee titled What part of “immoral” don’t you understand? breathed new life into this old debate. Lee argued that the question wasn’t what part of illegal you don’t understand. The question, rather, was what part of illegal one could understand, given that the typical native simply acquired citizenship in his current country of residence by birth.

Thanksgiving special

John Lee’s blog post Let them come: treasuring the immigrant legacy of Thanksgiving, published to honor the occasion of Thanksgiving in the United States, has become one of our most liked posts of all time. As of the time of this writing, the post has had 282 Facebook engagements.

Also relevant are Thanksgiving posts from previous years by Nathan Smith and Chris Hendrix.

Reviving old popular blog posts

In light of the increased interest in migration as a result of Obama’s announcement, we promoted some of our older posts. Here are some of the posts for which we got good responses:

An explosion in Facebook likes

The like count for our Facebook page almost doubled in November, from about 1800 to about 3400. The initial growth in likes was sparked by the interest in migration driven by Obama’s announcement, and that alone would have increased the number of likes to about 2000. We also engaged in paid page and post promotions to a number of new audiences, and attribute the rapid increase in like count largely to that. Even excluding likes obtained as a result of paid promotions, however, the growth was pretty impressive.

Other metrics

  • The total pageview count of the website, as measured by WordPress, was 38,743. This excludes pageviews by administrators when logged in. The corresponding, slightly lower, number reported by Google Analytics is 37,863.
  • Our Twitter follower count now stands at 970.
  • Our Facebook discussion group, Open Borders Action Group, crossed 600 members and its current size is 643.

Site revamp

John Lee and Vipul Naik started on a site revamp that will hopefully be completed in the month of December. You might already see some changes such as better social sharing and author bios at the bottom of posts. More this coming month.

Let them come: treasuring the immigrant legacy of Thanksgiving

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US President Barack Obama’s announcement of deferred deportation for millions of irregular migrants is a wonderful gift for many American families this Thanksgiving, whatever the greater (de)merits of his executive action. Truly, the biggest regret one might have is that Obama did not go far enough. Or to put it in the way only an Onion headline can, “5 Million Illegal Immigrants To Realize Dreams Of Having Deportation Deferred.”

As I’ve written, no sane person can defend the immoral persecution which most of these immigrants living in the shadows unjustfly face. But if you haven’t considered the issue well enough, you might unfortunately produce such dross as this cartoon that recently ran in the Indianapolis Star:

Indianapolis Star anti-amnesty cartoonIt is truly curious to me that the main reaction of the mainstream media was to label this as racist. The Indianapolis Star actually initially responded to criticism by removing the immigrant’s mustache and republishing an otherwise identical cartoon! Of all the the things wrong with this image, race is the last thing I would single out. The problem isn’t inherently its depiction of race relations; if anything, it’s hard to say without knowledge of the political context what the ethnicity of that immigrant might be. The problem is inherent to this image’s portrayal of how immigrants actually conduct themselves in society.

Now, the basic idea of this cartoon is pretty simple: immigrants need to ask the government for permission to settle in a new country. Without permission, these immigrants are akin to trespassers. Just as it is wrong for me to set foot in your house without your permission, it is wrong for migrants to set foot on the country’s soil without its government’s permission. In short: illegal immigration violates citizens’ “collective property rights“.

There’s a fundamental problem with this analogy, because it ignores the simple reality that irregular immigrants are not trespassers. After all, what exactly is the problem with me sitting down at your Thanksgiving dinner table, uninvited? The problem is that I am there without your permission.

So where are the immigrants sitting themselves down at dinner tables uninvited? What have they done that is the equivalent of inviting themselves over to stay at your house? The reality is that most immigrants, even those who have entered unlawfully, have done no such thing. You cannot say with a straight face that millions of people have literally invaded the homes of Americans.

The average undocumented immigrant paid for his own passage. Transportation providers — some unauthorised coyotes, others actual bus, train, or airline companies — offered these migrants a seat in return for the market rate. No trespassing or theft occurred; the transportation carriers gladly and willingly offered their services because they were compensated by these migrants. You cannot say these migrants robbed Greyhound by daring to buy a bus ticket.

What next? The migrants settled down, and began looking for work. Again, your average migrant isn’t illegally camping out in someone’s house, or sleeping on the sidewalk: your average migrant is renting a room or a home from someone. It is generally agreed that some one-third of undocumented immigrants in the US actually own their own homes! Whose property were they trespassing on when they paid their rent, or paid the market price for their own home? Who did they steal from?

You may think me obtuse: after all, the answer is that these people trespassed on the land collectively owned by all citizens of the country they’re in. But this frankly ignores the reality that the laws of the US, and most countries, recognise no such concept as collective ownership: if the land belongs to you, John Doe, then you get to decide what to do with it, as long as all applicable real estate, zoning, or tenancy laws are followed. The furthest that most democracies go is limiting the sale of land to foreigners, but in such cases, foreigners remain free to rent their own homes from citizen landlords: after all, the homes belong to the individual citizens, not to the state.

Now, am I saying that there is no public interest in managing the flow of migration, no sovereign authority competent to regulate the flow of people across borders? No; I simply hold that the authority of governments to regulate borders flows from the public interest — not “collective property rights”, which don’t exist outside of communist states which refuse to recognise an individual right to private property.

The invocation of “property rights” as an excuse to dispossess people of property they have paid for in this particular instance is particularly ridiculous, because in no other arena of public life in a modern civilised state do we see such logic trotted out. When the government bans you from building a meth lab in your backyard, nobody says the government is justified in doing this because the citizens that collectively own your land haven’t given you permission to do that. The problem with you building a meth lab on your land isn’t that you failed to obtain the necessary permission from the collective that owns it. The problem is that the public has an interest in not having their own homes burned down if your meth lab explodes.

Immigrants who actually enter with the intention to commit crime, to steal, to trespass on private property — these are immigrants the government ought to detain, punish, and perhaps exclude via deportation. There I think I and the cartoonist have no quarrel. But where we differ is that the cartoonist clearly believes those who enter with peaceful intentions, those who pay for the homes they live in and the food they eat with the wages of their own sweat, are somehow also tantamount to criminal trespassers.

It is as though you tore down the treehouse I built in my backyard, using the lame excuse that some people might build meth labs in their backyards; that if I really wanted to build a treehouse I should have waited eighty years in line for the requisite bureaucratic approvals to prove that I’m not building a meth lab; that if I don’t like waiting eight decades to jump through bullshit hoops just to go about my own quiet business, I still have no right to question this because it’s the public’s land, not my own.

When it comes to travel, there is an obvious public interest in detaining criminals, treating contagious disease-carriers, and deterring invading armies. This is equally true inside a nation’s borders as it might be true outside. The health and security of the populace are obvious public interests where governments have a role to play. To the extent that we might impose restrictions on where someone can travel, these controls are justified not by imaginary collective property rights, but by the defence of the nation against actual threats to public safety and order.

I say, if someone wants to go somewhere in peace, and is willing to pay the required fare, it’s simply none of my business where that person goes. As long as he doesn’t trespass on my home, I have no business interfering with the peaceful conduct of that person. And if that person pays market rent for a home, I certainly have no business telling that person he is a trespasser — that he ought to get out of the home he has already paid the market price for.

It is all the more shameful and regretful that this ignorant, dehumanising cartoon had to mark the festival of Thanksgiving — a traditional American holiday which commemorates the cooperation of Pilgrims who immigrated to North America with the native Americans who welcomed them. In reality, of course the picture is much less rosier than the traditional account; the Pilgrims themselves might have had peaceful intentions, but many other European colonists were certainly more invaders than immigrants. And of course there is something to be said for the accuracy of this depiction, from a New Yorker cover marking Thanksgiving a few years back:

New Yorker cover of Pilgrims as illegal immigrants

But all the same, whatever the evils wrought by invading colonists, the people of the United States today owe their heritage to peaceful immigration. Most of their ancestors — poor Germans, Irish, Italians — came not to steal land, but to rent or buy their own homes in peace, and build a better future for their families through hard work. Thanksgiving is a holiday which at least in the popular imagination marks the American legacy of immigration — and yet ironically, sentiments like those of the Indianapolis Star cartoon endorse Soviet- or Maoist-style collectivism, the antithesis of all that the US stands for!

Amidst all those Americans who will mark this Thanksgiving by complaining about immigrants who have done nothing worse than crawl through sewers for the chance to pay market rent and earn a market wage, I hope at least some might remember the words of another President, one George Washington:

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

There was no qualification for who could or should be welcomed, as long as their conduct was decent. Most immigrants conduct themselves no worse than anyone else: they pay the fair price for their homes, and they expect only a fair wage for their labour. There is nothing indecent or improper about that. The janitor in your office and the line cook in your cafeteria are not invading anyone’s home. It disgraces Washington to pretend otherwise — to pretend that paying rent constitutes theft and trespassing.

People say that today is different; that things have changed. That’s not how I see it. People have always used bigotry to justify excluding innocent people from our societies, always ignorantly used prejudice to justify treating common people as though they are criminals. And people struggling to earn the dignity of a better life with honest labour have always been willing to risk it all for their dreams of a better tomorrow. It is as true today, and as true for people of all creeds and colours, as it has ever been:

Liu said he was happy to hear what his children told him one day about American history that they studied at school: “America was actually founded by people like dad who was unhappy with his home country and decided to take a boat to come to America.”

Liu said, “I heard their boat was called the May Flower. Mine was called Golden Venture.”

There may be much to regret in the history of Thanksgiving — in how many European newcomers to the Americas came as invaders, rather than peaceful immigrants. But all the same, the legacy of Thanksgiving is one of freedom of movement, freedom to search for a better life wherever your peaceful ambitions may lead you.

I am not American myself, but I am grateful today that I at least have the unearned privilege of being able to live in peace in the US. I am grateful that America’s legacy of open borders defended moral decency and civilisation from the depravity of dictatorship during World War II; that, as my German colleague Hansjoerg Walther says, American open borders changed the course of world history. I am thankful for the truly American legacy of open borders:

Haudenosaunee protest new border regulations

To all my American friends, happy Thanksgiving.

Executive Action, Not Legislative Reform, Is How U.S. Immigration Policy Gets Made Now

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Last Thursday, President Obama announced several measures to liberalize U.S. immigration policy by executive action. First is an expansion of the program initiated in 2012 which gave quasi-legal status to undocumented youth, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The age limit for qualification for DACA has been removed, and the date before which an applicant must prove he or she entered the U.S. has been moved from 2007 to 2010. DACA-style benefits will also be extended to undocumented parents of U.S. citizen or permanent resident children who have been in the U.S. since January 1, 2010, and have not been convicted of certain crimes. This new program for parents will be called Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA). The White House estimates that these two reforms, along with an expansion of waivers for family members of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who are currently ineligible for green cards and reforms to certain employment visas, will protect about five million people from deportation. That’s in addition to the nearly 600,000 who have already benefited from the DACA program.

Vivek Wadhwa believes the changes to employment visa processing will be good for immigrants and tech companies that rely on immigrant labor. Prerna Lal and Dara Lind both posted helpful summaries of the deferred action programs.

Applications for DAPA will not be accepted for another six months. The Department of Homeland Security concurrently made changes to its guidelines on enforcement priorities which will become effective in January. The new guidelines will penalize recent entrants and those convicted of certain crimes, while deprioritizing people who had been deported and reentered the U.S. prior to 2014.

As Dara Lind noted, DACA was an improvement over earlier failed prosecutorial discretion initiatives because the program “has demonstrated that formalized protections work much better than vague promises.” Like DACA and Temporary Protected Status, a type of executive humanitarian relief, once granted, DAPA is unlikely to be taken away. The government emphasizes that deferred action is completely discretionary and can be revoked at any time and for any reason. In practice, it is very unlikely that President Obama would rescind or significantly restrict these discretionary programs once they are implemented. It is harder to take something away than to never grant it in the first place. DACA beneficiaries have been able to come out of the shadows, integrating into communities, making their status known to more people, and becoming more active politically. While excluded from the franchise, the moral power they possess as victims of systemic oppression amplifies their voices. It will be difficult politically for Congress or an antagonistic president to rescind DACA or DAPA in the foreseeable future. Any presidential candidate who runs on a promise to rescind the programs will lose the Latino vote by a large margin, effectively dooming his or her candidacy. These programs are here to stay and will hopefully be expanded further.

The deferred action program has serious flaws.

President Obama’s announcement fell far short of what activists had hoped for. The DAPA program excludes parents of DACA beneficiaries. The program leaves out anyone who has already been deported and prioritizes enforcement against those who try to come back to rejoin their families in the future. The president’s “Felons, not families” messaging is a slap in the face of communities of color targeted by an unjust criminal justice system. Queer immigrants are less likely to have U.S.-born children than hetero immigrants and hence less likely to qualify for the program, and agricultural workers were not included.

The number of DAPA beneficiaries will likely be much lower than projected. A good rule of thumb is to divide by half the projected number of beneficiaries to get the true number. 1.2 million people are purportedly eligible for protection under DACA, but after two and a half years, fewer than 600,000 have actually navigated the process successfully. This is due to the difficulty of documenting presence when one is undocumented, high filing fees, disqualification for minor criminal convictions, lack of reliable legal services, and ingrained distrust of the government.

DACA applicants have advantages in navigating the system that many older immigrants don’t have: most speak English and have been able to access information and resources online. But even many undocumented youth have been unable to apply for DACA or have had applications denied, though they are technically eligible for the program, because they have been unable to prove physical presence in the U.S. I expect this to be an even bigger factor with parents, since they will not have school records, as many DACA applicants did. It can be difficult to document your life when you are undocumented, but that is what the government requires. Many people have been living in a way so as to escape detection. Many have been unable to open a bank account, get a loan, buy a car, get health care, or do any number of things that middle class citizens take for granted that would create a paper trail. Now the government wants ironclad proof that applicants were here since a date certain, and too often begins with the assumption that evidence presented is fraudulent.

Whether it is acknowledged or not, the Department of Homeland Security’s primary mandate is to deport people. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is the agency within DHS tasked with adjudicating DACA and DAPA applications. When reviewing applications, USCIS too often looks for reasons to deny rather than reasons to approve. The pattern with this administration has been to announce a policy reform that is supposed to benefit the undocumented community. By the time the policy is implemented, the cameras have turned away and DHS reverts to norm, denying applications for lack of evidence or using discretion against rather in favor of an applicant.

The DAPA program will exclude a large number of people with criminal convictions regardless of family ties or length of presence in the U.S. Convictions that might result in minor penalties for citizens, like a first-time DUI offense, categorically disqualify potential applicants. A third misdemeanor offense of any kind is a ground of ineligibility, which will screen out some undocumented activists who have participated in multiple civil disobedience actions.

In addition, as Dara Lind points out, for political reasons, the government may send contradictory messages about the program to applicants: “that they should apply now because the program is safe, but that it could be taken away at any time” by Republicans. This may discourage people from applying, especially since this president has deported more noncitizens than any other.

In all, I estimate that only two to three million people will be approved under the DAPA program, far below the five million projected by the White House. This may undercut the political benefits meant to accrue to Democrats as the shortcomings of the system once again come to the fore.

While the new programs are a flawed and partial remedy, and will make things worse for some people, obtaining benefits under the programs will be life-changing for many people. They will be able to work legally and live without fear of immediate deportation. They will become more visible and further integrated into their communities.

So, under these conditions, what can we expect going forward?

Deportations are likely to continue at a historically high rate.

The federal government is likely to continue deporting large numbers of people because DHS’s new enforcement priorities still cover more than enough people to maintain ICE’s existing deportation quota of about 400,000 per year. Unnecessary imprisonment of noncitizens will continue as the so-called bed mandate remains in place, which DHS construes to require it to imprison 34,000 immigrants at any given time for civil immigration violations. Operation Streamline, the federal program to criminally prosecute, jail, and deport immigrants crossing the border, is still in place. Many of those convicted through Operation Streamline were arrested while trying to rejoin families in the U.S., and now face 20-year or, in some cases, lifetime bars on returning to the U.S.

The new enforcement priorities escalate the government’s punitive response to refugees fleeing violence and corruption in Central America. The administration is going ahead with plans to construct the largest immigration prison in the country, primarily to jail refugee women and children until they can be deported. The president’s initiative calls for 20,000 additional border officers, though the mechanism for funding those officers is not yet clear to me.

The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel itself estimates that deportations will not significantly slow after the new policies are implemented:

[W]hile the potential size of the program is large, it is nevertheless only a fraction of the approximately 11 million undocumented aliens who remain in the United States each year because DHS lacks the resources to remove them; and, as we have indicated, the program is limited to individuals who would be unlikely to be removed under DHS’s proposed prioritization policy. There is thus little practical danger that the program, simply by virtue of its size, will impede removals that would otherwise occur in its absence.

Mark Noferi of the American Immigration Council notes that deportation numbers may remain high due to an increased use of expedited removal at or near (within 100 miles of) the border and the high-by-historical-standards levels of funding for immigration enforcement.

Given the low percentage of people I expect to successfully complete the process, seven to eight million undocumented people will likely still be in limbo, at varying degrees of risk of deportation. The deportation machine has been built and is running smoothly. It won’t disappear just because the president has placed some people off limits. DHS may now go after those who are not protected more aggressively than before.

Political divisions around immigration will become more entrenched.

The political dynamics that pushed the president to announce the deferred action measures are likely to persist. Legislative reforms are not on the horizon, and additional discretionary measures will be the only viable form of relief for the foreseeable future. The polarization and political salience of immigration policy will only deepen.

After the 2012 general election, I had begun to believe predictions that demographic changes in the electorate would inevitably lead to broad legalization relatively soon. Given the demands of the two-year election cycle, House Republicans might succumb to the temptation to demagogue immigrants. But, the thinking went, more reasonable voices in the GOP would prevail as the party looked ahead to 2016 and the prospect of failing to win the White House and the Senate. I read with interest Tim Dickinson’s analysis of Karl Rove’s political strategy in 2010 of winning state legislatures in order to reshape House districts more favorably for Republicans. Dickinson and others predicted that the strategy of spreading GOP voters among a larger number of districts–turning more districts red, but a lighter shade of red–would eventually backfire as the proportion of Democratic voters grew and turned the districts blue again. However, others rebutted this theory, arguing that the concentration of Democratic voters in urban districts, combined with the increased polarization of the electorate, provides Republicans with a structural advantage in the House that could forestall demographic electoral benefits to Democrats in that chamber for many years.

The Democrats’ demographic weaknesses in midterm elections become strengths in presidential elections. In elections where there is a high percentage of Latino voters and a sharp distinction between candidates on immigration policy, Democrats hold the advantage. This held true for Harry Reid in 2010 and President Obama in 2012. By announcing and implementing the new deferred action programs, the president may have secured the White House for the Democrats again in 2016. Arguably, this was the only way not to lose it.

GOP base voters, who are older and whiter than the electorate as a whole, view the demographic changes brought on by the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965 as an existential threat to the party and the country. They will not willingly compromise on this issue, and will punish Republican candidates who do not take a hard line. The base has now defined amnesty as any liberalization of immigration policy. While the GOP establishment beat Tea Party candidates in most cases this election cycle, the exceptions, such as Eric Cantor’s surprise primary loss to restrictionist-leaning David Brat, pushed even mainstream candidates far to the right on immigration policy. GOP Senate candidates Scott Brown and Tom Cotton ran on the urgent, yet mythical, threat of Ebola and ISIS overrunning the southern border. This in turn pushed Democratic politicians to take ridiculous positions, such as Kentucky Senatorial candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes’s accusation that Mitch McConnell had supported amnesty. Even one-time children’s rights advocate Hillary Clinton urged the government to deport refugee children who had crossed the border.

I believe that the GOP’s populist base will push the party to fight broad legalization until the party is overwhelmed by brute electoral force generated by the demographic tipping point as nonwhites become a majority in the U.S. This tipping point may be the most momentous political event in the U.S. in the coming decades, aside from possibly climate change. I believe immigration policy will track that broader demographic event. Until the political environment acknowledges the changing demographics (which, given California’s experience, should precede the actual demographic tipping point), individual GOP politicians will find political benefit–really, political survival–in opposing the legalization of undocumented immigrants.

But by opposing legalization, Republicans will find it very difficult to win national elections. The Latino electorate is growing each year, while the proportion of white voters shrinks. Immigration policy is a highly-salient issue for many Latino voters. The strategy of some Republicans will be to oppose the deferred action programs while claiming to support legislative legalization. GOP candidates who take this position will likely face primary challenges from the right. Meanwhile, many Latino voters will oppose any candidate who threatens to rescind the programs. This dynamic places the national GOP at a disadvantage, while also creating a hostile environment for comprehensive immigration reform.

If it’s true, as Talking Points Memo proposes, that Democrats won’t be able to win the House back until at least 2022, and the GOP views legalization of undocumented immigrants as an existential threat, then the U.S. may not see broad legislative legalization for another eight years or more.

Further reforms are likely to come from the executive before they come from Congress.

Because there are many shortcomings with the new executive measures and deportations may continue at a high rate, many immigrant rights activists will continue to criticize the president’s deportation record. In fact, some undocumented activists interrupted the president during his speech announcing the program in Las Vegas to ask why he left their parents out. The administration’s response to both pro and anti-migrant critics has been “pass a bill.” However, because of the factors I described above, it is unlikely that Congress will pass a bill in the next several years. This is why the most likely avenue for further expansion of immigrant rights in the U.S. is through further executive action from President Obama or the next president.

I hope to see more immigration civil rights litigation in the courts, which have historically been an important part of civil rights advances. However, the courts move slowly, and Congress and the president have for years strengthened the immigration system’s immunity to attack in the courts.

The legal justification for the deferred action programs rests in the ample discretion of the executive in matters of immigration and foreign policy. The president may have regretted his claim last year that he had no authority to stop deportations beyond the DACA program. The White House took greater care this time to insulate itself from future demands to expand the deferred action programs, but it is already being asked to do just that. The White House took the unusual step of making public the memo from the Office of Legal Counsel setting out the legal arguments for the DAPA program and against expanding the program to parents of DACA beneficiaries. The latter argument rests on dubious legal grounds that would have also precluded the initial DACA program. The OLC memo may cause the president or his successor problems down the road, as organizers pressure them to expand deferred action to parents of undocumented youth.

The increasing convergence and formalization of prosecutorial discretion immigration policies makes them more vulnerable to challenge by opponents. Offloading immigration policy into the realm of discretion is a function of the increased power of the executive vis-a-vis Congress, growing political polarization, and an immigration regime widely seen as morally illegitimate. Prosecutorial discretion works for immigrants when the president feels magnanimous, but not when he is the Deporter In Chief.

Oppressed people draw moral power from the fact of their oppression. Even before the DACA program was announced, “undocumented and undeportable” organizers had carved out a safe space for themselves by coming out publicly, fighting deportation defense campaigns for their peers, and staging civil disobedience actions. Changes in immigration policy reflect and reinforce changes in norms, as the line between documented and undocumented has become more and more blurry. “Illegal means illegal” is no longer a useful or even accurate catch phrase. This incremental, quasi-legal progress may provide a template for immigration liberalization in other assimilationist countries. It’s a type of adverse possession: physical presence eventually leads to legal rights based on moral considerations.

However, as is becoming more clear with respect to DACA beneficiaries, the deferred action programs also represent a step towards formal recognition of an underclass of workers who are legally, indefinitely excluded from full participation in U.S. society. This should remind U.S. citizens of the country’s shameful legacy of state-sanctioned stigmatization and exploitation of disfavored groups.

The promise of legislative legalization has eluded advocates for at least 15 years. Executive relief will likely be the only viable form of formal protection for undocumented immigrants for the next several years. Claims that Obama can’t expand deferred action further will ring hollow, given that he said the same thing about the programs he just announced. Activists and advocates would do well to remember how unreliable both major political parties have been and how fickle a reform strategy that relies solely on electoral politics can be. Comprehensive immigration reform should not be the sole focus of immigrant rights organizing. Now is the time to escalate action beyond elections and Congress and to utilize unconventional strategies to highlight the moral incongruities of the immigration system. Here are some ideas for action (though the DAPA program makes #7 moot).

The immigration system isn’t broken, it is working as intended. But it needs to be broken; we need to break it. The closed-border immigration system is a key element in a regime of global apartheid that mocks the ideals of justice, equality, and liberty. When we mourn those left out of the most recent reforms, let’s not forget those who’ve already been deported or who never had the chance to leave to pursue a better life.

Image credit: Steve Pavey, Portland Occupier

Constitutionally entrenching migration as a fundamental human right: Argentina and open borders

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US President Obama just announced a major policy change that will, at least temporarily, allow some immigrants a reprieve from the threat of deportation. Co-blogger Michelangelo’s pointed out that this is still extremely far from the true liberal reforms which the unjust, draconian US immigration system sorely needs. People are falling over themselves to contest the constitutional permissibility of Obama’s actions — for more on that, see our guest blogger and law professor Ilya Somin’s take. Irrespective of that legal issue, Michelangelo is right that we need to dream bigger — so let’s talk about one country in the world which legally enshrines freedom of movement as a universal human right: let’s talk about Argentina.

Now, I don’t have the time or space in this post to cover every single aspect of the Argentinean story: despite the many parallels between Argentina and any number of Western or developed countries you can name,  Argentina is not the canonical open borders country; it does not represent a template that can be copied whole sale. Neither can it be a representative test case illustrating the likely effects of open borders if another country were to adopt them.

The empirical learnings to be had from the Argentine experience are worth a whole set of blog posts, if not books. Today, I want to just talk about the laws and constitution that govern immigration to Argentina — for in of themselves, they prove that what so many restrictionist naysayers call legally and philosophically impossible can in fact be done without the nation-state collapsing into a black hole of philosophical contradictions.

Argentina, like the US and many other countries, has a long history of being shaped by migration. Prior to the abolition of international open borders in the early 20th century, as much as a third of the Argentine population was comprised of immigrants. Over the course of the 20th century, restrictive immigration laws were introduced by various dictatorships, and the immigrant population eventually dwindled to a small fraction of its former size. So far, the Argentine story is much like that of every other country in the world: open borders up until the early 20th century, and restrictionism thereafter.

Up until a decade ago, Argentinean immigration law was like that of any other country’s. It disclaimed and disdained any concept of freedom of movement as a human right. Sizeable populations of undocumented migrants lived in the shadows, legally separated from the course of ordinary human life, and routinely deported when discovered. This legal-philosophical framework, we are supposed to believe, is the natural order of things: it is impossible to have an immigration law that abolishes arbitrary deportation, impossible to have an immigration law that recognizes mobility as a human right.

But in 2004, the Argentine government swept all this away, and adopted a new immigration law, simply labeled Law 25.871. This unremarkable name aside, the law is sweeping in its defence of movement as an inalienable human right. Article 4 states simply:

The right to migrate is essential and inalienable to all persons and the Republic of Argentina shall guarantee it based on principles of equality and universality.

The law does not go as far as to abolish visa or border controls, but it lays out a simple — at least on paper — process to immigrate to Argentina: find an employer or family member who will sponsor you. Once sponsored, you become a temporary resident. After one to two years, you can apply for permanent residency. After a few more years, you become eligible to apply for naturalisation as a citizen. There are no visa caps or quotas to worry about — something which already puts the Argentine system way ahead of every other country in the world in respecting the human right to migrate.

But Argentina goes further: not every individual who enters Argentina might be able to find a sponsor. And although the law prohibits entry without a visa or similar legal documentation, people will find a way in — not least because you could always just overstay a temporary visa. It’s virtually impossible to seal your borders without becoming a military dictatorship. And Argentina recognises this, with Law 25.871 declaring that those who migrate to Argentina without legal residency are simply “irregular migrants”.

Remarkably, Law 25.871 bans discrimination against irregular migrants in the provision of healthcare or education. Deporting an irregular migrant requires a court hearing, and generally may only be executed if the government offers the irregular migrant a chance to regularise their status, and the migrant refuses this offer. Exceptions, of course, are made for criminal convicts and the like, but otherwise, deportation is rarely enforced, and instead large-scale “amnesties” — though the more accurate term would be regularisations — have been the norm. The International Detention Coalition summarises Argentine deportation policy:

Migration decisions are made by immigration authorities but are reviewable by a court, with no detention during this period. Legal aid is available throughout the deportation process for all irregular migrants. Deportation and detention are both decisions that must be ordered by a court, with detention used only as a final resort after all other remedies are exhausted. Detention is limited to 15 days pending removal. In practice, migrants who have been committed to prison for criminal offences are the only immigration detainees.

One American immigrant to Argentina worried about his spouse overstaying their visa and becoming an irregular migrant describes what happened when he asked an immigration official what he should do:

Then we spoke with another, much kinder immigration official who assured us that there is absolutely no deportation law in Argentina. She laughed when I told her that I feared that a white van would come to our house to take my spouse and deport him. She told me that Argentina is not the United States and they don’t treat immigrants this way. The only time that Argentina would ever consider deporting someone who is illegal is if he or she commits a crime.

Imagine that — a country with no deportations! It’s not just easy if you try: it’s actually real! But not all is roses, naturally: the continued existence of large populations of irregular migrants in Argentina points to the failure of the government to live up to the law it passed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that bureaucratic red tape often constitutes a barrier to successful sponsorship — and while this is a mere headache for middle-class immigrants, for semi-literate members of the working class, complying with the requirements of immigration laws can be more than onerous.

Argentina is hardly unique in this regard: when my family immigrated to the US (after first overcoming the ridiculous quotas that kept us waiting for about two decades after our visa petitions were first submitted), we had to provide documentation from the local police in every jurisdiction we’ve lived in showing that we’ve been citizens in good standing with the law. Obtaining this documentation is at worst a nuisance for a middle-class person — and even then, since documentary burdens like these are many and cumbersome when you’re dealing with immigration authorities, a lot of people in our shoes would have outsourced this gumshoe work to an expensive lawyer. For a working class person who might have frequently moved around a lot without keeping many records, and whose educational attainment may not go past elementary school, obtaining this sort of evidence can border on the impossible.

Aside from the burdensome red tape that makes legal residency difficult to attain, Argentina also strangely upholds legal persecution of irregular immigrants: landlords and employers who do business with irregular migrants are singled out for punishment by Law 25.871. Clearly this has not stopped Argentineans from doing business with irregular migrants, but this does seem discordant with the rest of the law: notably Law 25.871 explicitly states that all leases and employment agreements which irregular migrants enter into will be upheld and enforced by the courts, even though entering into these agreements is in of itself an offense.

Argentina does not have truly legal open borders, but it comes remarkably close. If the bureaucratic requirements for obtaining residency were loosened and the fines for employing or renting to irregular migrants were abolished, I think Argentina would basically have open borders — because every person seeking to travel to Argentina for work, study or pleasure would be free to do so. Those seeking to commit crimes would still be punished and subject to exclusion; all others seeking to move and live in peace would be let in peace.

Argentina is a remarkable counterpoint to those who allege that open borders are by definition inconsistent with national sovereignty, or that open borders by definition threaten the social compact governing the welfare state. We on this blog have spoken a lot about how governments are free to limit migrant access to welfare, and other similar policies that we call keyhole solutions.

Argentina is faring just fine despite throwing these out the window: even irregular migrants have full access to both private and public education and healthcare, and are generally allowed access to other social benefits too. In fact, other keyhole solutions we’ve discussed, such as the imposition of tariffs or additional surtaxes on migrants, are unconstitutional.

That’s right: Law 25.871 didn’t pull the concept of the right to migrate out of thin air. Argentina’s history of open immigration dates a long way back, all the way back to 1853 when it adopted its constitution. Article 16 consciously adopts an egalitarian stand on the rights of citizens and foreigners, treating them all as inhabitants entitled to the same freedoms under Argentine law:

All its inhabitants are equal before the law, and admissible to employment without any other requirement than their ability. Equality is the basis of taxation and public burdens.

The rhetoric about equitable taxation is remarkably repeated twice more. Article 20 of the Argentinean constitution elaborates on egalitarian treatment of foreigners:

Foreigners enjoy within the territory of the Nation all the civil rights of citizens; they may exercise their industry, trade and profession; own real property, buy and sell it; navigate the rivers and coasts; practice freely their religion; make wills and marry under the laws. They are not obliged to accept citizenship nor to pay extraordinary compulsory taxes. They may obtain naturalization papers residing two uninterrupted years in the Nation; but the authorities may shorten this term in favor of those so requesting it, alleging and proving services rendered to the Republic.

No extraordinary taxes — and foreigners enjoy all the same civil rights as citizens! And Article 25 of the constitution states:

The Federal Government shall foster European immigration; and may not restrict, limit or burden with any tax whatsoever, the entry into the Argentine territory of foreigners who arrive for the purpose of tilling the soil, improving industries, and introducing and teaching arts and sciences.

No tariffs on the entry of immigrants either! We’ve proposed such schemes as potential mechanisms to mitigate possible fiscal burdens of managing migrant inflows, but Argentina has expressly ruled these out — and yet nobody can say that open borders or open immigration are what is ruining Argentina. Argentina has easy naturalisation (you can become a citizen within five or six years of entering the country) and birthright citizenship for anyone born on its territory — all things restrictionists dread — and yet hardly anyone can say this is what’s ruining the country.

If anything, Argentina seems to have been designed as a decisive rejection of all the philosophical ideas immigration restrictionists hold dear. Most arguments for the arbitrary restriction of immigration rest on this moral philosophy sometimes labeled as “citizenism”: the belief that the government of a country is justified in excluding, abusing, and mistreating non-citizens as long as this is for the benefit of its own citizens. Even if these non-citizens come in peace, even if they want to work with you, work for you — the government has no business considering any of this. The government is established for the benefit of current citizens alone, to the exclusion of all others.

Acuerdo_de_San_NicolásAcuerdo de San Nicolás de los Arroyos, a treaty between different governors signed in 1852 to convene a Constitutional Convention that drafted the constitution of 1853, source La Guia 2000, discovered via Wikipedia
Well, the preamble of the Argentine constitution explicitly rejects citizenism — I’ve added emphasis to make this clear:

We, the representatives of the people of the Argentine Nation, gathered in General Constituent Assembly by the will and election of the Provinces which compose it, in fulfillment of pre-existing pacts, in order to form a national union, guarantee justice, secure domestic peace, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves, to our posterity, and to all men of the world who wish to dwell on Argentine soil: invoking the protection of God, source of all reason and justice: do ordain, decree, and establish this Constitution for the Argentine Nation.

A constitution that insists on treating immigrants as virtual equals with citizens, and a constitution that enshrines immigrants’ rights to justice, peace, welfare, and liberty: it sounds like an utopian dream, but it is real, and it’s in Argentina.

There are many things not to recommend about Argentina; its overly burdensome red tape, both in immigration and in just about every other arena of public life, famously strangle ordinary economic activity. The long legacy of Peronism has seen Argentina’s economy stagnate, and even today, Argentina’s government chronically mismanages the public fisc. But none of these problems have anything to do with immigration, and everything to do with problems endemic to the culture of Argentinean public life — a culture that has remained remarkably resilient despite Argentina’s long history of open immigration and now its reopened borders.

Argentina is far from perfect, but its constitution and immigration laws show us the way forward in guaranteeing the just and equitable treatment of all human beings subject to our governments’ laws, be they citizen or foreigner. In drafting their constitution, Argentina’s founding fathers drew on the constitution of the United States. Perhaps now those Americans opposed to open borders and freedom of movement would do well to take a page from the Argentine playbook, and remember the wisdom of their own founding fathers.

The American and Argentine tradition of open borders did not emerge from a legal or philosophical vacuum, after all. At the founding of modern Germany in the 1860s, German legislator Wilhelm Liebknecht articulated the legal rationale for egalitarian principles like those upheld in Argentina’s constitution and immigration laws:

A right that does not exist for all is no right… Gentlemen, it is necessary for us to proceed in the same fashion that England, that free country, has already taken, and to extend to foreigners the same right that exists for Englishmen. There is no such thing as police expulsion in England; the government there does not have the right to deny someone their place of residence.

Or, as one of Liebknecht’s colleagues put it,

…it is a barbarity to make a distinction between foreigners and the indigenous in the right to hospitable residence. Not only every German, but every human being has the right to not be chased away like a dog.

I could not have said it any better myself. Argentina is not perfect, but its laws come far closer to the wisdom of our ancestors on freedom of movement than the laws of virtually any other country today. Obama’s action to provide relief from deportation for a few million American immigrants is welcome, but it is not true justice. There cannot be justice until America, and every country in the world, recognises that every human being has the right to not be chased away like a dog. Stop the deportations — not one more!

I am indebted to Barbara Hines’s The Right to Migrate as a Human Right: The Current Argentine Immigration Law and discussions with members of the Open Borders Action Group for their assistance in preparing this article.

Source for featured image: We didn’t keep track of the original source, because there are many similar images available via Google Search. This might have been the original source.

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