My co-blogger Vipul Naik is better than I am at reading sources on the other side of the immigration issue. I sometimes like to learn by debating, to know what the other side thinks, and to take their claims and arguments and talking points as a jumping-off point for my own thoughts. Sometimes the other side convinces me and I reverse my views, e.g., on natural rights, which I disbelieved in at the age of 25 but believed in by the time I was 30 or so. But on other issues, including immigration, the truth is more lop-sided, and to read the other side just frustrates me with bad logic and pollutes my brain with false facts. To be fair, I think there are a few needle-in-a-haystack decent arguments on the other side, but to find them I’d have to read so much rubbish that it’s not worth the effort.

So I was glad to read the comments section of Bryan Caplan’s post “Vipul Naik and the Priority of Open Borders,” (a follow-up on Vipul’s post open borders and the libertarian priority list: part 1) because it aggregates a lot of objections to open borders in one place, succinctly stated, and informed by at least some familiarity with Caplan’s arguments. I’ll quote and address them in the order that they appeared. Continue reading A Few Responses to Critics →