Guest Post by Tom Luongo
Immigration is a tricky subject for a lot of libertarians. If there is one issue that has caused more fights in libertarian circles it is the question of restricting a person’s right to movement.
But in a world of private property where does that right end? We know where it is in a world of public property. It doesn’t. I’m very Hoppean in my views on private property and the private production of defense. So, I have zero problem going toe to toe with the left-libertarians who refuse to divorce themselves from their principled hobby horses and push for open borders uber alles.
It’s stupid, counter-productive and, frankly, one of the main reasons why libertarians are thoroughly corrupted as a political force in the U.S., having been neutered by the Koch brothers fighting about irrelevancies.
Immigration issues are on the ballot today. The Soros-funded invasion caravan is a thinly-veiled political stunt which is being used to fuel the unquenchable greed of globalists using Marxist arguments of envy to sow sympathy for those marching to take back what was supposedly stolen by evil white American Imperialists.
The sad truth is that part of that narrative is true. It’s also why open borders are incompatible with the world we live in today. Because both the warfare state and the welfare state create an artificially high supply of migrants and an artificial demand for subsidy of those migrants, especially, as here in the U.S. where those migrants overwhelmingly vote for the party who will further subsidize them.
This is far beyond the principle that peaceable people should be free to traverse arbitrary political boundaries.
Those artificial political boundaries are created through the application of private property of the citizens nee subjects of the government. If anyone has a claim on the property expropriated by this government it is the taxpayers themselves and not those trudging across Mexico in search of a handout.
Because like it or not, that’s what’s on the table today. That’s reality. When my grandparents came here from Italy they didn’t ask for a handout. They weren’t given one either.
All they wanted was the opportunity, which they took and were grateful for.
So, it makes me happy today to see Italian Interior Minister and all-around badass Matteo Salvini highlight just how sick and insane the whole immigration issue is by announcing he’s cutting in half the daily allowance of migrants from 35€ per day (PER DAY!) to 19€.
That’s nearly $1200 per month folks.
As Ron Paul so succinctly said on the campaign trail, when you subsidize something you get more of it.
So, Italy under the direction of an EU-appointed Prime Minister and government was handing out nearly €1 billion a year to migrants in a country under a brutal austerity program and laboring under a crushing debt load due to fiscal mismanagement.
Now, it doesn’t take an economist to tell you that people respond to incentives. No wonder everyone wants in. And this is where I break with my left-libertarian brethren.
Open borders are incompatible with public property on the subject of defense. Because the state via public roads exports behavior the community doesn’t want to your front yard and you have no direct way to combat this.
It is especially incompatible with public property in which Marxist wealth transfer systems are in place.
In fact, the political system is so dysfunctional it encourages this behavior to suit the agenda of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. So has it been in both Europe and the U.S.
And the sick display of using economic migrants as political footballs lies at their feet. And those who stand up against this abrogation of the basic property rights of natives are labeled racists, elitists, populists and Nazis.
So, Salvini made a brilliant political move by highlighting this insane practice of paying people to come be subsidized by native Italians who, frankly, had very little say in the matter.
Because up until today I didn’t know Italy was paying these people €35 per day. And I’m sure a lot of Italians didn’t either. So, by cutting the allowance Salvini highlights the practice but doesn’t end it outright, leaving that decision to voters to continue to be outraged about.
It also puts both his coalition partners at Five Star Movement and the rest of the Italian political elite and media in a position to defend a practice that 60% of Italians are furious about, illegal immigration.
He can do this because the polls are trending in his favor. Any disagreement with his coalition partner puts them on a path to call for snap elections and reversing the terms of the coalition since The League now out-polls M5S. Salvini knows this and it’s why he can continue to push on this issue because it is 1) popular and 2) the right thing to do.
The solution to the immigration problem lies at the heart of our attitude towards government. The more power the government has to co-opt private property and the private production of defense the more the borders have to be controlled because of the perverse incentives the State engenders.
Like with most of our political problems, the solution is leaving the wealth of a community in the hands of that community to be free to try different solutions of their own accord. It isn’t more power to the state.
And to the left libertarians who think destroying the country by flooding it with economic migrants is the most efficient way to achieve that end, I say, try that in your backyard, bub.
Because it ain’t happening in mine.
Amen to that, brother.
And to all those who are weary of political differences and long for compromises, may you reincarnate as the same jackass you are now, only literally so that your braying has little consequence.
The group that doesn’t recognize a nation’s private property as exemplified by borders and restrictions on immigration is best known as the Libertardians….basically, they’re liberals who want unrestricted pot.
The National Academy of Science has estimated the annual net (after subtracting taxes paid) cost of immigration to the US is over $300 billion each and every year (almost a third of a trillion dollars). In Canada, economist Professor Grubel at Simon Fraser University estimates the net annual cost at close to $30 billion each and every year, which is more than Canada spends on health care and defense combined. In the meantime, patients in Canada’s health care system are waiting in the hallways to be treated, the elderly are on waiting lists for nursing homes, old age security pensions have not kept up with inflation, young people are saddled with student loan debt and the dream of owning a home in major cities is fading rapidly. The wealth of the US and Canada (and most western nations) is being transferred from those who created it to third-world invaders brought into our countries by treasonous politicians and the ruling class.
It sure would be nice if I could afford $700 “Goose Canada” coats for my family and I this winter; instead I just get to pay more taxes to ensure that Abdi and his family each get a “Goose Canada” coat as a reward from boy prince Trudeau for breaking into my country illegally…
The problem is that the open borders crowds don’t care. The Libertarian sorts (disingenuous as they may be) profess total faith in markets and private property. Good on that as tens or hundreds of millions of non-Libertarians move in. These people are not going to support private exclusion, they will get public appropriation. The Libertarians just don’t get it, or just don’t care.
The US will remain an extremely attractive destination even if living standards fall 50% for the bottom 80% of the population. And fall they will, if the current trends don’t change for the better, and soon. Anyone without some durable (over generations) way to ensure a position in the top 10 or 20% of the heap is likely to see a dramatic and fast derogation of their material living standards. Most of the people reading this are going to be in that group.
The author I think oversimplified Libertarian views on unrestricted immigration. It’s a subject of ferocious debate now. But he’s correct that the moneybags “libertarian” globalists have attempted to hijack the issue.
And I certainly agree with your views. I’ve done my best to try to convince other libertarians that unrestricted immigration is a stupid hill for American libertarians to die upon. But many are as impractical as suburban white liberal housewives.
“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad. ”
– Euripides
In fact, stark raving mad….
When people talk about their ancestors coming to America, it no longer applies today. Immigrants coming today have the odds stacked against them to start a business much less go to college for a quality education in today’s milieu. Also, they are coming here to be indentured servants to corporations and the “American Dream”. How’s that working out for most of you that are not of the 1 percent?
H1b VISA workers, I’m making the same hourly rate now that I was making in 2005. I’m curious about the IT industry. This is why more and more nurses are leaving the profession as well as being spit on, yelled at, items thrown at them or assaulted secondary to the decrepit parenting that exist. So next time you are in the hospital with your wife, father, mother or children don’t accuse the nurse of being rude for running into the room and running out. There is less pay and more patients due to immigrants and the corporations that exploit everyone, Americans & especially immigrants.
If I hear one more Dem say “We are a nation of immigrants” to rationalize the gazillions of uneducated and poor looking for a handout streaming across the border… I guess we all immigrated, but there are differences like my family immigrated in the 1600s, which doesn’t really qualify as an immigrant, because immigrants are coming into an established society or nation state, and when they walked down the gangplank there was nothing but wilderness, a smattering of Redskins, a few other dazed and still seasick white French and English men and fewer women, and an abundance of wild animals and the promise of a lot of hard work and a dubious chance of survival. There was no Church group funded by the Government to “settle” them (they had to build the churches first, right after they built a house to shelter themselves) and coach them on where to claim their welfare checks, how to sign their children up for free schooling,(the schoolhouses would be built much later after they whipped the wilderness and Indians back)and pointed out where the hospital was to get free health care. If my ancestors got sick, they died, and many did. But they persevered, and fought the weather, the mosquitos, the Indians, the snakes and disease yet somehow managed to build productive plantations and businesses and a society. Then came the Revolution, and they fought for Independence which was won, but at a price, their Plantations burned by the British and their fortunes depleted, but they carried on and built it all back again, and then the Northern armies invaded, and laid it all to waste or smoldering again, their fortunes and properties lost or stolen. During Reconstruction they were told that they were no longer Citizens of the United States (despite the fact that it was they that invented the United States being signers of both the Declaration and Constitution) and had no right to vote or hold office, although they did retain the right to pay huge taxes on what properties they still “owned” after the Yankees were done confiscating what they wanted. The Yankees had freed their former slaves, only to starve, and despite the fact they were themselves starving, they honored their responsibility to the welfare of their former servants and they suffered together. Eventually, like not until the 50s or 60’s, they worked their way back to prosperity managing to hold on to just a few of the many properties they forged out of the wilderness from the day they stepped off the ship in the 1600s, albeit tenuously with ever increasing taxes, property and inheritance, So, you tell me, are we all ” just immigrants” like the millions that have come and are still coming illegally into the country?