The ideology of Open Borders

Check out this argument for Open Borders from an Objectivist, anarcho-capitalist perspective:

But does a foreigner have a right to move to America? And should America welcome him? Yes, he does—and yes, she should. Recognition of these facts was part and parcel of this country’s founding.

"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 wellcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment."

Unfortunately this pro-immigration attitude, expressed by George Washington in 1783, has all but vanished from American politics. Indeed, the policies of America—the republic built by and for immigrants—have become hostile to immigrants.

This article, by Craig Biddle, illustrates how shouting matches have replaced genuine debate these days. Both Open Borders advocates and ideologues are the worst sinners: they thrust a platitude in your face and demand you bow before it. They act as if that abstract ideal trumps all contrary facts and arguments. And in this case, since the author is a rigid Objectivist, this piece is especially other-worldly in its assertions.

For example, George Washington's statement is supposed to be accepted as a blanket endorsement of unlimited immigration. In fact, the first president was addressing newly arrived Irishmen, whose "decency and propriety of conduct" he believed would fit in with standard American attitudes and codes of behavior; or, as he put it, with "a participation of all our rights and privileges." But ideologues dismiss context. Instead, we are supposed to accept Washington's welcome to another group of former British subjects -- of which he himself was a prime example -- as the official Open Borders doctrine of all the Founders.

Of course, Washington's statement was no such thing. As proof, here are some other statements from Washington and other Founding Fathers on the issue of immigration. The context of these statements can be found in the sources provided by the American Policy Institute's pamphlet on immigration.

I have no intention to invite immigrants, even if there are no restrictive acts against it. I am opposed to it altogether... - George Washington, from a letter to Sir John St. Clair

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people - a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs... John Jay

I do not wish that any man should acquire the privilege of citizenship, but such as would be a real addition to the wealth or strength of the United States. James Madison

And consider this observation by Thomas Jefferson, whose views on immigration were seconded by even his rival Alexander Hamilton:

But are there no inconveniences to be thrown into the scale against the advantage expected from a multiplication of numbers by the importation of foreigners? It is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in matters which they must of necessity: transact together. Civil government being the sale object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe. It is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason. To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies. Yet from such we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants. They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, p. 217

There it is again, the recognition that a nation's culture is an expression of the interaction of its many members, and is thus a bottom-up phenomenon. In the above passage, Jefferson expresses concern that his country, Virginia, which owed its political and social institutions from its English orgins, must preserve those institutions to preserve its cherished way of life. Alien influences were a threat to the continuation of those institutions. Further, Jefferson observes that a shared culture is essential to liberty. Without a natural "common consent" as to how government could proceed, he implies, a more authoritarian administration would become necessary.

No better illustration of that could be imagined than what's happening to us today in the last days of the United States of America, as the influx of diverse, conflicting cultures necessitate a strong government to ensure security and social harmony.

Mr. Biddle continues to re-write American history as the march toward the realization of Objectivist theory. Regulating immigration, he argues, is

... un-American and immoral. The basic principle of America—the principle of individual rights—demands a policy of open immigration. … Individuals possess rights not by virtue of their geographic location or national origin or genetic lineage, but by nature of the fact that in order to live they must be free to act on their basic means of living: their judgment.

This ignores the historical American belief that our rights are God-given, imprinted on us by long-established tradition and experience. (Remember that nice wording about how we “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”?) In the Continental Congress’ Resolutions on the Stamp Act, our Revolutionary forefathers declared:

“That His Majesty’s liege subjects in these colonies, are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain.

That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.”

In other words, we claimed the traditional rights of our inheritance as a British people. This, of course, is what separated the American Revolution (actually, a war of independence) from the Jacobin-led French Revolution, which, as Edmund Burke argued, was a utopian, universalist, and individualistic crusade to destroy the bonds of heritage and tradition, as opposed to the American Revolution, which sought to preserve heritage. As Burke wrote to a young Frenchman:

Permit me ... to tell You what the freedom is that I love and that to which I think all men intitled. It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish liberty. As if every man was to regulate the whole of his Conduct by his own will. the Liberty I mean is social; freedom. It is that state of things in which Liberty is secured by the equality of Restraint; A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one Man and no Number of men can find Means to trespass on the liberty of any Person or any description of Persons in the Society.

In short, the French Revolution saw the individual human being as sovereign, as an end in himself. It overthrew the existing social order as repressive to the individual. Based not on experience, but theory, it regarded human history up to the present moment as a big mistake, lacking the genius and insight of the new philosophers who would remake the world based on their own enlightened values and ideas. On the other hand, the American Revolution, as Burke correctly summarized it, was fought to preserve the organic social order that the British colonists revered. Our legitimate rights, as the Founding Fathers recognized, arise from our experience as an historical people, which both creates and reveals our character. That ancient process reveals the handiwork of what Jefferson would refer to in the Declaration as “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” the true, organic source of our rights.

Contrary to the views of Robespierre and Objectivism, political institutions arise from man’s social nature. Destroy an individual’s social ties, isolating him from his natural compatriots, and you have destroyed his humanity, including the rules of social interaction that allow him to operate freely in society. Different cultures prescribe different rules for what one expects of others and what they should expect from the individual. But if all culture is destroyed (by mandating the forced mixture of peoples with clashing ideas and values, for example), then there is no standard for social interaction, and bureaucracy must step in to restore order. That’s the difference between a free society, and an authoritarian one.

Biddle then attempts to discredit the arguments of border security advocates:

If by “We have a right to our culture” opponents of immigration are speaking of a right to preserve the racial makeup of their culture, then what they seek is not to protect American culture but to “achieve” something on the order of Nazi culture. Nothing more need be said about that.

This is what passes for political argument these days. Instead of countering with a reasoned response, Biddle slaps a label on an idea he doesn't like, and imagines he has de-legitimized it. As the self-appointed judge of what is logical and permitted, he informs us that we have no right to desire the preservation of an historical, organic culture:

The only culture to which anyone can have a right is a culture of respect for and protection of individual rights.

And that's that -- at least in the mind of Mr. Biddle.