Immigration Part 1: The "Abolish Borders" Argument

Do people who say they believe this actually believe it?

Image from Adastra via Getty.

**This is part one of a four part series on immigration. The other three parts will arrive in the next few weeks, unless nobody reads these things, in which case I’ll pull the plug and write about the social media outrage du jour.**

Do countries have the right to keep people out? If your response to that question is to yell “obviously yes!” and throw your laptop across the room, let me point out that: 1) We have to establish the legitimacy of borders before we can discuss how borders should be managed, and 2) That’s your laptop, genius. Even though I believe that national borders are legitimate and necessary, I think the “borders are unethical” argument should be taken seriously. And by “taken seriously”, I mean understood, considered, and then tossed into a bin labeled “ideas that are wrong”.

Some people do oppose all borders.¹ There are two types of such people: 1) People who admit they oppose borders, and 2) People who talk endlessly about immigration without identifying any situation in which a person should be denied entry, and then yell “straw man!” if you suggest that they oppose borders. The first group, though more honest, is often represented by Twitter weirdos who tweet about immigration in between comparing Biden to Hitler and making death threats against JK Rowling. Of course, any movement looks bad when defined by its most deformed social media freaks. Luckily, two academics — Bryan Caplan and Joseph Carens — have done serious work making the practical and ethical case for completely open borders. So, I’m going to focus on their not-loony arguments.

Caplan is a George Mason economist who makes the practical case for abolishing borders. He often begins his open borders pitch with a provocative question: “Why, exactly, is it that people who are born on the wrong side of the border have to get government permission just to get a job?" It’s a question a bit like “If Smurfette is the only female Smurf, then how do Smurfs reproduce?” in that it defies easy answers and produces troubling thoughts when you really start to chew on it.