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Arnold Kling of EconLog writes:

From my point of view, the first-best world is one with (i) open borders and (ii) limited government. One argument against (i) is that it would eventually undermine (ii)…

However, I can think of a number of reasons that the correlation between (i) and (ii) could be positive rather than negative. For tyrants, open borders would offer a powerful check on power. Robert Mugabe would have a harder time exploiting his people if they all just got up and left. Our own government would be smaller if we said that its job did not include interfering with peaceful transactions between American employers and non-American-born employees…

Kling offers a stance on immigration that both parties in America are currently sidestepping. On one hand the GOP would never think of providing (illegal) immigrants with entitlements, but they also want to retard immigration and criminalize all undocumented immigrants. On the other hand the Democrats want liberalized immigration but they are also more than willing to give social services to all kinds of immigrants at the same time. At the same time neither party offers a true free market solution.

The free market solution to immigration should encompass (a) liberalized immigration restrictions and (b) no welfare benefits for undocumented immigrants. I have no problem with “illegals”. Their added labor puts more muscle power as well as mind power into the system, while–as long as (b) holds true, and they do not receive vast amounts of social welfare–they drain nothing from it.

Open borders are a pure sign of freedom, so it is troubling that there is currently such ill-will in America towards it. As Kling implies, it is indicative of a dictator to close borders to keep people in (i.e. Soviet Union), but it is also authoritarian to close borders to keep them out. In a free country people should be able to move freely not just within its borders but across them too.

Some may warn, that if we allow too many of a certain demographic (in our case Hispanics) to come, they could eventually sway the policies of our country in the direction of their native governments (i.e. bigger). There are two ways of preventing that–and it certainly must be prevented. (A) Don’t give many of them citizenship. Just because they should be able to come here freely doesn’t mean that we should sacrifice to accommodate them. They can stay here but they need not be citizens; this way they can neither vote nor collect public welfare benefits. (B) There should be provisions written into the law to prevent the government from becoming to big. Perhaps the founders would have been upset with how far their successors have stretched the elastic clause, but the fact of the matter is that there could be greater specifications limiting the size of our government. (For instance: “The Federal Budget may not grow above 15% of GDP…” etc.)

Additionally, open borders provide capital mobility, which is of great benefit to the market. If we can have mobility of inanimate capital (in the form of imports, exports, outsourcing, insourcing, etc.), we should have mobile human capital. Free trade and free markets should include freer immigration, shouldn’t it? As I see it, it would only make our economy stronger.

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The What About Open Borders? by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.