Tyranny Has Invaded America Through the Immigration Enforcement Regime
Immigration helps the country become freer and more prosperous and restrictionism is doing the opposite
On Wednesday, May 21 at the Soho Forum, a debate series organized by the libertarian Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh squared off against comedian and podcaster Dave Smith on the question of whether “government restrictions on the immigration of peaceful and healthy people make sense from a libertarian standpoint, especially in present-day America.” Alex, a contributor at The UnPopulist and co-author of Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions, argued the negative—that is, that such government restrictions don’t make sense.
We adapted Alex’s superb remarks and present them below.
Not only do government restrictions on the immigration of healthy and peaceful people to America make no sense—but they are the opposite of what America needs. Immigration is beneficial to Americans. And restricting immigration will harm America’s economy and liberal democracy.
Support for such restrictions violates the ethical foundations of a free society for the simple reason that restrictive immigration laws interfere with peaceful, voluntary exchange of native-born citizens as well. They prevent you from using your property as you see fit and from voluntarily interacting with others. Every immigration restriction infringes on both the rights of immigrants and your rights to associate with them.
Those who do not put human freedom at the center of their political project may dismiss this argument, but those who do should understand that, as with other laws, there should be a presumption of liberty in immigration laws. That presumption may be overcome in the face of demonstrable serious harm—but that is not how America’s immigration system works right now. Our immigration system is akin to Soviet communist central planning and therefore requires Soviet-style tactics to enforce.
The fact is that immigration is beneficial to Americans, and that government immigration restrictions are how tyranny will come to America.
Empirical economic research shows that immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in benefits or, at worst, break even. That includes costs like government schools, welfare, and criminal justice which they use less than native-born Americans. Contrary to the administration’s salacious characterization, immigrants are less likely to be arrested, convicted of crimes, and incarcerated. Historically, more open immigration has been associated with slower growth in the size of the federal government. At the state level, more immigration is either not related to changes in economic freedom, or else positively correlated. Benjamin Powell and I won an award for Best Book in Austrian Economics for showing that immigrants mostly increase economic freedom or have no effect.
America’s borders were mostly closed to immigration from the late 1920s to the late 1960s. When the Immigration Act of 1965 slightly liberalized immigration, union subsidies fell, labor law was liberalized, the number of government monopolies fell, growth in the size of government slowed, taxes were cut, trade was liberalized, and the draft was abolished. That liberalization did not happen when the borders were closed—it only happened after they were barely reopened.
Immigration restrictionism has spawned some of the most economically devastating, complex, and Soviet-style laws in America. Support for government immigration restrictions and mass deportations requires support for the methods of actually enforcing those laws, which represent some of the most dangerous abuses of power at the present moment.
Already so far, Donald Trump:
Has designated drug cartels as terrorists and is considering designating some gang members arrested inside of the U.S. as “enemy combatants” to stop immigration.
Wants to send U.S. troops to Mexico to fight a war against the “terrorist” cartels.
Has deployed the military at the border.
Is using the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants to prison camps in El Salvador without due process.
Is allowing federal ICE officers to enter houses without a warrant to arrest migrants that the president designates as terrorists or invaders.
It gets worse. This administration has also started deportation proceedings against green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested without a warrant, because he expressed an opinion that contradicts American foreign policy toward Israel. Foreign students like Rümeysa Öztürk are being detained and threatened with deportation for writing op-eds critical of Israel. A French scientist was denied entry for a scientific conference because he had phone messages critical of President Trump.
America has created a secret gulag for immigration offenders. A German green card holder named Fabian Schmidt who lived in New Hampshire was arrested, held incommunicado, and tortured by ICE. He ended up in the hospital. Irish green card holder Cliona Ward was arrested and held for 17 days after returning to the U.S. for a 20-year-old marijuana charge in a state with legalized marijuana. An Australian on a work permit returned from a funeral in his home country, was arrested by Customs and Border Protection and deported for no good reason—separated from his job, apartment, property, and his spouse. Two other German tourists, a Canadian with a visa, and several British tourists were disappeared for weeks in immigration detention and not allowed to contact lawyers for days. Other German tourists were strip searched, detained, and deported after arriving legally because Trump’s Customs agents didn’t think their travel schedules were detailed enough. A Russian scientist at Harvard named Kseniia Petrova was detained by ICE for over eight weeks for the heinous crime of failing to declare frog embryos (part of her research) on a flight from France.
Trump shipped migrants, most of whom have no criminal convictions or charges against them, to America’s prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Trump activated the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport people, with limited or no due process, to El Salvador’s prisons. He is bribing the government there with American tax dollars to take them in and house them in inhumane prison camps. His administration is refusing to bring illegally deported people like Abrego Garcia home. Trump administration lawyers wrote in a March 14 memo that the Alien Enemies Act allows ICE agents to enter private property without a warrant.
ICE agents arrested a native-born American citizen, pulling him off the street in Chicago into an unmarked van and holding him overnight until they checked his wallet to discover he was a citizen. Native-born American Jose Hermosillo was arrested in Arizona and held in immigration detention for 10 days incommunicado because he wasn’t carrying identification.
Most federal law enforcement officers work to enforce immigration, not actual criminal, laws. Every time you travel, you must show your papers. Every time you get a job, you must fill out the I-9 form to prove to the government that you are complying with immigration laws. Many states and the federal government require employers to check your papers against federal databases through the E-Verify system when you apply for a job. Every significant proposal for a national biometric identity card is designed to enforce immigration laws.
Immigration enforcers go to schools, churches, and courthouses to arrest peaceful people. They operate with near-impunity in a 100-mile buffer zone along America’s borders where they run internal checkpoints, harass Americans and immigrants, and frequently enter private property without permission. ICE agents make arrests without warrants, and then just create warrants for themselves in the field after the arrests. ICE recently bragged that part of its job is keeping out “ideas that cross our borders illegally.” Show your papers to travel near the border, carry your papers or you’ll be in ICE detention for weeks, show your papers to get a job—all for immigration enforcement purposes. The U.S. is becoming a “your papers please” society, to enforce these immigration laws.
Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that the administration was considering suspending the writ of habeas corpus because we are, according to him, being “invaded” by illegal immigrants. And both Trump and his press secretary have said that they are considering deporting American citizens to prison camps in El Salvador.
Immigration laws can only be enforced by the heavy hand of the federal government, and the proposed mass deportations would be much worse. Mass deportations would require a tremendous outlay of taxpayer dollars to send federal law enforcement officers to arrest people, rip them away from families, break their market contracts, alienate their property—all for no good reason. And in Trump’s America, they would also likely involve even more payments to foreign autocrats. This populist immigration enforcement regime is leading the United States down a dark road. Mass deportations must be statist, and they can be populist, conservative, nationalist, socialist, or autocratic, but they can never be consistent with liberty or true liberalism.
Many people were unperturbed when President Trump announced earlier in his second term that foreign students who engaged in illegal activity would be deported. But then his Department of Homeland Security began showing up with masks on and in plainclothes to arrest and deport legal foreign students merely for expressing views that the administration doesn’t like, prompting none other than former Republican Congressman Ron Paul from Texas, not known for being a woke warrior, to warn: “This is a slippery slope that will backfire on those who support it.”
The last person to try to exercise this much power here was named George III. If tyranny comes to the United States, it will come to enforce immigration laws. Even if you don’t care about immigrants, whatever the government does to immigrants, it will eventually do to native-born Americans too.
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America doesn't have an immigration problem, it has one about an invasion. Though, to be fair, it's one they've contributed to with illegal drug use causing societal collapse in places where those "immigrants" come from.
And one might reasonably argue that America was created by such "invasions" -- one might ask the natives about their thoughts on the matter.
But while America might reasonably be commended for opening its doors to refugees of one sort or another, one might also argue that America is justified, and probably wise, to regulate it -- even to the extent of some draconian policies. Some reason to argue, many reasons to argue, that many if not most people from some cultures are simply incompatible with America's best principles, values, and interests.
Coming to this country is not a "human right", its a privilege and one that can be extended or revoked to anyone at any time for any reason. Completely opening our borders to anyone, which is essentially what the author advocates, will destroy our society and culture. I realize that's point for many open border advocates and all the actions of the Trump administration on this topic is exactly what people like me voted for.