[wvns] Jacob Hornberger: Immigration Tyranny
Immigration Tyranny
by Jacob G. Hornberger
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0707f.asp
A popular argument among advocates of immigration controls is that a
nation has a "right" to control its borders. The argument is based on
the supposed "right" of the U.S. government to station gendarmes
along its international borders, including on privately owned land,
to prevent people from coming into the country illegally.
What the advocates of control never address, however, is a related
situation: If the government has the "right" to prevent people from
coming into the country, why doesn't it have the correlative "right"
to prevent people from leaving the country? Doesn't control over the
borders connote control in both directions?
In fact, isn't that the true rationale for prohibiting Americans, on
pain of fine and imprisonment, from traveling to Cuba? While the feds
actually prohibit Americans from spending dollars in Cuba, we all
know that that's simply a sham to cover up what they are actually
doing — preventing Americans from traveling from the United States to
Cuba. If the federal government has the power to prevent Americans
from traveling to Cuba, doesn't it have the power to prevent
Americans from traveling everywhere else? Isn't this what comes with
the government's "right" to control its borders?
That, of course, brings us to the Berlin Wall, a border control that
seems to make American proponents of immigration controls uncomfortable.
One of the principal arguments that advocates of immigration controls
make is, "The law is the law and people should obey the law." Under
East German law, it was a criminal act to cross the border into West
Berlin without permission from East German officials. Even if people
disagreed with the law, the East German authorities expected everyone
to obey it. After all, they believed, "The law is the law and people
should obey the law."
Once American immigration-control proponents accept that principle as
immutable, it would seem that they have no choice but to defend East
Germany's enforcement of its law. Yet most American immigration
controllers would never do that, at least not publicly. To defend the
shooting of East Germans illegally crossing into West Berlin is not
exactly a popular position. Once the advocates of immigration
controls take the position that the East German law was immoral and,
therefore, that it was morally okay for East Germans to violate it,
an important principle emerges: People have a fundamental and
inherent right to disobey an immoral law.
If a law that prevents people from leaving a country is immoral, then
why isn't a law that prevents people from entering a country equally
immoral? Suppose West Berlin had constructed its own wall that ran
parallel to the East Berlin wall. Would advocates of immigration
controls have condemned the killing of an East German for illegally
crossing the East German wall and praised his killing for illegally
crossing the West German wall?
The immigration controllers often use collectivist rhetoric to
justify immigration controls. They say that "we" have a right to keep
people from "breaking into" our national "home" and trespassing on
farms and ranches along the border.
But the only reason that immigrants are illegally hiking across
people's farms and ranches when they enter the United States is that
it's illegal for them to travel normally by bus or car. Moreover,
America isn't Cuba or North Korea, where the government owns the
nation and everything and everybody within the nation. Instead,
America includes a myriad of private properties, homes, and
businesses owned and operated by millions of private individuals and
companies. It's obvious that the millions of immigrants who have
crossed the U.S. border illegally have found their way into these
private residences and businesses with the consent of the owners.
When the controllers call on U.S. officials to "lock" our national
door, what they really want to do is empower federal officials to
lock the doors of millions of private homes and businesses without
the consent of the owners.
The ultimate issue in the immigration debate is a moral one: Are
freedom to move, freedom to associate, freedom of contract, and
private ownership fundamental, inherent rights or not? If so, then
the federal government has no legitimate authority to interfere with
them. If not, then the immigration controllers have the burden of
showing how their position conflicts, in principle, with that of the
East Germans, Cubans, and, for that matter, the North Koreans, who,
not surprisingly, tightly control the movements of people into and
out of their nation.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. Send him email.
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