The host’s formulation
Bob Zadek opened a 2011 episode by stating his own position on illegal immigration in four words: “let them all in.” He said he favored as open a border as possible, provided there was a basic system to weed out the baddest of the bad, people carrying disease and people with very serious records, while the ordinary immigrant who simply wants to be here ought to be welcome. He argued that the country has prospered not in spite of but as a result of open borders and a healthy flow of immigrants from all over the world Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
Zadek framed the issue as a question of what opponents actually oppose — the illegal part or the immigrant part of the phrase “illegal immigration.” If the objection is only to illegality, he asked, would making immigration legal change the attitude? He also said the problem lies in the law rather than in the number of immigrants, and complained that opinions on the subject are driven by emotion rather than data.
Amnesty as a policy device
In the same episode Zadek argued that amnesty is a legitimate public technique. He noted that public officials who propose granting amnesty to the roughly 12 million undocumented residents then face indignation, particularly from the right, on the ground that telling people who broke the law that there are no consequences is unacceptable. He called that hypocrisy, citing the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, after which people who had been felons a day earlier were not, and the amnesty programs taxing authorities routinely offer to people who have misstated their tax liability Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011). He said declaring amnesty would let undocumented residents come out of hiding and participate fully in the system.
Guest Sophia Campos, describing her own status as an undocumented person who came at six years old, said there is no line people can get into to become permanent legal residents and no pathway for her to gain legal residency. She cited the DREAM Act and immigration reform as important, said there are 12 million undocumented people who cannot seriously all be deported, and pointed to Secure Communities and collaborations between police and ICE as reasons undocumented people live in fear. She also rejected the stereotype that undocumented people do not pay taxes, saying she and her parents prove it wrong every year, and noted that undocumented communities include Asian people and people from all over the world, not only Latinos Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).
The label problem
Benjamin Powell told Zadek in 2022 that he finds “open borders” a loaded term that packages several things together, including the chaos on the southern border along Texas-Mexico — which, he noted, is not an open border when people pay $5,000 to $10,000 to coyotes to smuggle them across, since paying those fees shows you are not free to cross openly. Powell distinguished no checks at all from what he called Ellis Island migration policy or free migration, analogous to free trade: no blanket quantitative restrictions on immigrants from any particular origin country, but basic qualitative checks at legal checkpoints for contagious disease, known criminals or terrorists, with any number from any origin otherwise welcome The Economics of Immigration (2022).
Zadek agreed that the phrase makes fists clench and that many hear doomsday in it, and joked that he would take an oath never to say “open borders” again, at least until 9:00 AM Pacific that morning. Powell added that Ellis Island policy allowed most people in the world to legally come to the United States, whereas now almost everybody in the world is legally prohibited from migrating there — a way, he said, of building bridges with people who object only to illegal immigration and whose grandparents came legally The Economics of Immigration (2022).
Zadek had earlier used Ellis Island as a marker for open borders, describing it as the first stop of immigrants arriving by boat, where officials looked for disease and criminality and the bar to entry was pretty low The Economics of Immigration (2022).
Economic and individualist arguments
In a 2018 episode Zadek gave two reasons for generally favoring open borders. The first was national benefit: he said the economic benefits are obvious and the scholarship is clear that the country benefits economically from open borders and from allowing workers in, who then become consumers, with no downside statistically and a net gain to all of society — a point he attributed to Alex Nowrasteh of Cato and numerous studies. The second was individualist: he said he is uncomfortable claiming entitlement to all the benefits of the country and its freedom over someone else because of the accident of where he was born, and that he claims no superior right over an individual born in Central America or sub-Saharan Africa David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018).
David Boaz, responding to a caller’s question about the libertarian perspective on immigration, said open borders can be an exaggerated term but that America has always been a country of immigrants and has benefited from immigration, and that libertarians are generally in favor of being an open, welcoming country. He added that if we care about human freedom we want people to be able to move from less free places to more free places, and that migration around the world is likely to increase as more countries become attractive places to live David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018).
Zadek also raised a difficulty: a guest had told him of a scientifically sound survey in India finding that about 80 million Indians said they would move to the United States if they could, and he asked whether the country could survive an influx of that size over a short period, saying he was stumped by the statistic David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018).
Welfare and fiscal effects
Zadek put the welfare objection to Nowrasteh in a 2015 episode, citing Milton Friedman’s fear that relatively open borders and free immigration would overtax the welfare system and that immigrants take more from it than they put back. Nowrasteh answered that legal immigrants on a green card have no access to welfare for their first five years, that holders of work permits such as student visas or H-1Bs have no access at all, and that illegal immigrants have no access to welfare benefits; only after five years legally on a green card does access to some means-tested benefits begin. He said that when the numbers are examined, immigrants generally pay their own way, paying as much in taxes over their working lives as they consume in benefits, and that taking account of an immigrant who arrived at, say, 25 and consumed no public schooling, immigration is about a net zero and does not make deficits worse Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).
Zadek concluded from this that it is patently not true that immigrants come for welfare benefits because they cannot get them, and that the claim they are a drain on the economy is factually incorrect; Nowrasteh agreed it is entirely factually incorrect. Nowrasteh added that he would favor laws restricting welfare further — requiring ten, fifteen or twenty years of presence, or never allowing access — but that as things stand the problem is mainly in people’s minds rather than in reality. He also noted that the only real exception to the welfare exclusion is the EMTALA Act, under which an emergency room must stabilize a patient who shows up ill, which he called a relatively small program Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).
Zadek observed that Friedman favored open borders but feared the welfare system could not absorb a wave of immigrants, and that this was before laws limiting immigrant access to welfare existed; he added that immigrants can access healthcare and cannot be turned away from hospitals. Nowrasteh supplied the part of the Friedman quotation he said everybody misses: that Friedman favored illegal immigration, essentially favoring salutary neglect in which the government makes immigration illegal but does not enforce those laws, so that people come and cannot get welfare but do work Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).
Restrictionist qualifications
John McGinnis told Zadek in 2019 that he favors a lot of immigration but not open borders, saying the country depends somewhat on its culture and that you cannot let 100 million people in because they could not be assimilated into the American ideas he called an important infrastructure for liberty. He said he is not in favor of illegal immigration and that it needs to be stopped, while criticizing Trump’s rhetoric as sometimes unfairly demonizing people who come for good reasons even when they come illegally, and calling it a total mistake not to increase immigration of people who will be real innovators. He blamed both Obama and Trump in some sense and called for compromise producing very generous immigration without permitting illegal immigration, arguing that the absence of standards is not politically viable and leads to backlash against legitimate immigrants Here Comes the Storm (2019).
Zadek introduced that segment by saying that in his view Trump had been on the wrong side of immigration, that libertarians generally support open borders — “let them all in,” as he often expressed it — though he said he does not really mean that, and asking for a report card on Trump’s immigration record Here Comes the Storm (2019).
Across episodes: the same question over time
The excerpts show the same question — whether “open borders” names a defensible policy or a poisoned slogan — argued across episodes, with the treatment shifting from assertion to terminological caution. Zadek asserted “let them all in” in 2011 and defended it on economic and individualist grounds in 2018, while Boaz called open borders an exaggerated term in that same 2018 exchange; by 2022 Powell was advising against the phrase altogether in favor of Ellis Island migration policy, and Zadek agreed on the spot. The restrictionist qualification appears only in the 2019 episode, where McGinnis dissented from the idea that there should be no standards for immigration. The welfare objection is raised by Zadek in 2015 and answered by Nowrasteh in the same episode.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any legislation, the holding of any case, or the details of the Secure Communities initiative beyond its mention as a source of fear and of police-ICE collaboration. They do not give the date or terms of the Chinese Exclusion Act or of the Progressive Era shift described in the 2013 episode’s summary, nor the content of the 2013 discussion itself, which appears only as a topic list and speaker roster. The 2011 episode breaks off mid-sentence in Zadek’s closing thought, and the 2015 welfare segment ends with Nowrasteh’s answer, so neither continues past that point.