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Open Borders

7 min read

Part of Immigration.

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Every episode (3)

Who argued it

Alex Nowrasteh ×3

Immigration · Welfare State · National Security · Regulatory Capture · Rent Seeking · Entrepreneurship · Chinese Exclusion Act · Assimilation

Background

The host’s framing

Bob Zadek opened a 2011 episode by stating his own position on illegal immigration “in four words: let them all in,” favoring as open a border as possible provided there is some basic system to weed out people carrying disease and people with very serious records. He described illegal immigration as an issue that transcends typical Democrat-Republican and liberal-conservative lines, and said opinions on it seemed driven by emotion rather than data. He posed the question of whether opponents of illegal immigration oppose the illegal part or the immigrant part of the phrase, asking whether making immigration legal would change their attitude Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).

The broken system and the DREAM Act

Sophia Campos, a college student who learned of her undocumented status in her senior year of high school, told Bob that many people hold extreme emotions about the issue without knowing the facts, and that the immigration system is broken with no single line people can enter to become permanent legal residents. She said there is no pathway for her to gain legal residency, that there are 12 million undocumented people in the country, and that they cannot all be deported. She cited the DREAM Act and immigration reform as important, and said Secure Communities and collaborations between police and ICE make it important for undocumented people to be visible and continue paying taxes, which she said they already do Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).

Amnesty as a policy device

Bob argued that the problem lies in the law rather than in the number of immigrants, and that amnesty is a legitimate public technique. He compared it to the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, after which people who were felons a day earlier were no longer felons, and to tax amnesty programs under which authorities collect what is due while waiving penalties, felonies and jail time. He said declaring amnesty would let undocumented residents come out of hiding and participate fully in the system Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011).

Economics, welfare and the Friedman objection

In a 2015 episode, Bob put to Alex Nowrasteh the belief, which he attributed to Milton Friedman, that open borders would overtax the welfare system. Nowrasteh replied that legal immigrants on a green card lack access to welfare for their first five years, that work-permit and visa holders have no access at all, and that illegal immigrants have no access to welfare benefits; only after five years legally present on a green card does access to some means-tested benefits begin. He said immigrants generally pay their own way, paying as much in taxes over their working lives as they consume in benefits, and that immigration is about a net zero and does not make deficits worse Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).

Nowrasteh added that the only exception is the EMTALA Act, under which an emergency room must stabilize a patient who shows up ill, which he called a relatively small program. He said the second part of the Friedman quote that people miss is 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 they work Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015).

Libertarian principle and the scale problem

In a 2018 episode, a caller asked whether open borders is the libertarian perspective. David Boaz called open borders an exaggerated term but said 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; if we care about human freedom, we want people to be able to move from less free places to more free places. Bob answered the personal part of the question by saying that in general he favors open borders, citing economic benefits and scholarship showing a net gain, and an individualist argument: he is uncomfortable claiming a superior right to the benefits of the country over someone born in Central America or sub-Saharan Africa because of the accident of his birth. He said the one area he struggles with is a survey he described as scientifically sound, in which about 80 million Indians said they would move to the US if they could, and asked whether the country could survive such an influx David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018).

A dissenting guest

In a 2019 episode, John McGinnis said he favors a lot of immigration but not open borders, arguing that the country depends somewhat on its culture and that you cannot let 100 million people come in because they could not be assimilated into American ideas that are an important infrastructure for liberty. He said he is not in favor of illegal immigration and that it needs to be stopped, but that Trump’s rhetoric sometimes unfairly demonizes people who come for good reasons, and that Trump is mistaken not to increase immigration of people who will be real innovators. He called for compromise producing very generous immigration without permitting illegal immigration, warning that the absence of standards is not politically viable and leads to backlash against legitimate immigrants Here Comes the Storm (2019).

Defining the term

In a 2022 episode, Bob described Ellis Island as the first stop of immigrants arriving by boat, where officials looked for disease and criminality and the bar to entry was low, and asked whether any reference to Ellis Island is a reference to open borders. Benjamin Powell said he finds “open borders” a loaded term that packages things together, including the chaos on the southern border, which he noted is not an open border when people pay $5,000 to $10,000 to coyotes to be smuggled across. He distinguished no checks at all from Ellis Island migration policy or free migration, which he said implies no blanket quantitative restrictions on immigrants from any particular origin country, while allowing basic qualitative checks at legal checkpoints for contagious disease, known criminals or terrorists. Bob agreed that the phrase is poisoned and gets people angry, and joked that he would take an oath never to say it. 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, so returning to it would be law and order immigration without restricting numbers The Economics of Immigration (2022).

Across episodes

The topic recurs across 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022. The 2013 episode with Alex Nowrasteh is described as covering the history and economics of US immigration policy and arguing for a return to the let them all in approach of the 19th century, with the shift to restrictionism attributed to Progressive Era centralization and economic protectionism rather than cultural failure Let Them All In (2013). Between the earlier and later treatments, the vocabulary shifts: Bob’s 2011 formulation let them all in gives way by 2022 to Powell’s preference for Ellis Island migration policy over the loaded phrase open borders, while the underlying argument for generous immigration persists.

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