The debate was lively and spirited on both sides, and one club member commented that it was the best debate he had ever seen at the Forum.

Unfortunately, the debate was not videotaped, but the following is my
3-minute opening statement of the debate:

Just about everything the federal government has done for the past 40 years is today in crisis — Social Security, healthcare, the drug war, foreign policy, the dollar — you name it, it’s in crisis. Unfortunately, the response of Washington policymakers to all these crises has been to move our nation even more in the direction of the socialism of the Soviet Union than the principles of freedom of our Founding Fathers. A good example of this phenomenon is the 40-year-old federal war on immigrants, which, not surprisingly, is also in crisis!

For example, there’s nothing the anti-immigrant crowd in Washington would love more than to build a new Berlin Wall along the southern border of the United States. They might not call it that because they’re embarrassed but make no mistake about it — that’s their ideal. And there are even people in Congress who have called for sending U.S. military forces onto the farms and ranches and communities in the Southwest in order to “seal” the border … just like in the Soviet Union.

Second, for many years federal forces have engaged in the forcible repatriation of Cuban refugees into communist tyranny. They attack these defenseless refugees, sometimes with water cannons, and capture them on the high seas and then, working closely with their Cuban communist Coast Guard counterparts, forcibly repatriate them into communist tyranny, as if communism is just no big deal anymore … just like in the Soviet Union.

Third, the anti-immigrant crowd are fierce advocates of socialistic central planning … just like in the Soviet Union. They honestly believe that after 40 years of distortions and perversions arising from an endless series of immigration reforms, some government bureaucrat or agency is going to be able to plan the intricate affairs of a complex labor market involving millions of prospective employers and employees. I assume most of you here are conservatives. You’ve read Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. You know that central planning will never work because it is incapable of working.

The anti-immigrant crowd will never succeed in repealing the laws of supply and demand any more than the laws of God or the laws of morality. And they will never be able to build a wall high enough to keep people from seeking freedom or a better way of life.

I say: Let’s reject the socialism emanating from Washington. Let’s lead the world out of this socialist morass and toward our heritage — a heritage of liberty — toward the principles of freedom expressed in our Declaration of Independence and reflected by our Statue of Liberty — toward free men and free markets — the free movement of goods, services, and people across borders. Not only because would this be the morally correct course of action but also because, as everyone in this room knows, free enterprise, unlike socialism, works.