NOTICE: Mark your calendar! Thursday, October 5, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Benjamin Power is our first presenter in our upcoming online Austrian conference: “How Austrian Economics Impacted My Life.” Register here to receive your Zoom link.
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During my entire life I have watched immigration-control advocates try valiantly to make their immigration-control system work. I’ve always been bemused because no matter how much failure the government has experienced, immigration-control advocates have never given up hope that some day their immigration-control system will finally — finally! — work.
From the very beginning, the goal of America’s immigration-control system has been to prevent foreigners from entering the United States illegally. I think everyone, including the most fanatical of immigration-control advocates, would agree that year after year, decade after decade, their system has failed to achieve its goal.
Today, it is difficult not to be more bemused than ever. That’s because more immigrants than ever are illegally entering the United States. Needless to say, this has caused immigration-control advocates to go into paroxysms of anxiety and mental depression, while still maintaining a deep hope that their system one of these days will finally — finally! — work.
No, it’s not the mental state of immigration-control advocates that has me so bemused. What has me so bemused is what they are saying is the reason for the thousands of immigrants who are today illegally entering the United States.
They’re saying that there is now an “open border” on the U.S.-Mexico border and that that is the reason why so many immigrants are illegally “invading” the United States.
Now, that’s pretty funny!
After all, let’s not forget: There is an immigration police state along the border! There are tens of thousands of Border Patrol agents and ICE agents along the border, all of whom are doing their best to enforce America’s decades-long system of immigration controls.
There are also U.S. military troops along the border, whose aim is the same — to prevent the illegal entry of foreigners into the United States.
There are also the other immigration police-state measures that exist along the border.
There are highway checkpoints, which subject travelers to warrantless stops and searches.
There are also the roving Border Patrol checkpoints, which enable Border Patrol agents to stop vehicles at random and search them, without a search warrant.
There are also the warrantless trespasses and searches of farms and ranches within 100 miles of the border.
There is also the boarding of buses by immigration officials to check people’s papers.
There are also the criminal prosecutions of people who hire, transport, or harbor illegal immigrants.
Oh, and let’t not forget the Berlin Wall that has been placed along the border.
Should I also mention the transportation and dumping of immigrants in various parts of the country or the forcible separation of children from their immigrant parents?
That sort of police-state activity is occurring right now along the border, just as it has for decades.
Why is that an important thing to note?
Because it’s that militarized immigration police state that immigration-control advocates are now labeling “open borders.”
That’s very funny. How can anyone not be bemused over that?
What is really going on here? It’s that immigration-control advocates do not want to acknowledge and confront the obvious: that their decades-old immigration-control system and the immigration police state that they have imposed on people in the borderlands are nothing more than a continuous failure! No matter how many troops they have sent to the border, no matter how many Border Patrol agents and immigration officials they have hired, no matter how many police-state measures they have imposed on people who live on the border, no matter their Berlin Wall — none of it has worked to achieve their goal. It has all been a failure, as we see today with the thousands of immigrants who continue to illegally enter the United States.
But acknowledging failure is a very painful thing for immigration-control advocates to do. That’s what causes them to go off on silly larks, such as, “The reason immigrants are ‘invading’ the United States is that we have adopted the libertarian policy of open borders.”
No, you haven’t. The genuine libertarian position of open borders means the absence of an immigration police state — that is, the total dismantling of all those police-state measures — and the abolition of all governmental restrictions on the free movements of goods, services, and people across borders. Your immigration police state, which obviously has failed to achieve its goal, is the very opposite of the libertarian position of open borders.
Moreover, it is the genuine libertarian concept of open borders that is the only — repeat only — solution to the decades-long failure of America’s socialist system of immigration controls, the liberty-destroying immigration police state that accompanies it, and the deaths, suffering, and endless crises and chaos it continues to produce.