Immigration ranks among the top three domestic issues in the U.S. presidential race. Republicans accuse Democrat presidential candidate Angela Harris of having failed to “secure” the border in her supposed role as Border Czar. Democrats respond by saying that Harris was never appointed Border Czar and that she and her Democrat cohorts are as determined to “secure” the border as Trump and his Republican cohorts.
Of course, all of this is nothing more than pure deadly and destructive political inanity — the same inanity we have heard in presidential campaigns for our entire lives. And as long as America remains committed to its socialist system of immigration controls, we will continue to hear this deadly and destructive political nonsense in every presidential campaign for the rest of our lives.
For 34 years here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, I have been emphasizing a critically important point, one that Republicans, Democrats, and even rightwing libertarians simply do not want to confront. That point is this: No matter who is elected president and no matter what immigration-reform plan is put into place, it will not succeed in making America’s immigration-control system work. There will continue to be a perpetual immigration crisis, deaths and suffering of innocent people, and a massive, ever-growing immigration police state along the border.
Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Jason Owens delivers remarks as the U.S. Border Patrol hosts a ceremony in El Paso, Texas, to commemorate 100 years of securing the U.S. border, May 24, 2024.
Let me emphasize that 34-year-old point again: This system cannot be made to work, no matter who is elected president and no matter what immigration-reform plan is adopted.
Contrary to what Republicans, Democrats, independents, the mainstream press, and rightwing libertarians often claim, America’s immigration-control system is not “broken.” When something is broken, it is oftentimes able to be fixed.
America’s immigration control system is actually inherently defective. Something that is inherently defective cannot be fixed. That’s why America’s immigration-control system has not worked for the past 100 years. That’s why immigration is always a hot topic in every presidential election.
Regardless of whether it is Trump who is elected or Harris, there will be all the same hoopla about immigration in the 2028 presidential election as there has been in 2024 (and as there was in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, etc.)
America’s immigration-control system is based on the socialist principle of central planning. Socialist central planning cannot be made to work, regardless of whether it is being run by a Republican, Democrat, independent, rightwing libertarian, or the most brilliant immigration-control expert in the world. That’s because it is an inherently defective system. The free-market economist Ludwig von Mises observed that socialist central planning produces “planned chaos.” What better term to describe the U.S.-Mexico border during the entirety of our lives, regardless of who has been elected president?
But socialist central planning in the area of immigration doesn’t just produce perpetual crisis and chaos. It has produces death and suffering for countless innocent people. But it does even more than that. It also produces a massive immigration police state along the border, which includes such totalitarian measures as highway checkpoints, warrantless searches of ranches and farms, violent raids on American businesses, the criminalization of hiring, transporting, harboring, and caring for illegal immigrants, a Berlin Wall, the boarding of Greyhound buses to check for people’s papers, and much more.
Rightwing libertarians claim that America’s socialist immigration-control system is actually encompassed by the libertarian philosophy and, therefore, that libertarians should join up with Democrats, Republicans, and independent statists by embracing it. What they are actually saying is that libertarianism is a philosophy of socialism, death and suffering of innocent people, and a police state. If that were really the case, I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the libertarian philosophy. In actuality though, rightwing libertarians are wrong. Libertarianism is a philosophy of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, vitality, energy, entrepreneurship, peace, prosperity, morality, and harmony among people.
For 34 years, I have been making a second critically important point, one that Republicans, Democrats, and rightwing libertarians simply do not want to hear: There is only one solution to the immigration morass that immigration socialism has brought to our land. That solution is open borders — that is, freedom and free markets — the abolition of the Border Patrol (which didn’t exist until 1924) and ICE and the removal of all restrictions on the free movements of people across borders, just like the open borders we have inside the United States between the states.
Let me repeat that point for emphasis: There is only one — repeat one — solution to America’s 100-year immigration-control morass: open borders, a system that is based on freedom and free markets. Americans should be leading the world to freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony. That means changing our system, not electing “better” people to run it.
