Comments Elsewhere

Jay Tea: The fundamental question behind all this is stunning in its simplicity: does the United States have the right to maintain and secure its own borders, to regulate and control who comes into the United States, when, how, and why?

That’s not the fundamental question behind all this.

The fundamental question behind all this is whether the United States government has the right to impose restrictions on whom United States citizens can invite into their own homes, sell land to, rent to, provide services to, or employ. Because you realize that’s what your little policy proposals involve, right? Bigger government and more restrictions on the freedom of those American citizens who do not agree with exclusionist immigration policy?

To illustrate, consider this little plan for less immigration:

Linoge: I would not go so far as to say they should be arrested on sight (though I am close), but their presence illegally in another nation should be heavily discouraged. That means, no health care, no driver’s licenses, no jobs, no nothing. At all. Ever.

Let’s set aside for the moment the question of how you could discern somebody’s immigration status “on sight” for the purposes of the arrest, and ask a different question. In the United States, health care and jobs are not (usually) provided by bureaus of the government. They are (mostly) provided by private doctors (nurses, midwives, etc.) and by private employers. If I happen to be a doctor, and I want to treat a paying customer without checking her or his immigration status, this policy proposal would require that the government use physical violence in order to stop me from providing health care whichever paying customers I want to. If I happen to have a job I need to get done and willingly hire a good worker to get it done, this policy proposal would require that the government use physical violence against me in order to stop me from hiring whomever I think is best qualified. Where in the world do you think that big government bureaucrats in Washington get the knowledge, the virtue, or the right to go around giving me orders about how I can run my own business, or provide healthcare to whoever needs it?