cfrost: Rad Geek, good luck getting your plan passed into law, in the U.S. or anywhere else on planet earth.

I didn’t say that my proposal is popular. I said that it’s right. I am not foolish enough to think that being right guarantees being popular. Or amoral enough to believe the converse.

As for California farmers, they surely are foolish if they believe that they can practically maintain a quarantine zone larger than most European countries by forcing individual drivers to lose their pears or grapes at an agricultural checkpoint. I’m not too worked up about it in the grand scheme of things, though.

Dock,

Thanks for the dishonestly selective quotation. I do wonder who you think you’re fooling, though, since the source is right above your cherry-picked selection. The existing immigration system certainly does criminalize millions of immigrants — tens of millions, in fact — and forcibly pauperizes many if not most of those by dramatically restricting the kinds of jobs that they can find or their opportunities for advancement. The number who are jailed and deported is in the hundreds of thousands per year (the government only tabulates statistics on “criminal alien” deportations, which are upwards of 80,000). The hellish crossings of the desert that current immigration policy forces on new immigrants “only” kill a few dozen people a year. I feel so great knowing that my government “only” forces a few dozen desperate people per year into a slow and agonizing death from dehydration or exposure in 115 degree temperatures.

Lindsay:

RadGeek, do you think that the government should relinquish all control and supervision over the flow of people across our borders?

Yes. I think that both the Border Patrol and the ICE internal security forces should be completely abolished, as should the entire visa / resident alien documentation system, with complete amnesty for all currently undocumented immigrants. In terms of traveling freely, establishing a temporary or a permanent residence, getting a job, etc., moving from Ottawa to Michigan should be no different, and involve no more scrutiny or documentation, than moving from Michigan to Ohio.

Any legitimate functions that the Border Patrol and ICE serve (say quarantining people with dangerous communicable diseases or apprehending known criminals) can and should be served by ordinary police forces, without regard to immigrant status.

For example, do we have a right to deny entry to war criminals?

I don’t have a firm opinion on whether or not governments would have the right to deny entry to known war criminals. But if they do have such a right, the problem is how to identify war criminals from among the general pool of immigrants, and I don’t think there’s any way of creating an ex ante system for identifying and screening out war criminals that won’t violate the rights of millions of non-war criminals by subjecting them to heightened government scrutiny without probable cause. There’s no reason to think that the average Mexican worker is secretly a war criminal, and no non-xenophobic reason for treating prospective immigrants with a greater presumption of their criminality than U.S. citizens would be.

But anyway, why deny war criminals entry, even if it is within one’s rights to do so? If you’ve identified a war criminal trying to get into the U.S., why not let them in, and then arrest them within the country and pack them off to the appropriate tribunal?

For example, I supported Spitzer’s plan to issue driver’s licenses substantiated by ID other than immigration documents. If people are going to come here, they’ve got to be subject to the same level of monitoring as everyone else. I’m glad that we have means to track citizens.

I also support plans to extend driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, although perhaps for different reasons. But I don’t see how this cuts against the open borders proposal that I advocate. If driver’s licenses or government identification documents are a desirable thing to have for long-term residents, then all my proposal would require is precisely what you advocate — that these licenses or documents be available to all long-term residents, without requiring them to produce documentation of immigration status (since that sort of documentation would no longer exist).

Ex hypothesi, there’s no process, so there’s no path to citizenship for these folks, even if they spend years contributing to our society. Citizens have rights and privileges, but these people are just hanging out in indefinite legal limbo. Is that fair?

I don’t understand the inference here. It seems to me that you’re conflating immigration restrictions with a naturalization process. All I’ve proposed is that the immigration restrictions be done away with. As far as my argument goes, you can implement whatever kind of process you like for naturalizing immigrants once they are here; my only claim is that the government shouldn’t be making any efforts to stop them from getting here, or to control how they can make a living once here, or to throw them out over arbitrarily imposed time limits or restrictions on their peaceful activities.

Similarly, when I moved from Michigan to Nevada, I didn’t have to send any prior notice to the government and I didn’t have to undergo any kind of pre-screening or submit to any government restrictions on how long I could stay or what kind of work I could take. I just moved into a new house and started working. There are defined processes that I have to go through in order to do things like establishing official residency, getting a local driver’s license, registering to vote, etc. These processes just aren’t linked to any kind of ex ante screening at the border.

We’re still going to need checkpoints to inspect goods and make sure all the applicable duties and tariffs get paid.

Well, I don’t think that the government should be collecting duties and tariffs on imported goods, or limiting entry chokepoints for inspection. Those who do think that duties and tariffs are important don’t need government-controlled chokepoints to do that, either; the U.S. government’s physical control over the land borders and the sea coasts used to be far, far looser than it is today, but nevertheless they got by just fine, even when import duties were almost the only source of federal revenue.

But. If this sort of thing is both justified and desirable, then channeling cross-border traffic through government chokepoints isn’t necessarily inconsistent with what people call open borders immigration policy, which refers to the right of people to travel freely across the border without government restrictions, not necessarily the presence or absence of inspection stations. (Does California have an open border with Nevada? I’d say so, in spite of the agricultural inspection stations. Although personally I think that the inspection stations are foolish.)

So, if you please, I support what you call “physically open borders.” If what I can get is checkpointed borders with non-discriminatory inspections, but free and open crossing without any kind of government visa system, then that would be less than what I advocate, but it would also be big step forward over the system we have now, which serves to criminalize, forcibly pauperize, jail, and/or kill millions of immigrants every year.

Just letting people circulate freely without actively inducting them into our system is ghettoizing.

Not as ghettoizing as constantly forcing them to live with the threat of imprisonment and forced separation from their friends, family, livelihoods, and homes.

I haven’t said anything against having naturalization procedures. I just denied that those procedures should be tied to restrictions on crossing borders or living and working within the country.

herbert browne:

Yes, there are 2 distinct issues here. Like rootlesscosmo & Rad Geek I support the former as an “open border” process, with this caveat: It only works with with citizens of countries with whom it is RECIPROCAL, ie the country has to be willing to allow ME to go there & work legally, if I want.

I don’t understand this restriction. Let’s say that you want to move to Ruritania, but the Ruritanian government has closed its borders to American immigrants. And let’s say that a Ruritanian citizen, who had nothing in particular to do with the Ruritanian government’s stupid decision, wants to move to America. Certainly the situation sucks for you, and the Ruritanian government deserves blame for treating you badly. But why should the sins of the Ruritanian government be taken out on some innocent would-be Ruritanian ex-pat, who played no particular role in forming or implementing the policy?

Lindsay:

The reality is that it’s going to be time consuming to process all the people who want to come.

What processing? Again, if we’re talking about entry to the country, rather than naturalization, then there’s no processing necessary: you let people come in via their port of choice and you leave them alone rather than demanding that they flash their papers whenever they try to get a job, try to go to school, etc. etc. I.e., you treat somebody moving from Michoacan to take a job in California the same way that you’d treat somebody moving from Michigan to take a job in California. No processing necessary.

You might say, “Well, what if the Michoacan@ isn’t ready to work and pay taxes?” Well, what if the Michigander isn’t ready to work and pay taxes? Why should the Mexican immigrant be treated with greater scrutiny and greater prior restraint than the American native? Simply because one is Mexican and the other is American? If not, then what other reason is there, besides discrimination on the basis of nationality? If so, then what possible connection could this have to anything like liberal or progressive values?

“Open borders” isn’t an accurate description of any progressive immigration policy or amnesty deal.

Depends on what you mean by “progressive,” I guess. The old-timey Progressives certainly were for all kinds of immigration restrictions. But then, the old-timey Progressives were for sedition laws and forced sterilization, too. I would hope that people who call themselves “Progressives” today have moved on.

“Open borders” makes it sound like society is just stepping back and letting events play out. That’s not what we should be doing at all, and it’s not really what anyone is proposing.

Of course it’s what some people are proposing. I’m proposing it right now. I believe that the government has no business whatsoever in choking off border crossings or in maintaining an internal police force for surveillance and deportation of undocumented immigrants. I think that both should be abolished immediately, and people should be free to move wherever they can find a home and make a living for themselves. Neither “society” (whatever that means) nor the government should be trying to micromanage freely adopted demographic patterns, or trying to exclude or screen people on the basis of their nationality.

We still have the right to manage the flow of new arrivals. For example, even if we agree that everyone who wants to work ought to be able to do so, it doesn’t follow that we are obliged to let in everyone who qualifies at the same time.

On what possible basis would you justify imposing these kind of discriminatory prior restrictions, screens, quarantines, dossier-gathering, etc. on Mexicans, Canadians, Guatamaltecans, Cubans, Haitians, etc., but not on U.S. citizens? How do you figure it’s “progressive” for the government to privilege one group of people over everyone else, when it comes to basic workaday activities like traveling, setting up a home, getting an education, or making a living, solely on the basis of their nationality?

Reform means taking control, and using that power more wisely and humanely, not abdicating.

Sure, which is why reform is a bankrupt goal: it leaves a fundamentally racist and classist system of power in place, even if it liberalizes the exercise of that power slightly around the edges. I’m not for immigration law reform. I’m for repeal.