heydaralon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 4:59 pm
good point. Thanks for clearing that up.
I don't mind useful exchange; I live for it. However, I don't get off on middle school "gotcha" crap, which makes up about 90% of what goes on around here. I was rereading this thread this morning and I feel dumb for even responding to your trolling.
But, since I opened the door on myself, here's yet another piece on the topic, from HHH. I've probably posted this before here somewhere.
If you want to know about the state's legitimate obligations to protect the private property rights of its own citizens, read the whole thing.
The Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration
However, with respect to the movement of people, the same government will have to do more in order to fulfill its protective function than merely permit events to take their own course, because people, unlike products, possess a will and can migrate. Accordingly, population movements, unlike product shipments, are not per se mutually beneficial events because they are not always —necessarily and invariably—the result of an agreement between a specific receiver and sender. There can be shipments (immigrants) without willing domestic recipients. In this case, immigrants are foreign invaders, and immigration represents an act of invasion. Surely, a government’s basic protective function includes the prevention of foreign invasions and the expulsion of foreign invaders. Just as surely then, in order to do so and subject immigrants to the same requirement as imports (of having been invited by domestic residents), this government cannot rightfully allow the kind of free immigration advocated by most free traders. Just imagine again that the U.S. and Switzerland opened their borders to whomever wanted to come—provided only that immigrants be excluded from all welfare entitlements, which would be reserved for U.S. and Swiss citizens. Apart from the sociological problem of thus creating two distinct classes of domestic residents and thus causing severe social tensions, there is also little doubt about the outcome of this experiment in the present world. The result would be less drastic and less immediate than under the scenario of unconditional free immigration, but it too would amount to a massive foreign invasion and ultimately lead to the destruction of American and Swiss civilization. Thus, in order to fulfill its primary function as protector of its citizens and their domestic property, a high-wage-area government cannot follow an immigration policy of laissez-passer, but must engage in restrictive measures.
From the recognition that proponents of free trade and markets cannot advocate free immigration without falling into inconsistency and contradiction, and hence, that immigration must —logically—be restricted, it is but a small step to the further recognition of how it must be restricted. As a matter of fact, all high-wage-area governments presently restrict immigration in one way or another. Nowhere is immigration “free,” unconditionally or conditionally. Yet the restrictions imposed on immigration by the U.S. and by Switzerland, for instance, are quite different. What restrictions should then exist? Or, more precisely, what immigration restrictions is a free trader and free marketeer logically compelled to uphold and promote? The guiding principle of a high-wage-area country’s immigration policy follows from the insight that immigration, to be free in the same sense as trade is free, must be invited immigration. The details follow from the further elucidation and exemplification of the concept of invitation vs. invasion and forced integration.
