To My Conservative Friends on the Issue of Immigration

Over the last fifty years, during which time I’ve engaged in my own “freedom efforts,” you, my conservative friends, and we libertarians, have stood together on many issues. We have fought many tax and spend boondoggles, stood against attempts to weaken the Bill of Rights, argued together for the morality, not just the efficiency, of the free market. We have stood firm against many attacks on individual liberty. Though not always successful, we have been allies against collectivism in its many disguises.

Sadly, we are not together on the issue of immigration. This disturbs me as I think we should not just support real reform, but should do so standing together as we have on so many other issues, and for the same reasons. In fact the conservatives, with the libertarians and free market economists, should lead the assault on the present closed immigration travesty.

I have heard many superficial arguments against immigrants, whether legal or illegal. Fortunately, conservatives, libertarians, and free market proponents are in agreement on the important basics. Overarching all other arguments is the monumental precept that all men are created with Inalienable Rights.

This country used this as its rallying cry for freedom from the monarchy and all that implied. Slow in evolving historically, but from that point on, encoded, one might say, in the nature of our American adventure. Later it was stated unequivocally; each person has rights within themselves not granted by any other human. Rights that need not, indeed cannot, be granted. If they were innate and belonging to each human individual, then these rights could not be taken away by a king, ruler, or even a religious leader.

To believe that all people have inalienable rights required an enormous mental leap. Now, it seems, to us in this country, a self evident statement. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were students of history. Their letters and writings reveal knowledge and agreement with this concept, most certainly. They, however, went further; beyond study, beyond quoting, beyond mere discussion. They wrote it boldly in ink and signed their names "in letters writ large" for the King and all the world to see.

They understood it was not an academic debate. They knew with certainty they were committing their lives, fortunes and honor and probably, most frightening to them, the safety of their families. If none of these men had performed any other act except sign their name to this document, their boldness and bravery would be enough to earn true hero status. When history called, many did far more and were willing to fight and die for the idea of self-ownership and self-determination.
 
From this critical idea of self-ownership many important principles evolve. It embraces, by logical extension, the right to one's own labor and the fruits of that labor, to contract with others, to defend one's life, to read, write and speak, to learn, think and plan, and among many other choices, the right to move freely.

For some of the Founders, an unpleasant memory included restrictive emigration. They knew walls, checkpoints, required permission from "their betters" and "officially granted papers" in order to travel, were dangerous impediments to freedom. Experience and their intelligent study of history had taught them well and they wanted no prohibitions on their movements. They desired for all people the same liberty they desired for themselves; the freedom to come and go as one pleases. They also understood that any wall that could keep other people out could also keep them enslaved within.

Remember also the complaint against King George restricting immigration was so vitally important to them it is included in the Declaration of Independence, stated right in the very document itself. Fortunately, for many years of America's history, there were no restrictions on people coming in, nor on those going out. They acted upon the assumption of open ingress and egress as expected among a free people. Most of them welcomed all newcomers, recognizing the desirability of new people to our shores. The Constitution included a section on citizenship but it was unthinkable that immigrants be denied entry.

Rightfully, anyone can say they do not want someone to trespass on their own private property. That is a far different matter, however, from declaring that those who feel negatively about newcomers have a right to tell people, people who others may want here, that they cannot come in or walk about on common property. Assuming there is "common property" then logically, the people wanting to keep immigrants out have no more rights than those people who want them here.

For restrictions to be placed on peaceful people wanting to come here to visit friends and relatives, to buy and sell, live and work, is a restriction on them as well as on the many people who want immigrants to be here so they may interact with them.

An essential freedom is that which allows people to interact with whom they wish, when and where they wish. This underlies the idea of contracts, and, in fact, our entire economic system. True liberty requires respect for this right to associate and as this right naturally requires respect for freedom of movement, I ask my conservative friends, who have worked for freedom in other areas, to work with libertarians and all friends of freedom to defend the right of people to move and live and work where they wish.