Immigration Is An Inalienable Right
We could have solved the worst of our immigration crises years ago if our leaders had been honest with Americans - immigration is a good thing and a human right.
In the last few years, in the small city I live in, we have had a growing crisis. Thousands of people have flooded in, overcrowding the streets, dramatically spiking the cost of housing, most of them not working for a living. There have been lots of concerned citizens meetings, the city has created an affordable housing commission to try and navigate the housing crisis caused by this influx of people.
Who are these migrants, renting our housing, raising our costs?
They are out-of-state college students coming to study (and party) at the local university.
I’m not joking - the local housing crisis is all most locals can talk about, especially those of us who rent and are working on leases for the fall right now. My own rent has increased $900 in the last three years, $500 this year alone. So I’m not being facetious when I talk about the problems that increasing migration has on a city, nor am I blind to it.
Now think about how differently we address the issue when it’s (mostly wealthy) Americans moving within the country instead of migrants from another country. Yes, Americans have free movement rights within the country - as long as you’re not in Ron DeSantis’ “Free State of Florida” during COVID, that is. But no one is accusing groups of freshmen from California of “eating the cats,” and relatively few are arguing for more restrictions on allowing people to move here. Instead housing builds are increasing, and the city is reasonably working to improve and increase public infrastructure to accommodate.
I do believe that there is no fundamental right of a state to restrict migration in or out of their borders. That is not a popular sentiment, and it is not likely to win me a seat in Congress, I get that. Waves of anti-immigration sentiment, particularly in Western Europe, started with the fallout from the wars in the Middle East in the last few decades and America has always had complicated feelings about our immigrant population. And that is not to argue that large migration influxes don’t cause issues - and they can, no matter where the migrants are coming from, internally or externally. Here’s one thing I can tell you, though: you’d much rather live in the city or country that is growing and attracting migrants, than the one that is shrinking and losing them. (That’s something I fear America as a whole is about to discover.)
Believing that people have a fundamental human right to migrate where they want doesn’t mean governments can’t regulate some aspects of immigration. Yes, migrants coming into the country should be documented. Yes, we should maintain the ability to restrict certain extreme cases of criminals, high-risk terrorists, etc from entering. Yet we have to be mindful that even these fundamental limitations can and are being misused, as evidenced by the State Department canceling visas due to pro-Palestinian writings. Our northern neighbors having long imposed restrictions on even foreigners with past DUIs from entering Canada, which is a poor policy and deserves criticism as well. Libertarians are often criticized for rejecting any regulations, but as I often argue, when others see how regulations can help first, we see how they can be misused.
America already has strict migration restrictions. Ask anyone who has ever immigrated here through the legal processes. It is expensive, difficult, and most Americans would be shocked by how hard we make it. We have this horribly difficult process because loosening it is not politically popular. And yet it doesn’t work. The entire reason we have a huge underclass of “undocumented immigrants,” mostly people who overstayed travel or work visas, is because people are going to do what’s best for their family.
We can try and restrict migration here all we want, but as long as we have a need for migrant labor, people will come here with or without permission. You can build whatever fence you want: ask the UK and Australia - literally islands, mind you - about their undocumented migrant issues. Creating a much more permissive system that allows people to come here legally, be documented, settle, and contribute to civil life without fear of arrest and deportation is the only solution that will work long term.
And no, that’s not popular right now, evidenced by the fact that we’ve tried immigration reform for decades. It never passes because no one wants to be honest with the public. Voters generally wants less immigration, except for the immigrants they know. Some are okay with immigrants who do low-skilled jobs they don’t want to do, others only want “high-skilled” workers (often those that look like them, you’ll find). Politicians are still too afraid to be honest with the public: the only immigration reform that will work is reform that makes it easier to come here and work. That will lead to more immigration, and that is a good thing.