DemocracyThe God That Failed (35 page)

Put differently, while someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone else wanting him to do so, goods and services cannot be shipped from place to place unless both sender and receiver agree. Trivial as this distinction may appear, it has momentous consequences, for
free
in conjunction with trade means trade by invitation of private households and firms only; and
restricted
trade does not mean protection of households and firms from uninvited goods or services, but invasion and abrogation of the right of private households and firms to extend or deny invitations to their own property. In contrast,
free
in conjunction with immigration does not mean immigration by invitation of individual households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration; and
restricted
immigration actually means, or at least can mean, the protection of private households and firms from unwanted invasion and forced integration. Hence, in advocating free trade and restricted immigration, one follows the same principle: of requiring an invitation for people as for goods and services.

The free trade and free market proponent who adopts the conditional free immigration position is involved in intellectual inconsistency. Free trade and markets mean that private property owners may receive or send goods from and to other owners without government interference. The government stays inactive
vis-a-vis
the process of foreign and domestic trade, because a paying recipient exists for every good or service sent; hence, every locational change, as the outcome of an agreement between sender and receiver, must be deemed mutually beneficial. The government's sole function is that of maintaining the very trading-process by protecting citizen and domestic property. However, with respect to the movement of people, the same government will have to do more 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 would include 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 to be invited by domestic residents), a government cannot rightfully allow the kind of free immigration advocated by most free traders. Just imagine again th
at the United States and
Switzerland threw their borders open to whoever wanted to come, provided only that immigrants be excluded from all welfare entitlements (which would be reserved for United States and Swiss citizens respectively). Apart from the sociological problem of thereby creating two distinct classes of domestic residents and thus causing severe social tensions, there is little doubt about the outcome of this experiment in the present world.
¹¹
The result would be less drastic and less immediate than under the scenario of unconditional free immigration, but it would also amount to a massive foreign invasion and ultimately lead to the destruction of American and Swiss civilization. Even if no welfarehandouts were available to immigrants, this does not mean that they would actually have to work, since even life on and off the public streets and parks in the United States and Switzerland is comfortable as compared to "real" life in many other areas of the world. Thus, in order to fulfill its primary function as the 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.
¹²

V

From the recognition that proponents of free trade and markets cannot advocate free immigration without being inconsistent and contradicting themselves, and that therefore immigration must logically be restricted, it is but a small step to the further recognition of
how
it must be restricted. In fact, all high-wage area governments presently restrict immigration in one way or another. Nowhere is immigration "free," unconditionally or conditionally. However, the restrictions imposed on immigration by the United States and by Switzerland, for instance, are quite different. Which restrictions
should
exist? More precisely, which 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 to be free in the same sense as trade is free, immigration must be
invited.
The details follow from the further
elucidation and exemplification of the concepts of invitation versus invasion and forced integration.

ⁿ
Note, that even if immigrants were excluded from all tax-funded welfare entitlements as well as the democratic "right" to vote, they would still be "protected" and covered by all currently existing antidiscrimination affirmative action laws, which would prevent domestic residents from "arbitrarily" excluding them from employment, housing, and any other form of "public" accommodation.

¹²
For a brilliant literary treatment of the subject of "free" immigration see Jean Raspail,
The
Camp
of
the
Saints
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975).

To this end, it is necessary to presuppose, as a conceptual benchmark, the existence of what political philosophers have described as a private property anarchy, anarcho-capitalism, or ordered anarchy." All land is privately owned, including all streets, rivers, airports, and harbors. With respect to some pieces of land, the property title may be unrestricted; that is, the owner is permitted to do whatever he pleases with his property as long as he does not physically damage the property of others. With respect to other territories, the property title may be more or less restricted. As is currently the case in some housing developments, the owner may be bound by contractual limitations on what he can do with his property (restrictive covenants, voluntary zoning), which might include residential rather than commercial use, no buildings more than four stories high, no sale or rent to unmarried couples, smokers, or Germans, for instance.

Clearly, in this kind of society there is no such thing as freedom of immigration or an immigrant's right-of-way. Rather, there exists the freedom of many independent private property owners to admit or exclude others from their own property in accordance with their own restricted or unrestricted property titles. Admission to some territories might be easy, while to others it might be nearly impossible. Moreover, admission to the property of one party does not imply the "freedom to move around," unless other property owners have agreed to such movements. There will be as much immigration or nonimmigration, inclusivity or exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, nondiscrimination or discrimination as individual owners or associations of individual owners desire.
¹⁴

¹³
On the theory of anarcho-capitalism see Murray N. Rothbard,
The
Ethics
of
Liberty
(New York: New York University Press, 1988); idem,
For
A
New
Liberty
(New York: Collier, 1978); Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
The
Economics
and
Ethics
of
Private
Prop
erty
(Boston: Kluwer, 1993); David Friedman,
The
Machinery
of
Freedom:
Guide
to
Radical
Capitalism
(La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1989); Morris and Linda Tannehill,
The
Market
for
Liberty
(New York: Laissez Faire Books, 1984); Anthony de Jasay,
Against
Politics:
On
Government,
Anarchy,
and
Order
(London: Routledge, 1997).

¹⁴
If every piece of land in a country were owned by some person, group, or corporation," elaborates Murray N. Rothbard,

this would mean that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed to rent, or purchase property. A totally privatized country would be as closed as the particular inhabitants and property owners desire. It seems clear, then, that the regime of open borders that
exists
de
facto
in the U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors.... Under total privatization, many local conflicts and externality problems—not merely the immigration problem—would be neatly settled. With every locale and neighborhood owned by private firms, corporations, or contractual communities, a true diversity would reign, according to the preferences of each community. Some neighborhoods would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortions, while others would prohibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed, but would simply be requirements for residence or for use of some person's or community's land area. While statists, who have the itch to impose their values on everyone else, would be disappointed, every group or interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflicts, it would at least provide a "second-best" solution that most people might be willing to live with. ("Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State,"
Journal
of
Liber
tarian
Studies
11, no. 1 [1994]: 7)

The reason for citing the model of an anarcho-capitalist society is that no such thing as forced integration (uninvited migration) is possible (permitted) within its framework. Under this scenario no difference between the physical movement of goods and the migration of people exists. Just as every product movement reflects an underlying agreement between sender and receiver, so are all movements of immigrants into and within an anarcho-capitalist society the result of an agreement between the immigrant and one or a series of receiving domestic property owners. Hence, even if the anarcho-capitalist model is ultimately rejected—and if for "realism's" sake the existence of a government and of "public" (in addition to private) goods and property is assumed—it brings into clear focus what a government's immigration policy would have to be
if
and
insofar
as this government derived its legitimacy from the sovereignty of the "people" and was viewed as the outgrowth of an agreement or "social contract" (as is presumably the case with all modern—post-monarchical—governments, of course). Surely, such a "popular" government, which assumed as its primary task the protection of its citizens and their property (the production of domestic security), would want to preserve rather than abolish this no-forcedintegration feature of anarcho-capitalism.

In order to clarify what this implies, it is necessary to explain how an anarcho-capitalist society is altered by the introduction of a government, and how this affects the immigration problem. Since there is no government in
an anarcho-capitalist society, there is no clear-cut distinction between inlanders (domestic citizens) and foreigners. This distinction appears only with the establishment of a government. The territory over which a government's power extends then becomes inland, and everyone residing outside of this territory becomes a foreigner. State borders (and passports), as distinct from private property borders (and titles to property), come into existence, and immigration takes on a new meaning. Immigration becomes immigration by foreigners across state borders, and the decision as to whether or not a person should be admitted no longer rests exclusively with private property owners or associations of such owners but ultimately with the government
qua
domestic security-producer monopolist. Now if the government excludes a person while a domestic resident exists who wants to admit this very person onto his property, the result is forced exclusion; and if the government admits a person while no domestic resident exists who wants to have this person on his property, the result is forced integration.

Moreover, hand-in-hand with the institution of a government comes the institution of public property and goods; that is, of property and goods owned collectively by all domestic residents and controlled and administered by the government. The larger or smaller the amount of public government ownership, the greater or smaller will be the potential problem of forced integration. Consider a socialist society like the former Soviet Union or East Germany, for example. All factors of production (capital goods), including all land and natural resources, are publicly owned. Accordingly, if the government admits an uninvited immigrant, it admits him to any place within the country; for without private land ownership there are no limitations on his internal migrations other than those decreed by government. Under socialism, therefore, forced integration can be spread everywhere and thereby immensely intensified. (In fact, in the Soviet Union and East Germany, for instance, the government could quarter a stranger in someone else's private house or apartment. This measure and the resulting high-powered forced integration was justified on grounds of the "fact" that all private houses rested on public land.
¹⁵
)

Socialist countries are not high-wage areas, of course. Or if they are, they will not remain so for long. Their problem is not immigration but emigration pressure. The Soviet Union and East Germany prohibited
emigration and killed people for trying to leave the country.
¹⁶
However, the problem of the extension and intensification of forced integration persists outside of socialism. To be sure, in nonsocialist countries such as the United States, Switzerland, and the Federal Republic of Germany, which
are
favorite immigration destinations, a government-admitted immigrant could not move just anywhere. His freedom of movement would be severely restricted by the extent of private property and private land ownership in particular. Yet by proceeding on public roads or with public means of transportation and by staying on public land and in public parks and buildings, an immigrant can cross every domestic resident's path, and move into virtually any neighborhood. The smaller the quantity of public property, the less likely this will occur, but as long as
any
public property exists it cannot be entirely avoided.

¹⁵
By the same token, under socialism every form of internal migration was subject to government control. See on this Victor Zaslavsky and Yuri Lury, "The Passport System in the USSR and Changes in the Soviet Union,"
Soviet
Union
8, no. 2 (1979).