Soon after September 11th, 2001, I attended a Libertarian dinner/speech with my good friend Eric. This particular dinner was a real treat for me simply for the reason that the keynote speaker was Nathanial Brandon. I’ve always admired Nathanial Brandon since I read his fantastic book “Judgment Day” back in the early 90’s.
Sitting at our table was the host of the event Jacob “Bumper” Hornberger. I have known about Jacob Hornberger for a number of years now. He was a Libertarian candidate for president in the 2000 elections and ran for a Virginian Senate seat in 2002. I had also seen a few of his talks on C-Span and have read numerous articles of his on fff.org. But, what really drew me to Mr. Hornberger was/is his stand on immigration. Mr. Hornberger is a tireless advocate of open immigration for the United States. He advocates an open border policy and a dismantling of the Border Patrol. These are issues on which we certainly agree.
While at the dinner I posed this question to him:
In light of September 11th, what can we do to ensure we do not become a completely closed society, in effect criminalizing all immigration?
His answer was simple:
Be vigilant, fight harder.
Let me make myself clear before I go any further. I am for open immigration. I am for abolishing the INS and the Border Patrol. Conservatives and Libertarians who argue against open immigration because of the cost to our social welfare system are completely missing the point. Abolish the welfare system. Conservatives and Libertarians who argue against immigration because it takes jobs away from Americans miss the point. Jobs belong to the people who offer them, not to the people seeking them.
These two arguments should pretty much be self-evident to most Libertarians. Apparently not all however. Consider this blog entry from Lew Rockwell’s Blog today:
Four Illegals Aliens Gang Rape NY Woman
Posted by Marcus Epstein at January 17, 2004 03:51 PMDiversity is strength! Immigrants do the jobs Americans don’t want! We’re a nation of immigrants!
The link Mr. Epstein provides is to an article written by the folks over at World Net Daily. It’s not really the article that bothers me, it’s the way Mr. Epstein chooses to describe his feelings towards the article.
Now, we all know that the folks over at Lew Rockwell are staunchly anti-immigration. It’s never really been explained to me, however, just why the people who claim to host the “anti-state, anti-war, pro-market news site” feel completely justified using the state to impose restrictions on the market. Numerous other people have called them on this so, I’ll save that for another day.
Now, I assume Mr. Epstein is taking a jab at Liberals in general since most libertarians I know give a wit about diversity. I can think of some libertarians who might make the argument that immigrants do the jobs Americans don’t want but, most are too intelligent to over simplify the problem in this manner.
While I don’t mind taking the occasional swipe at Liberals myself, I would probably be a bit more careful not to make a total ass monkey out of myself doing so. What Mr. Epstein is implying with this simple statement (whether he realizes it or not) is that all illegal immigrants are gang rapists and those who promote an open immigration policy are nothing more than shills for the bleeding heart Liberals out there.
Just so I’m not accused of missing Lew Rockwell’s point, I do understand the thrust of their arguments. It is their contention that open immigration will allow those not educated in the finer aspects of liberty and freedom to saturate our population. Once these people get the right to vote, they will systematically turn our country into their place of origin. Eventually, America will undoubtedly become Balkanized along with the inevitable result.
Essentially what the people over at Lew Rockwell are arguing for is the right to maintain their Anglo-Saxon culture. It’s going to take someone a great deal of time and effort to ever convince me that I have a God given right to a certain culture.
But, then again, I believe in freedom.
