'Immigrants Are Trespassers' Is a Socialist Argument

By Bryan Caplan.

Should you need government permission to take a job offer from a willing employer, rent an apartment from a willing landlord, or buy a product from a willing merchant? Most libertarians will rush to say, "No; these are basic human rights." Do all human beings have these rights? Most libertarians will rush to say, "Yes; we hold these truths to be self-evident."

If you snap these two answers together, they imply a policy of free immigration. If an American doesn't need government permission to take a job offer from an American, why should a Mexican need government permission to take such an offer? Yet today, many libertarians oppose free immigration. Plenty favor even stricter regulations than we already have.

What makes libertarians so open to immigration restrictions? Their favorite rationale comes straight from the late, great Milton Friedman. In a 1999 interview, he famously declared, "You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state." Libertarians who support immigration restrictions have been quoting him ever since. But was he right?

Friedman plainly overstates. Suppose the welfare state gave everyone in the United States just $1 per year. Even if everyone on Earth moved here, that annual $8 billion would be only a little more than 0.1 percent of the federal budget. No matter how philosophically opposed to this handout you are, it would be foolish to insist that it "cannot" be done. The feasibility of combining free immigration with the welfare state is plainly a matter of degree. It depends on the benefits immigrants receive and the taxes they pay. It depends, in short, on math—math that almost everyone finds too boring to consider.

Fortunately, there are quants who do this boring math for a living, quants like the people who write reports for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). While quants' answers vary, they don't vary that much. By NAS calculations, the average current immigrant to the U.S. is ultimately a net fiscal positive. When you split the sample up by education and age, high school dropouts and the elderly are net negatives but all other demographics are net positives.

How can the math be so benign? First, because immigrants' home countries often pay for most or all of their education, so U.S. taxpayers don't have to. Second, because immigrants tend to be young and therefore pay taxes for decades before they start collecting retirement benefits. Third, because much government spending (such as defense and debt service) does not depend on population. Immigrants who pay below-average taxes can still improve our fiscal outlook, just as moviegoers who buy discounted tickets can still improve a movie theater's profitability.

What if you tone down Friedman's hyperbole, and just say, "Open borders are probably fiscally feasible, but it's still in our interest to exclude all of the immigrants who are statistically expected to be a net burden"? Pragmatically, the obvious objection is: Why are you focused on excluding burdensome immigrants instead of limiting their access to benefits so they cease to be burdensome? Virtually every country already limits foreigners' access to benefits. The Gulf monarchies, with extremely strict limits, not coincidentally have the world's most open immigration policies. Why not emulate that?

The philosophical objection to excluding burdensome immigrants is even stronger. If government may justifiably forbid the entry of burdensome immigrants, may government also justifiably forbid the birth of burdensome natives? You need not be a math whiz to realize that the child of an unemployed mother and an imprisoned father is likely to be a burden on taxpayers. Should libertarians take this as a compelling reason for government to restrict the right to reproduce?

Libertarians famously oppose fairly mild infringements of personal freedom, such as mask requirements, vaccine mandates, gun bans, and motorcycle helmet laws. Why? Because libertarians hold government to high standards. When a law has bad effects, libertarians push for repeal, not another law to offset those bad effects. When governments restrict immigration, consistency requires libertarians to hold them to the same high standards—much higher, really, because denying someone the right to do business in the labor and housing markets is truly draconian.

But don't nations, like property owners, have the right to exclude outsiders? Since you can't move into my house without my permission, the argument goes, you shouldn't be allowed to move into our country without our permission. The implications here are totalitarian. The reasoning is exactly parallel to: You can't start a church in my house without my permission, therefore you shouldn't be allowed to start a church in our country without our permission. Or: You can't open a store in my house without my permission, therefore you shouldn't be allowed to open a store in our country without our permission.

The core of libertarianism is that a country belongs not to "the people" collectively, but to property owners individually. If and when the welfare state makes an immigrant a net negative, labeling the immigrant a "trespasser" may be convenient. But you have to be a socialist to really believe it."