Those who advocate a policy of “open borders” would be well advised to go on a sight-seeing trip. Perhaps they need not go so far as the border itself, to see the illegals crossing the Tijuana River. Or the no-man’s-land in which bandits prey on illegals, or the tunnels and various paths of exit into the U.S. which the illegals use night after night. It will be sufficient if they pay a few days’ visit to the towns and countryside of the southernmost counties of California (or for that matter Arizona and Texas). Let them stay in the motels that ordinary citizens use, and walk the streets of any once-flourishing town which is now a shantytown, the fashionable shops all gone, and dangerous now to walk in or even to drive through by night. Do they hesitate any longer to visit Tijuana? Now they have it here.
Or let them leave the luxurious Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a popular convention center where they meet with fellow intellectuals to discuss world problems, and walk just a couple of blocks to Skid Row, and witness the crowds of immigrants, most of them probably illegal, roaming the streets in search of one knows not what, and ask whether here in microcosm is the future of America.
Or let them go to a public elementary school, where thousands of children begin their classes without knowing a word of English. The teacher tries to impart to them the meaning of a few English words and phrases. (In some schools, no English is spoken at all, only Spanish.) One can imagine also the boredom of those first-graders who were born in the United States who are already familiar with these English words, whose minds wander to other things, some of which they are supposed to be studying.
Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as “limousine libertarians”—those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.
(John Hospers, "A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders," Journal of Libertarian Studies 13 [summer 1998]: 153-65, at 164-5)
Note from KBJ: There is an unholy alliance between progressives and libertarians on the question of illegal immigration. If you've been reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, you know that the editorial boards of both newspapers support amnesty for those who entered this country illegally. Their reasons differ. Progressives support amnesty on humanitarian grounds; libertarians support it on commercial grounds. How easy it is to support something without feeling its effects firsthand! Are the editorial writers willing to live next door to illegal immigrants? Are they willing to put up with the cultural, environmental, legal, and linguistic devastation that illegal immigration wreaks? They are not. They want the benefits of illegal immigration but want the costs to be borne by others, far away in time and space. Hospers lives in Los Angeles. He sees the effects of illegal immigration every day. He knows what it is doing to this country and its institutions. I wish more libertarians had Hospers's good sense.
