For the past several years, there has been a running debate within the libertarian movement between libertarians who favor government immigration controls and those who favor open borders.
As an advocate of open borders, I have never been able to figure out how those libertarians who favor government-controlled borders are able to reconcile their position with the libertarian non-aggression principle, which condemns the initiation of force against others and holds that people should be free to do whatever they want so long as their conduct is peaceful.
I have also been unable to understand how the government-controlled-borders libertarians reconcile their position with the concepts of natural, God-given rights, private property, free markets, and limited government, all of which are bedrock political and economic principles of libertarianism. (My inability to understand the pro-government-controlled-borders position is even more pronounced with respect to those libertarians who favor no government at all.)
Under libertarian principles, I have the fundamental right to do whatever I want with my own money. That’s because it’s my money — my private property. I have the right to spend, invest, donate, or hoard it, or whatever. If I use my money to open a business, it’s my business. It is privately owned, by me. Under the non-aggression principle, I have the right to use my money to hire whoever I want, including someone from another country. No one, including any American citizen, has a right to force me to hire him. Again, that’s because it’s my money — my private property. I have the right to do anything I want with it.
What the government-controlled-border libertarian says is: Hornberger doesn’t have the right to hire whomever he wants, if his employee has not been approved by the government.
Read the rest at the Future of Freedom Foundation.
