"David Boaz on Immigration" - My Contribution to the Liberty Fund Symposium on "The Legacy of David Boaz"

My contribution to the Liberty Fund symposium on “The Legacy of David Boaz” is now available on the symposium website. See here. Here is an excerpt:

David Boaz did not write much on immigration. But what he did say on the subject indicates his understanding that breaking down harsh migration restrictions should be a high-priority issue for all who value liberty.

In David’s final public speech, “The Rise of Illiberalism in the Shadow of Liberal Triumph,” he emphasized the enduring value of “equal rights for people regardless of color, gender, religion, sexuality or language. Equal rights based on our common humanity.” He warned that the liberal ideal of “inalienable rights” to a “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all people is “incompatible with political ideas based on ‘blood and soil’ or treating people differently because of race or religion.” In our time, there is no greater example of that incompatibility than immigration restrictions, which severely undermine liberty based simply on the fact that would-be migrants were born in the wrong place, to the wrong parents, or are members of the wrong “race or religion.” Severe immigration restrictions, of course, are central to the ideology of “blood and soil” nationalists in the US and Europe, the greatest enemies of liberty in the Western world today.

In a 2006 article, David praised the immigration policy of pre-Chinese Exclusion Act America, in which “there were no restrictions on immigration and thus no “illegal immigrants”. There were rules governing naturalisation and citizenship, but anyone who could get here could live and work here.” That is an ideal we should aspire to return to.

In David’s contribution to National Review’s 2016 “Against Trump” symposium, he wrote that “From a libertarian point of view…. Trump’s greatest offenses against American tradition and our founding principles are his nativism and his promise of one-man rule.” He was right then, and remains right today. Nativism – the main source of support for migration restrictions – is indeed an offense against America’s founding principles, and those of liberalism, more generally.

Later in the essay, I describe how immigration restrictions are inimical to the principles of the American Founding and critique libertarian rationales for exempting migration restrictions from our general presumption in favor of liberty and against government intervention.

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