DemocracyThe God That Failed (32 page)

As far as immigration policies are concerned, the incentives and disincentives are likewise distorted, and the results are equally perverse. For a democratic ruler, it also matters little whether bums or geniuses, below or above-average civilized and productive people immigrate into the country. Nor is he much concerned about the distinction between temporary workers (owners of work permits) and permanent, property owning immigrants (naturalized citizens)." In fact, bums and unproductive people may well be preferred as residents and citizens, because they create more so-called "social" problems," and democratic rulers thrive on the existence of such problems. Moreover, bums and inferior people will likely support his egalitarian policies, whereas geniuses and superior people will not. The result of this policy of nondiscrimination is forced integration: the forcing of masses of inferior immigrants onto domestic property owners who, if the decision were left to them, would have sharply discriminated and chosen very
different
neighbors for themselves. Thus, as the best available example of democracy at work, the United States immigration laws of 1965 eliminated all previous "quality" concerns and the explicit preference for
European
immigrants, replacing them with a policy of almost complete nondiscrimination (multiculturalism).
¹⁷

¹⁵
To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be emphasized here that the difference between monarchical and democratic-republican government with respect to emigration policy is
not
one of restrictive versus unrestricted emigration. In fact, the most severe restrictions on emigration were imposed in the twentieth century, by the so-called socialist peoples' republics of Eastern Europe. Rather, the difference is one concerning the
type
of restrictions, respectively the
motivation
underlying such restrictions. Thus, whereas monarchical emigration restrictions were typically motivated by economic concerns, democratic-republican restrictions are typically motivated by power concerns, with the most frequent restriction being that one may not emigrate until one has fulfilled one's compulsory military service. See on this Carr-Saunders,
World
Population,
p. 148.

¹⁶
Of all major European countries it has been France, the country
with the longest democratic-republican tradition, which has boasted the most "liberal," i.e., least restrictive, immigration and naturalization policy. See on this ibid., pp. 57,145,154.

¹⁷
See Lawrence Auster,
The
Path
to
National
Suicide:
An
Essay
on
Immigration
and
Multiculturalism
(Monterey, Calif.: A1CEF, 1990);
Immigration
and
the
American
Iden
tity,
Thomas Fleming, ed. (Rockford, Ill.: Rockford Institute, 1995); George J. Borjas,
Friends
or
Strangers:
The
Impact
of
Immigrants
on
the
U.S.
Economy
(New York: Basic Books, 1990); idem,
Heaven's
Door:
Immigration
Policy
and
the
American
Economy
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999); Brimelow,
Alien
Nation.

To put matters into perspective, Brimelow documents chat from 1820 until 1967, when the new immigration laws went into effect, almost 90 percent of all immigrants were of European descent. In contrast, from 1967 until 1993, some 85 percent of the close to 17 million legal immigrants arriving in the U.S. came from the Third World, mostly Latin America and Asia (pp.
77,
281-85). Rather than selection by skill and job qualification as before 1967, the primary selection criteria currently are "family reunification," "asylum," and "diversity lottery" (pp. 78-84). Consequently, the average level of education and the average wage rate of immigrants has continually fallen as compared to their native American counterparts. Moreover, the welfare participation rate of immigrant households significantly exceeds—and increasingly so—that of the native population (which includes Blacks and Puerto Ricans with an already extremely high welfare participation rate). For instance, the welfare participation rate of Cambodian and Laotian immigrants is almost 50 percent; that of Vietnamese immigrants is above 25 percent; Dominican Republic 28 percent; Cuba 16 percent; former Soviet Union 16 percent; China 10 percent. As well, immigrants remain on the dole for increasingly longer periods (pp. 141-53,287-88). Last but not least, Brimelow estimates that if the current trends of legal as well as illegal immigraton continue, the population of European descent, which has traditionally made up close to 90 percent of the U.S. population, will be on the verge of becoming a minority by the year 2050 (p. 63). But won't all of the immigrants be assimilated and become Americans? Not likely, because in order to be successfully assimilated, the influx of immigrants needs to be small in comparison to the host population. However, the current influx of about one million legal immigrants (and two to three-hundred-thousand illegal immigrants) per year is concentrated in just a few regions: California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New York, and New Jersey—and most immigrants actually move to just six metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, Anaheim, Chicago, Miami, New York, and Washington, D.C. (p. 36). In these regions, the number of immigrants is proportionally so large that any assimilation is essentially out of the question. Rather than gradually being Americanized, then, in these areas immigrants have established foreign Third World "countries" on formerly American soil.

George Borjas notes further that

almost a quarter of immigrant households received some type of assistance, compared to 15 percent of native households. ... Wh
at's more, the use of public assistance by immigrants increases over time. It seems that assimilation involves learning not only about labor market
opportunities but also about the opportunities provided by the welfare state.... A study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that immigration in fact raised the taxes of the typical native household in California by about $1,200 per year.... [As for refugees in particular,] the evidence indicates that... after 10 years in the United States, 16 percent of Vietnamese refugees, 24 percent of Cambodian refugees and 34 percent of Laotian refugees were still receiving public assistance. ("Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy,"
Milken
Institute
Review
1, no. 3 [1999]: 64-65,79)

Indeed, the immigration policy of a democracy is the mirror image of its policy toward
internal
population movements: toward the voluntary association and dissociation, segregation and desegregation, and the physical distancing and approximating of various private property owners. Like a king, a democratic ruler promotes spatial over-integration by over-producing the "public good" of roads. However, for a democratic ruler, unlike a king, it will not be sufficient that everyone can move next door to anyone else on government roads. Concerned about his
current
income and power rather than capital values and constrained by egalitarian sentiments, a democratic ruler will tend to go even further. Through nondiscrimination laws—one cannot discriminate against Germans, Jews, Blacks, Catholics, Hindus, homosexuals, etc.—the government will want to increase the physical access and entrance to everyone's property to everyone else. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the so-called "civil rights" legislation in the United States, which outlawed domestic discrimination on the basis of color, race, national origin, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, etc., and which thereby actually mandated forced integration,
¹⁸
coincided with the adoption of a nondiscriminatory immigration policy; i.e., mandated international desegregation (forced integration).

Moreover, Borjas emphasizes, "ethnicity matters in economic life, and it matters for a very long time" (p. 66). That is, the (increasingly high) skill differential between the native and the immigrant population does not quickly disappear as the result of cultural assimilation. Instead, immigrants typically move to "ethnic ghettos" which "incubate ethnic differences," and thus "ethnic skill differentials may persist for three generations" (p. 66).

¹⁸
On the law and economics of "affirmative action" and discrimination see Richard A. Epstein,
Forbidden
Grounds
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Walter Block and Michael Walker, eds.,
Discrimination,
Affirmative
Action,
and
Equal
Opportunity
(Vancouver: Frazer Institute, 1982); Hugh Murray, "White Male Privilege? A Social Construct for Political Oppression,"
Journal
of
Libertarian
Studies
14, no. 1 (1999).

VII

The current situation in the United States and in Western Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with "free" immigration. It is forced integration, plain and simple, and forced integration is the predictable outcome of democratic one-man-one-vote rule. Abolishing forced integration requires the de-democratization of society and ultimately the abolition of democracy. More specifically, the power to admit or exclude should be stripped from the hands of the central government
¹⁹
and reassigned to the states, provinces, cities, towns, villages, residential districts, and ultimately to private property owners and their voluntary associations. The means to achieve this goal are decentralization and secession (both inherently undemocratic, and antimajoritarian).
²⁰
One would be well on the way toward a restoration of the freedom of association and exclusion as is implied in the idea and institution of private property, and much of the social strife currently caused by forced integration would disappear, if only towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to expel as trespassers those who do not fulfill these requirements; and to solve the "naturalization" question somewhat along the Swiss model, where local assemblies, not the central government, determine who can and who cannot become a Swiss citizen.

What should one advocate as the relatively correct immigration policy, however, as long as the democratic central state is still in place and successfully arrogates the power to determine a uniform
national
immigration policy? The best one may hope for, even if it goes against the "nature" of a democracy and thus is not very likely to happen, is that the democratic rulers act
as
if
they
were the personal owners of the country and as
if
they
had to decide who to include and who to exclude from their own personal property (into their very own houses). This means following a policy of the strictest discrimination
in
favor
of
the
human
qualities
of
skill,
character,
and
cultural
compatibility.

More specifically, it means distinguishing strictly between "
citizens" (naturalized immigrants) and "resident aliens" and excluding the
latter from all welfare entitlements. It means requiring, for resident alien status as well as for citizenship, the personal sponsorship by a resident citizen and his assumption of liability for all property damage caused by the immigrant. It implies requiring an existing employment contract with a resident citizen; moreover, for both categories but especially that of citizenship, it implies that all immigrants must demonstrate through tests not only English language proficiency, but all-around superior (above-average) intellectual performance and character structure as well as a compatible system of values—with the predictable result of a systematic pro-European immigration bias.
²¹

¹⁹
Until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1875, the regulation of immigration into the United States was considered a state, rather than a federal, matter.
²⁰
See further on this chap. 5.

²¹
Currently, about one-half of the U.S. foreign-bom citizens, after more than five years of presence in the U.S., still speak virtually no English. Of the largest immigrant group, Hispanics, well above two-thirds speak practically no English. See Brimelow,
Alien
Nation,
pp. 88-89. Their level of intellectual performance is significantly below the U.S. average (ibid., p. 56); and growing evidence indicates that the crime rate of the immigrant population systematically exceeds that of the nativeborn population (pp. 182-86).

8

On
Free
Trade
and
Restricted
Immigration

I

It is frequently maintained that "free trade" is connected with "free immigration" as is "protectionism" with "restricted immigration." That is, the claim is made that while it is not impossible that someone might combine protectionism with free immigration or free trade with restricted immigration, these positions are intellectually inconsistent and thus erroneous. Hence, insofar as people seek to avoid errors, they should be the exception rather than the rule. The facts, insofar as they have a bearing on the issue, appear to be consistent with this claim. As the last Republican presidential primaries indicated, for instance, most professed free traders are advocates of relatively free and nondiscriminatory immigration policies, while most protectionists are proponents of highly restrictive and selective immigration policies.

Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I will argue that this thesis and its implicit claim are fundamentally wrong. In particular, I will demonstrate that free trade and restricted immigration are not only perfectly consistent but even mutually reinforcing policies. That is, it is not the advocates of free trade and restricted immigration who are wrong, but rather the proponents of free trade and free immigration. In taking the "intellectual guilt" out of the free-trade-and-restricted-immigration position and putting it where it actually belongs, I hope to promote a change in current public opinion and facilitate substantial political realignments.

II

Since the days of Ricardo, the case for free trade has been logically unassailable. For the sake of argumentative thoroughness it would be useful to summarize it briefly. The restatement will be in the form of a
reductio
ad
absurdum
of the protectionist thesis as proposed most recently by Patrick Buchanan.
¹

¹
David Ricardo's discussion can be found in his
Principles
of
Political
Economy
and
Taxation
(New York: E.P. Dutton, 1948), chap. 7; the most brilliant nineteenth century
defense of free trade and intellectual demolition of all forms of protectionist policies can be found in Frederic Bastiat,
Economic
Sophisms
(Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975); and idem,
Selected
Essays
on
Political
Economy
(Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1975); for a modern, abstract and theoretically rigorous treatment of the subject of free trade see Ludwig von Mises,
Human
Action:
A
Treatise
on
Economics,
Scholar's Edition (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998), chap. 8, esp. pp. 158ff.; Patrick J. Buchanan's contrary antifree trade pronouncements are presented in his
The
Great
Betrayal:
How
American
Sovereignty
and
Social
Justice
are
Sacrificed
to
the
Gods
of
the
Global
Economy
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1998). Lest it be thought that protectionist views are restricted to journalistic or political circles see David S. Landes,
The
Wealth
and
Poverty
of
Nations
(New York: Norton, 1998), esp. pp. 265ff., 452ff., 521ff., who displays views quite similar to Buchanan's. The free-trade doctrine, according to Landes, is a "religion" (p. 452) and its proponents such as William Stanley Jevons are "true believers" (p. 523). Landes quotes Jevons as stating (in 1883) that