Samizdata have done it again (thanks Dave). They’ve gone and confused liberty generally, with liberty within a nation state.
There is plenty of immigration which is excellent. In fact I would go as far as to say that England would not have such high average wages if it weren’t for the talent and alternative views that immgrants have brought with them. Also, a true libertarian cannot but support untremelled immigration. But there are some buts.
Truely free and just immigration has to be two-way. Comparisons with fair trade, as Scott implies, are perfectly acceptable. No-one in their right mind would accept free-trade in only one direction. A free Britain (which we do not currently have) would allow anyone who wishes to, to settle here. But in today’s Britain we must take account of the way things actually are.
First, the non-libertarian social security system does not intend to act as if a honey pot for bees, but it does. I would wager that any Mexican trying to access the US would, if given the choice, enter a meritocratic country with a social security system more European in design. It is just common sense. If we are to open our borders in the ultimate show of human liberty then we must not provide artificial incentives for people to chose our country over others — they should want to come here because there are good prospects for work, not for not working.
Second, as I suggested above, countries that are not willing to negotiate over free-trade would not be offered free-trade with us. It is either two-way or no way! The same would go for untremelled immigration. In fact that is largely what the EU started out as being (when it wasn’t a mega-country). Free-trade and free movement of people make absolute sense together. I advocate the intentions of the EU in that respect. The cultural differences between France and Britain at the moment are artificially created because of the relative isolation of societies historically. If the EU survives its current attempts to run our lives, it will eventually bring about one of: a mono-culture; or a separatist movement in a country that was not previously home to that nationality. I’ll come back to that though, as I am getting way off track!
Third, immigrants must accept the current democratic and libertarian society that they are moving into. It matters not a jot whether the country is libertarian if, after massive immigration, the populace move to introduce illiberal laws. To protect a country opening its borders, a country must have a robust and unchangeable constitution.
Fourth, English culture is not yet ready for massive changes in its make up (Simon Cranshaw touches on this in his comments on Samizdata’s posting). Libertarians (and I would count myself among them mostly) must accept in the short-term, that immigration brings about cultural change. There are two schools of thought among those who accept immigration. Either immigration should only be allowed gradually for all-time, or it should be allowed in bursts with periods in between to ensure harmony. Both these alternatives, however, assume that the immigrants should (or will) assimilate with the cultural identity of the country they are entering.
I have a disproportionate number of friends (and acquaintances) who are not from England (or, indeed, the UK) and I believe that has given me some insights that others do not have. It is very easy for people to become convinced of the superiority of their own way of life and not to consider other people, other cultures or the environment. My contact with people not from Britain has shaped my opinions — and I am glad for that.
And I think that should be the result of immigration — not just amendments to the immigrant’s views so that they assimilate — the people already here should learn things from immigrants too. The trouble with immigration from the second-half of the 20th century to date is that British society has tended to ignore its new guests and assume that they will become Britons and that they should love our Queen. I don’t want to get too far away from my point here (again) but immigration should be a give and take transfer of people and ideas and it hasn’t been since we started our current policies.
What Britain (and mostly England) needs to do is stop immigration (not by marriage etc) for a period of time and come to have harmony again. When that and my other points, come together, immigration can restart for the benefit of all and in a libertarian spirit.
April 22nd, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Cheers for the comments, which I think are thoughtful. However, I put it to you that “cultural identity” is rather too much like an argument that various industries put in place for protectionism. A healthy culture will draw strength from immigrants, not be subsided by them.
Of course I can only speak for my own culture.. what the state of British culture is in… is up for the British to work out. I’m pretty solid that Australia is well capable of adapting to mass immigration, which has proven to be pretty much the case over the last 20 years.
April 22nd, 2006 at 9:35 pm
There is an inherent contradiction in your position. You want libertarian open-borders but then you want to force the immigrants to accept your current democratic and libertarian society, which is not very libertarian of you.
Fact is, if we had open borders and 10 million Arabs wanted to move into this country per year, you could not make them accept our culture at all.
April 22nd, 2006 at 11:06 pm
Dave, My position is consistent because those Arabs (or whoever) would have to be emmigrating from a country which is both libertarian and has open borders with us. I don’t think you can make yourself more free by inviting those who do not believe in freedom to participate in free elections all the time we do not have the protection of a formalised and written constitution.
Scott, I absolutely agree. But in the same way as removing protectionism from the national psyche was a painful, though necessary experience, this would be an upheaval like none known before. Already England’s demographic is shifting — I don’t think that matters. But in the short-term (where short can be anything up to a generation) racism will surface in communities that decide that “they took our jobs” or “they took our women”. Recent riots in Australia and England should serve as a warning about the dangers of humanity’s inability to look beyond stereotypes. While ideology should be the basis for decisions, I think we must consider the practical consequences of a good idea!
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:23 am
I can’t believe your lies Scot, Austrialia has adapted to mass-immigration by scores of its women getting gang raped by immigrants.
Just type gang rape into google if you don’t believe me, you get countless Austrialian hits.
And in Britain too:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1230533,00.html
“”The added element in this is ethnicity,” says Trail. The Haven’s statistics indicate that, in 2002, in the under-16 age group, 43% of the assailants were black, as were 33% of the victims. Even in an ethnically diverse population such as Lambeth-Southwark-Lewisham (LSL), this goes beyond demographics. It is controversial. When a documentary on juvenile gang rape was broadcast by Channel 4 in 1998, the channel was accused of racism.”
You don’t care as long as you are making more money hey Scot.
Gav, if you want a selective immigration system then that is not libertarian, at least not the same kind as Scott.
Libertarians like Scot want open borders for ‘anyone’ not just other libertarians or other generally freedom orientated people.
Even if the devil himself wanted to move into Scott’s country he wouldn’t mind as long as it had a positive effect on GDP!
April 23rd, 2006 at 12:54 am
I think I might agree with you Gavin.
Putting a hold on immigration and letting things settle might give a chance to get more organized.
I have never been to europe so I really can’t comment on your problems.
We are having major issues with mexico.
I’m not sure how to feel about it.
I come from an immigrant family myself. I know why they came and what they went through, I also grew up in an area with a very large Greek, Italian, serbian, hungarian and lebonese population.
All get along and enjoy what each has to offer.
I can not imagine a united states without them.
Now we have a new wave of immigrants…. all have different reasons for why.
I am still surrounded by them and not all had a choice where they would go, My sister in law is from Kenya she came for a chance to have an education. But where I work I have made friends with a woman from Liberia and a family that is bosnian.
Both under different circumstances would not have chose to leave their homes, and both as refugees had to go to the country that would take them. some adjusted better than others, and it makes a difference in how they are accepted. Maybe it goes both ways, and it takes time. It’s not as easy now to go somewhere as some might think.
so (mexicans aside) how the the wrong people get in is beyond me, especialy those from know problem areas.
To have open borders sounds like a bad Idea, and due to current world events very dangerous.
hard hard topic to deal with.
April 23rd, 2006 at 4:45 am
Gav, reading samizdata comments again, you compared “cultural protection to economic protectionism”, I don’t understand how you can do that… Its not the same thing at all?
Take for example Chinese clothes, there was recently a fuss about cheap imports swamping the EU so local producers can’t compete. So the EU puts tariffs or limits on imports, I am against that protectionism because clearly if the Chinese can do this trade cheaper its better for everyone in the long run.
But culturally, if 100 million Chinese desided they wanted to live in Britain therefor swamping our culture, do we not have a right to want to protect our way of life??
Just because one group of people out breed another and then overwhelm them by numbers does not make their culture superior (in the way that a foreign factory out producing us is superior), often quite the opposite because less educated women have more children.
By your logic, the world will in the end be ruled by cultures that treat women as baby factories and overwhelm everyone else through immigration, no?
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:08 am
No-one in their right mind would accept free-trade in only one direction.
On the contrary.
No one sane can accept (or deny) trade of any kind in only one direction. Trade is always both ways at once. And it happens only because it makes both sides better off. Once you understand that you are well on the way to grasping why abolishing trade restrictions is generally going to be good for people in the country that does so regardless of what other countries do.
…the world will in the end be ruled by cultures that treat women as baby factories and overwhelm everyone else through immigration.
Rot. It hasn’t happened in the past and there’s no reason to believe. There are interlocking constraints on both population, culture and economics. People do adapt to new cultural conditions. Gross fertility slows as people get better off. And immigrants are by definition more adaptable than those they leave behind.
Show me a baby-factory culture and I’ll show you one that is feeble, unproductive economically and culturally, and fragile.
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:32 am
Dave, No.
I think Leanne’s comment is quite revealing. The US had completely open borders and its national identity is much stronger than ours for it. There is a chance that the very fact of closed borders gives people some bias against other cultures. For the reasons I set out above I am against unlimited immigration, but consider the Chinese example you gave:
If 100 million Chinese came here they would very soon cease to be coming to a better life (and if they were, who’s losing?). The society of the island that (only through quirks of history) now makes up the UK would sink or swim on whether the UK somehow makes people work harder/better.
When you say that a foreign factory is competing, you are assuming that there are national borders beyond which economic competition is acceptable and within which it is not. The libertarian position suggests to us that economic competition should be even more of a personal competition. Each person is competing with everyone else in the world, not just their fellow-Britons when trying to get a job and not just foreigners when running a business competing with China etc.
But to clarify, I think this is ideology without practicality. Scott is wrong if he thinks we can survive 100 million Chinese people coming here without a fair and equivalent exit for the 60 million Britons already here. If we had open borders and free libertarianism in both directions then it would be acceptable.
April 23rd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
To add to what Guy said, adopting unilateral free trade was an extremely sucessful policy for the Eastern European nations (until the EU made them give it up).
Protectionist policies add stregnth to a nation’s currency making imports cheaper and exports more expensive to foreigners. All that is achieved then is that wealth is shifted from the most productive industries to less productive, unprotected ones. In the case of “one-way” free trade the protectionist nation would have a choice between allowing their currency to rise relative to that of the free nation or endure inflationary pressures.
The same is essentially true of immigration. Contrary to your assertion, people who travel looking for a better life tend not to be looking for welfare but for work (which is why the US is the number 1 preferred destination and not France). Free and open societies would attract the best people while closed societies would suffer a brain-drain of their most talented people.
Neither immigration or trade need be “two-way”. Moreover there is no distinction between liberty in general and liberty within a nation state. I have a right to freedom of association and a right to freely enter into contracts with others. Nations aren’t sovereign, people are.
April 23rd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
guy, it hasn’t happened before because its only very very recently in human history that we’ve been able to control/reduce birth-rates.
Gav, I am not against the liberatarian position with regard to economic trade at all.
Culture is different, because as I said the best culture isn’t necessarily going to win if left to a darwinian breeding game.
Take a look at Northern Ireland, if the Unionists out breed the Nationalists, then N.Ireland will stay in the UK, if Nationalists become the bigger population then it will be impossible for the UK to hold into it in the long term, if they stay equal-ish the dispute wont be solved any time soon regardless of any supposed political settlement. Who is wrong or right is irrelevant, its about who is best able to propagate their ideas.
The best messager doesn’t always bring the best message.
Let me ask you, do you think Native Americans should have protected reservations, I bet almost everyone reading does. Why, because their people and culture couldn’t stand up to globalized immigration and would be lost very quickly. The same with Aborigines, and various isolated African tribes.
If there is something unique and special worth saving for those cultures why not ours?
I am not saying we should have no immigration and hide away on our little Island, but I am arguing against open borders and in favour of a carefully controlled system where we let in those most compatible with us and less of those not.
You are wrong on the USA, they had a white European only immigration policy for years, which only changed in the 60’s.
Is their national identity stronger now than before that? not if you listen to US Conservatives.
April 23rd, 2006 at 2:04 pm
lol, not at all mark adams, the reason the USA is the number one destination is because Mexico is trying to annex the South West, with mass-immigration of millions per year. They admit it.
http://www.aztlan.net/
April 23rd, 2006 at 4:46 pm
Dave,
The US is not just the #1 destination for Mexican immigrants but for economic migrants the world over. The immigrants who pass through France and other EU countries to come here don’t ignore those other more temperate countries because our benefits are more generous, they do it because there are more opportunities in Britain.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
More facts against open borders.
According to the BBC, hardly a racist organization
1 in 8 of the UK prison population is a foreigner. (British prisons being now so full that many criminals are not locked up)
1000, foreign prisoners have been lost in Britain since release including rapists, paedophiles and murderers.
Gotta love our open borders!
April 26th, 2006 at 6:38 am
No, the population of prisons is very worrying. I believe 34% of prisoners are Muslims too.
Britain did (until 1989-ish) have a low-crime history (quite a while after immigration started).
April 26th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
34% wow, I didn’t know that.
I think its 70%+ in France…
How would libertarian immigration policy handle this?
Would it not be a good idea to have a policy of sending criminals home to serve their prison sentence there instead of here, since Britain is quite an expensive country to live in it would probably be cheaper, and if the country they came from refused we could have a lot stricter immigration control with them. But ofcourse people like Scott couldn’t accept that, because the evil state has no right to keep rapists out of the country!
Today I read the National Geographic, it has an artical about marriage ages around the world. The largest group is 16 years old, but the 2nd largest group is “No minium age”.
Predictable culprits like Iran and Saudi Arabia… But I was supprised by Brazil, 12 years old… In Nepal 7% of girls are married before they are 10 years old, wow, thats sick.
In Argentina and Venezuela a pregant girl of ‘any’ age can marry the father.
Apparently International human rights standards set the limit at 18.
Its easy to talk about libertarian freedoms and it sounds good in theory, but I don’t want a culture who think its ok to marry girls under the age of 10 bring their abuse here.
April 26th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
I agree. The point of my two-way agreement was to ensure that we had this level playing field. A liberal but just country like ours (unless Labour carry on running us for much longer) cannot, and should not be, allowing people from (sorry) primitive countries to bring their witch-burning, exorcising, child-marrying nonsense here.
But that’s just what our immigration system currently does. I hate to put asylum in with immigration — I think they’re very different in most ways — but this, too, has to be a consideration. If we’re allowing people to come here for their benefit or ours, we must be clear that they are coming to England and that English law is what they must abide by (not Sharia law or witch-burning law).