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).

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.

Britain did (until 1989-ish) have a low-crime history (quite a while after immigration started).

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!

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.

http://www.aztlan.net/

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.

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.

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.

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.