A border is literally an imaginary line in the ground drawn to protect property rights, to dignify where different pieces of land owned by different people started and ended, and the same is true of governments and countries. Borders illustrate where boundaries of legal jurisdiction are. However, in our modern political parlance, this simple truth of the construction of government has given rise to something much more visceral and absolute. Borders are now walls that entrap and exclude innovation, prevent people from seeking better lives, and where nationalists mark their promised land. Only through open, free borders can we as a nation fully solve the current immigration crisis by allowing immigrants to easily enter our country and enter our society.
Border control sets a dangerous precedent in terms of personal rights. Borders give governments the power to easily control an individual’s right to move where they please under the guise of “national security” or “protectionism.” To go where you want, you have to fill out paperwork, get approval, and get checked. There are no such controls on one’s right to buy a gun, right to a speedy and fair trial or even free speech for that matter. Now, while the right to movement isn’t a clear constitutional right in the same sense of one’s gun rights, imagine a world in which you don’t have to right to move as you please. You are rooted where you are born and can never leave. No such democracy can easily function along liberal, just ideals while restricting an individual’s ability to move. Why is it that I am rooted where I am born? Why is it that I’m trapped?
A lot of people would argue that unmitigated immigration would destroy our society, which justifies the government’s right to entrap us. However, I would submit no statistical evidence supports these claims. Arguments against free movement and immigration quickly dissolve into racist assumptions about “unwashed masses” raping “our women” or stealing jobs. Economically, immigrants are a free market’s boon. They take largely empty jobs such as agricultural and construction jobs for lower wages than natural citizens, which increases the wages and efficiency of firms. The only ones hurt by this development are those who have little to no education, which is becoming increasingly rare in our globalized society. The true issue when it comes to illegal immigrants in an economic context is two fold. One, illegal immigrants have few legal protections from abusive employers. Two, because of illegal status, illegal aliens can’t pay income taxes, which could help society, even though they do pay other forms of taxes. However, with open, free borders, these traditional issues built into our immigration system would cease to exist as all immigrants would be legal.
The other clear argument many desperately make in order to end immigration is crime. Once again, the statistics don't support the supposed reality peddled by the border closers. On average, illegal or legal immigrants do not commit crimes more than their native counterparts. Now, the frothing anti-immigrant defendants would point out numerous examples of where an illegal immigrant committed a crime, to which I would say, I could prove hundreds of instances of where refrigerators killed people. I could ravish you with stories about so-in-so who did whatever to advance my argument, but at the end of the day, it would be a weird detached story lost in the context of the greater picture. Yes, some illegal and legal immigrants commit crimes as they are people and people do commit crimes. However, to ostracize and demonize an entire group on the basis of isolated anecdotes is both racist and stupid.
Now, in a desperate fit of rage and ignorance, the close the border supporters would claim every illegal immigrant is a criminal. Well, yes...in a legal sense they are. However, their criminality is based off an outmoded and inefficient model of nationalistic construct built to imprison people within backwards nation-states. So, yes, you’re right in a backwards sense. But, the connection between criminality and immigration is highly unfounded and absurd.
For the most part, immigration is good and just. Maintaining closed borders where one has to get permission to move as they please is as absurd and Kafkaesque as requiring government permission to express your other rights in full. By opening our borders, we would not only provide better lives to those who want a better life, but enshrining a right to movement as a fundamental human right.
