“For libertarians, the issue appears to be millions of illegal immigrants denied legal status because they committed the misdemeanor of entering or staying in the United States. . . . [I]mmigration is an economic benefit and a natural right. . . .” – Ed Krayewski, 3/4/14 reason.com.
Fact Check: This article is quite typical of libertarian thinking. Libertarians tend to believe that freedom to make money is the only significant human aspiration. Thus they have little sympathy for concerns about national cohesion and the desire of national communities to maintain their cultures and heritage. To many libertarians, the United States is first and foremost an economy, rather than a nation.
With this one-dimensional dogma guiding them, libertarians maintain that unlimited numbers of foreigners have a “natural right” to come to the U.S. in search of work, and American employers have the right to hire them, regardless of how this flood of cheap labor might negatively impact the job prospects and wages of their fellow citizens.
Nor do most libertarians seem to have much concern about the clashes of culture and social division that massive immigration entails. Viewing the world through the lenses of radical individualism and unfettered capitalism, such issues seldom intrude on their vision. This is most ironic because mass immigration today is predominately from poor countries where people tend to favor Big Government and public assistance.
Commonly they bring these beliefs to the U.S., and often their children and grandchildren embrace them even more so. Thus immigration, by shifting the electorate to the left, is undermining the political agenda that libertarians want to promote. But again, their ideological blinders keep them from viewing this obvious reality.
To his credit, Krayewski seems to have some dim understanding of the problem. He wants amnesty (legal status) for the millions of illegal aliens now living in the U.S., but doesn’t want to give them citizenship and voting rights. In terms of practical politics, this is a vain hope because illegal alien advocates and the Democratic Party will insist on citizenship after legalization and they will never give up until they reach that goal. Unlike libertarians, these leftists have no illusions about practical politics.
In terms of benefitting the economy, the libertarians’ central concern, mass immigration is a failure, except to the extent that further enriches the wealthy who profiteer from cheap labor. As for middle and working class Americans, that is not the case at all. If immigration truly helps general prosperity, then why has California, the state with the most immigrants, become progressively poorer since the present wave of mass immigration began in 1965?
Sadly, the real world makes little impression on libertarians who, particularly with respect to their views on immigration, live in the dream world of their ideology.