The Founders on immigration policy
Madison was asked about the kinds of immigrants sought after:
“Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
“Not merely to swell the catalogue of people. No, sir, it is to increase the wealth and strength of the community; and those who acquire the rights of citizenship, without adding to the strength or wealth of the community are not the people we are in want of.”
For the second point, I was merely stating a principle from which government policy should follow from. Obviously, people who immigrate to the United States need to be vented and it would hurt to roll back the warfare state at the same time...
I agree with you on the application of immigration law and processing and how one set of rules will apply. What I found is interesting is that we already have the immigration laws on the books which require legal immigrants to integrate into society. The problem is that those laws have to be enforced, and the current administration is loathe to do that. You point that out well in your last paragraph.
And such an argument can easily be debunked simply by looking at the costs of illegal immigration today. Welfare, education, and the medical system all suffer disproportionately.
"The principle being any human has the right to live and work wherever they want..."
No, they don't actually. They have the right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, but there are no guarantees - implied or otherwise. People have the right to control and apply themselves, but how they apply themselves is a subjective decision.
"...as long they respect other people rights."
And that is the key. We must all respect the rights of others if we expect ours to be held sacrosanct. That includes the right to property - beginning with ourselves.
I expect promulgators of this conspiracy theory to now produce evidence of the Japanese military leadership saying 'I was under orders, US President Roosevelt fostered me to do it'.
Ayn Rand defended the right to immigrate, as a basic human right, in the context of normal life and normal economic affairs in a free country, and that is all she said about it. Specifically she properly opposed blocking people from coming to the country out of protectionist fear that they would compete.
There is much more to the broader question of immigration as a legal principle, especially with today's problems, which were not an issue in 1973 and which Ayn Rand was not asked about when she spoke about it in a brief response to a question about protectionism for economic interests. She was not discussing hoards of religious primitives coming to this country for welfare and/or the spread of sharia law. She simply rejected using force to prevent another human individual from peacefully pursing his own economic interests by moving from one country to another.
She defended the right to immigrate based on the rights of the individual, which apply to every human being peacefully pursuing his own interests. She did not base it on a "right to travel", which is a derivative principle. "Travel" is only one aspect of freedom of physical action and movement, which is a consequence of the right to live here in a material reality, and does not require much discussion. She did not publicly discuss a philosophy of a "right to travel" at all, let alone as a basis of immigration. (She did once disparage the leftist hippie mentality for objecting to the legal necessity of passports.)
1. Her sole public statement on immigration was in a spontaneous answer to the question on protectionism at her 1973 Ford Hall lecture on censorship. I don't know if the question period is included in the recording, but you can listen to the recording at https://estore.aynrand.org/p/16/censo....
The edited transcript is in Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew, 2005, p. 25. The question addressed there is: "What is your attitude towards immigration? Doesn't open immigration have a negative effect on a country's standard of living?"
The topic is expanded on by Leonard Peikoff in two of his podcasts:
2. "What is the proper government attitude toward immigration?" 7/5/10, 10 min http://www.peikoff.com/2010/07/05/wha...
3. "You said that if a country had laissez-faire it should not control immigration. What if New Zealand, with a population of 4.5 million people, had laissez-faire? Would it be obligated to accept all immigrants, even if that resulted in its becoming Muslim and having Sharia imposed?" 9/13/10, 4 3/4 min.
Perhaps this will put to rest the false alternatives that either the country should restrict immigration on the conservatives' collectivist grounds of what is best for the "economy" versus the misrepresentations that "Objectivism" promotes "open immigration" no matter what -- including terrorists, welfare statists, and supporters of sharia law -- based on a "right to travel" in border anarchy or anything else.
One could argue that simply having more people will make us richer and stronger regardless of who let into the country. Granted we would let in some trouble makers but overall most people are good and will serve their community well.
I think a better principle in recognizing the basic human right on mobility. The principle being any human has the right to live and work wherever they want as long they respect other people rights. Our immigration policy should reflect that principle.
It is NOT a natural right for anyone to become an American...we are a far cry from that now but not to late to change.
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