The Case for Open Borders by Harry Binswanger

Dr. Binswanger defends a radical position on immigration: the moral imperative to end all forms of governmental interference with freedom of travel. Crossing a national border, he argues, should be as free, unregulated, and unsupervised as crossing a state border. He takes on all the common objections to open borders, including: “Immigrants take our jobs away,” “Open borders abandon sovereignty,” “Immigration is harmful in a welfare state,” and “Immigrants will vote the wrong way.” He concludes by explaining why freedom of entry is of special importance to Objectivists.

Recorded live on July 2, 2022 as part of the Objectivist Summer Conference.

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[BalugaWhale]

What Binswanger did not mention is the "border checkpoints" that lie 100 miles north of the southern border. I was appalled when I had to traverse one on my way from Austin to El Paso. At no time did I leave the state. But to continue on my journey to Arizona I had to show my papers. It's too bad that the Supreme Court considers these interior barriers to be legal. I'm for open borders and private property. Dismantle all the checkpoints. Go Harry!

[runtsmeadow]

I wonder if he supports open borders for Israel.

[jafco]

Thank you for making this lecture available to those of us who weren’t able to make it to the conference. I look forward to seeing more.

[adriennefried]

Remember Sirhan- Sirhan was a Palestinian immigrant

[joshuagould]

Awesome talk! Hopefully I'll see you at the next OCON!

[edbonz]

THANK YOU DR B & ARI. Good premises. $

[CurrentYearAnalog-hpkb]

Greetings, fellow white people. This is an excellent talk and us whites should definitely listen to this talk. 
* rubs hands *

[aeomaster]

How interesting to have these ideas involving open borders, put under the light of reason. As you outline, these complex factors have to be pulled apart and dealt with in a principled way - the only way to resolve such a broad set of issues. I so enjoyed having the sanity part of my brain being fed a rational feast.

[hellothere-hxby]

This talk was very good, but Harry's support for a poll tax and requiring strict standards for voting is horrific and ignores the valid historical reasons why the poll tax was removed and why voting standards ought to be bare minimum. Strict voting standards allow those in power that setting those standards to abuse power to take away the political agency of people so that they cannot defend their rights, and therefore allow over time the destruction of republican government. Abuse of power against black people in the US was ripe when there were poll taxes and stricter standards such as literacy tests. Poll taxes in principle violate political equality because people with unequal economic power have unequal political power, which violates a separation of economic power from political power, and one's level of economic power is IRRELEVANT to how much one needs to defend his rights to life, liberty, and property. The principle of political equality would demand that taxes ought to have equal economic burden for every person as a cost for equal access to political power, not a poll tax which would exclude people with less economic power from having the political power that is the right to vote.

Additionally, taxes as a PRECONDITION instead of a POSTCONDITION could allow government agents to deny people's ability to vote on false claims of not paying taxes. The proper principle for a tax would be that one could not lose one's ability to vote by not paying a tax beforehand, and one shall not lose the ability to vote for not paying a tax, but instead will be penalized in some other form for violating their agreement with the government that voting comes with the condition of paying taxes.

The fundamental point is that voting is the political and constitutional means for self-defense of the individual's rights. If every individual has rights, if an individual is excluded from having political power, that individual is at the mercy of all those that have political power. The right to vote is a sacred right because it is the fundamental constitutional defense of a person's rights to life, liberty, and property, and therefore putting limitations on it cannot be taken lightly at all.

The power to do good IS the power to do bad, and any proposed law ought to be questioned with "according to whose judgment?" or "according to whose say so?" The law can say one thing, but hopes and dreams don't make people automatically enforce them with good intent or with correct judgment. Stricter voting laws sound good on paper, but if someone is not literate enough to vote, who determines that? People who wish to subjugate others can easily abuse literacy tests and therefore violate people's rights or make a government move towards committing more rights-violations.

The only qualifications for voting I find valid are being an adult, being a citizen (through birth or naturalization), and being a resident (instead of being a citizen primarily outside the geographical jurisdiction), and then methods to prove that sufficiently prove that you have those qualifications while having the least potential to be abused. The only qualification that would necessarily place the burden on a potential voter to prove their qualification would be residency, so even then there should not be methods that are too burdensome on voters.

Once a person reaches the age of majority, he has full exercise capacity of rights and therefore needs to be able to defend his rights. Citizenship (particularly with respect to naturalization) and residency are important qualifications so that people don't have the ability to easily influence the governance of places by the ease of a one-time temporary visit, especially enemies of the constitutional rule which can unduly influence or actually usurp the constitutional rule by the ease of a one-time temporary visit. Naturalization and residency screen for people who are attached to the governance and the kind of society that the governance produces. Not having naturalization and residency would encourage any person or people to amass a large gang or faction to mass migrate to a region so that they can rule it.

On a separate note, citizenship has to also be allowed unconditionally for natives so that a republican government is secured in the region instead of dependent on immigration and so that the people already living in a country have the ability to have their rights secured. In other words, native citizenship must be unconditional so that the government being a republic is unconditional.

[RandFanOne]

It is not a given that new immigrants will bring in their culture and voting patterns?
You take your chances with Arabs,
Africans, Chinese, and South Americans, not me.

[Alejandro-cnyp]

I’m all for free immigration but we should still have border guards checking people. The laws for outside of a country are necessarily different from within that country. The standard for example for the government searching someone’s home in the US is different then the US military searching someone’s home in Iraq. We need to have different standards for people outside the country or those who are entering the country to protect the rights of those inside the country.

[edalbanese]

I am in disbelief!! We are all created equal is a USA principle, that the US choose to adapt. Why did not others do it? Again, in disbelief of this argument!

[narayanansubramanian]

a simple question : is deportaion ever proper?

[Virtueman]

Interesting talk, by a man I have great respect for. However I want to ask some questions here. This hypothetical reality, where mass immigration happens to coincide with radical capitalist, pro-individualist, and pro-freedom political movements, along with the abolishment of the EPA and so on - how likely is this to happen in reality? Are we to understand that this scenario is in any way likely or feasible, given today's prerequisites?

I'm asking because usually, these things do not coincide in practice. Usually, today, mass immigration coincides with mass socialistic politics. Increasing amounts of immigrants is used as a political tool to justify increased taxes and spending. There would have to be some entirely new and unique world first, where these things would all of a sudden start to happen simultaneously, but we aren't there now, are we?

So, my main question is, don't you first have to create this new world, before you promote open borders? If you try to follow this program by AR, don't you have to, lets say, successfully reduce govt spending by 20% (as was an example) first, before you double the immigration? Because what if you double the immigration and you don't get the other half of the deal, the reduced spending - what then? Do you keep doubling the immigration and hope for the best, hope the EPA suddenly goes away (or equivalent)?

Doesn't freedom have to come first, as an actuality, and only then can immigration increase, as the freedom of the citizens in the country in question is the more important value involved? (Its also the reason anyone wants to immigrate to begin with!).

[RandFanOne]

Do the big donors to the Ayn Rand Institute support open immigration? I wonder. Dr. Peikoff made a contradictory statement regarding immigration

[loadsamoney-ux]

Is this dude insane?so basically people just walk in?

[hermanessences]

Should Israel also have open borders, Harry?

[clairerobsin]

Harry, I'd like to come visit and discuss this topic with you personally so, please publish your your home address and there better be a welcome mat for me too or you'll have to answer for that insult also!

[RandFanOne]

You don't need a degree in epistemology to see this would be a disaster. A little common sense will do.

[yodrewyt]

6:10 These definitions of life and liberty are too abstract. They need grounding in concretes. Fundamentally, life means the body and liberty means movement (and rest). Crimes that violate them are poisoning (incl. by pollution), assault, maiming, murder; and obstruction, capture, and harassment. Note the physical and sensible quality of the rights and related crimes. Easy enough for a 5 year-old to understand.