Free immigration

We have (relatively) free movement of capital, we have (relatively) free trade. Why not adopt the same for labor?

Restrictions on migration serve the interests of the wealthy just as surely as trade restrictions do. How? They keep low marginal product workers from becoming high marginal product workers through migration. Libertarians often point out correctly that the pittance paid to minimally productive workers in the Third World is often better than what they could get before Western corporations established factories in their countries. Leftists respond that a pittance is still a pittance, and terrible conditions are still terrible conditions, and they're right, too.

The answer is the free movement of labor. Letting Third World workers come here and avail themselves of our highly developed, technologically advanced manufacturing capacity (a capacity that most certainly has not been gutted, whatever politicians and special interests say) will dramatically increase their marginal productivity and thus their wages, along with hugely expanding our species' productive capacity, going a long way towards eliminating poverty.

Would free migration push down American wages? The econometric literature suggests no, while basic economic reasoning suggests yes- holding demand constant, an increased supply nets a lower price*. Let's go ahead and posit that free migration will push down wages. Is that an unalloyed evil? I say no, of course. A wage is two things- an income and a cost. Increasing the cost of inputs will shift the aggregate supply curve to the left, leading to a higher price level. In the short term free migration will make some goods cheaper (including, alas, unskilled labor) but over the long term will make all goods more abundant while simultaneously increasing demand, making, I believe, the long-term price effects (including wage effects) negligible.

What's more, letting people leave these Third World hellholes seems like a moral imperative, does it not? By what right do we say to a poor garment worker in Cambodia that he absolutely cannot move to America? Some say we must not have free migration while we have a welfare state. If you support the welfare state and hold this belief, you're a racist, and if you oppose the welfare state and hold this belief, you're short-sighted. Welfare state advocates who oppose free migration because of the huge costs they fear are stating that while expenditure on the welfare of poor Americans is worthwhile, expenditure on the welfare of poor foreigners is not. So, racists, or at least xenophobes. If you oppose the welfare state and believe free migration would impose costs, then you're short-sighted, or don't you want to force the moment to its crisis?

Another argument against free migration runs as follows: immigrants support redistributionist policies, and permitting mass immigration would push our government towards a more redistributionist stance. Libertarians entertaining this argument simply lack courage in their convictions. Do you think you're right? Do you think you can convince others of your position? Then man up and try; don't use the power of the state to limit your audience.

Most libertarians believe some variation on the following: it is objectively true that markets are efficient and productive, and it is objectively true that governments are inefficient and destructive. Different libertarians expound different rationales behind this claim, but if the claim is true, how does letting everyone in change it? Might it delay the attainment of Libertopia? Sure, maybe. But isn't Libertopia a world-wide vision for humanity, or has the tribalism of the Right infected us, as well? Maybe open borders would temporarily set back the cause of liberty here, but it would be a global advance for liberty, and aren't we libertarians heirs to the classical liberals, the first internationalists? Or do we now limit our vision to our tribe?

Moving back to the freed market case for free migration, letting labor move freely would act as a counterweight to the free movement of capital- when corporations seek to move factories to the areas with the lowest labor costs, labor can respond by moving to the areas with the highest wages, rather than being trapped behind artificial barriers- barriers permeable to capital, but not to labor. By eliminating our barriers to immigration, we would level the playing field by freeing the market.


*Whenever I see a disparity between what economic reasoning predicts and what empirical data shows, I remember that magic phrase I learned on the first day of my first econ course- ceteris paribus. How often are all things actually equal? I don't doubt the basic supply and demand mechanism because immigration doesn't appear to lower wages, just as I don't doubt the effect of price floors as predicted by economic reasoning when it doesn't show up in studies of the minimum wage. I just remember that all things are rarely equal, that the world is unfathomably complex, and that myriad other factors are at work.