Balancing Open Borders and Political Ideals
By Boris Reitman
- 4 minutes read - 658 wordsA society built on individual rights allows anyone to enter, live, and work freely. The Presumption of Innocence means immigrants cannot be stopped at the border for interrogation. However, open immigration can introduce undesirable baggage — collectivist ideas that undermine freedom.
A government rooted in individual rights must respect free speech and free thought of all people in its country. It cannot dictate which ideas are good or bad, nor can it target people for holding dissenting views, as was done with persecuted heretics throughout history. How, then, can such a society guard against the rise of collectivism—an ideology that places the group above the individual and disregards individual rights?
Collectivism, in its various forms—whether socialism, communism, fascism, or other group-oriented ideology—demands the sacrifice of the individual to serve the group. If left unchecked, the country will slide into statism by the second generation, rendering the entire effort futile.
This danger is further exacerbated, because the first wave of immigration will not come from first-world countries where people are less acutely aware of their loss of rights and thus less likely to emigrate. Instead, immigration will largely come from third-world countries, which are so burdened by collectivist ideologies, that people would risk pioneering a new state for the promise of freedom. However, these immigrants are more likely to bring collectivist ideas with them.
Although the government cannot dictate morality, it has the responsibility, when granting citizenship, to test whether an applicant is patriotic to the country as it stands. To limit the influence of harmful ideas, voting rights should be a privilege, not an automatic given. Applicants for citizenship must pass a test to demonstrate their understanding of the country’s current system and values.
Citizenship should be restricted to descendants of immigrants who are at least N generations removed from the original settlers. This generational requirement serves a crucial purpose: ensuring the country’s core values remain dominant as the immigrant population gains political representation. While the exact value of N remains to be determined, it must be sufficiently high to account for various factors that could dilute an immigrant family’s integration into the country’s value system. These factors include cross-marriage with citizens of other countries and part-time residency arrangements, both of which can weaken exposure to and understanding of the country’s fundamental principles. The waiting period must be long enough to prevent such arrangements from circumventing its intended purpose.
Where politics cannot go, private initiative can. The lucrative business of assisting with immigration will propagandize to prospective immigrants even before they leave their home countries. These businesses would attract donations from citizens eager to protect the country from harmful ideas. The leaders of these businesses would earn respect as patriots, and the businesses themselves are likely to see an increase in sales of their other products.
One advantage of welcoming immigrants is their openness to new ideas. They are often more receptive to change than the native population. Natives, who have not experienced the dramatic uprooting and relocation that immigrants face, tend to be more resistant to new ideas and set in their ways.
This brings us to the question of how the initial population should be formed when establishing a new country. When building a country from scratch, the target territory is initially ruled by another entity. This entity must grant charter privileges to a private corporation to manage immigration, ensuring that only “friendlies” settle in the territory. Once the population is established, control can be transferred to a government, allowing the new society to declare itself a sovereign state.
Ultimately, the implementation of these combined efforts will determine whether a young nation remains a beacon of freedom or succumbs to the ideologies it was founded to reject.
Further Reading
For an elaboration of why the borders should be open in a free society, one can read Harry Binswanger’s article For Open Immigration.
