The Texas Border Case Study
By Boris Reitman
- 6 minutes read - 1177 wordsMany who consider themselves reasonable hold that a terrible thing happened during the Biden years: the handling of the Texas border. Of the total migrants coming through this border, about 2.5 million were allowed to enter, and 1.5 million more, known as “gotaways”, got through without documents. However, the Anthemism initiative advocates for open borders, and this episode serves as a case study. From the initiative’s perspective, the inflow through the Texas border was the best thing that happened during the Biden administration.
Hypothetically, if the border were truly open, another three million people who were rejected by Border Patrol would have entered as well. But for the sake of statistics, let’s limit ourselves to the four million who did enter and look only at the facts.
Many of these migrants ended up in New York. Texas bused tens of thousands there as part of Governor Abbott’s program to send asylum seekers to sanctuary cities. New York’s right-to-shelter and sanctuary policies also made it a major destination. Many others came on their own, drawn by family ties, job prospects, or the city’s reputation.
Most of those who came to New York found a place to settle. However, about 2% of the total four million migrants did not, and the government hosted them in hotels at a net cost of one billion dollars. In addition, about 8% of all migrants received financial assistance during their first eight months, amounting to another half a billion dollars. Taken together, these expenses represent about 0.02% of the U.S. fiscal budget.
(The above percentages include gotaways in the total migrant count, but note that gotaways did not receive any hotel accommodation or financial assistance, since they were not processed by the government.)
It would have been ideal, of course, if all 100% of the migrants would have been absorbed by the U.S. economy, instead of 98%. It would have been ideal if the government didn’t need to spend that staggering 0.02% of its fiscal budget on the hotels and the financial assistance. But let’s remember that U.S. is not a laissez-faire capitalist country, and its market is hampered by government regulations. Particularly, had the real estate market segment been less regulated (including short-term rentals), those 2% of migrants would have been absorbed too.
Case in point: Airbnb. It is heavily regulated in New York, and anyone who wants to host must register with the city’s Office of Special Enforcement. This exposes a host to scrutiny, making it impossible for him to hide that he is renting an entire apartment short-term — something the regulations forbid. For short-term rentals, he may only rent out rooms in an apartment he also lives in. He is also liable for occupancy and insurance limits, with fines for non-compliance. Why go through all this trouble to help some migrants, he thinks?
In a laissez-faire capitalist state, the market responds in an ad-hoc manner. There are no regulatory barriers to jump over in order to try new things. The lack of government assistance would mean that migrants would not cross unless they had a plan, and businesses in the country would mushroom to cater to that plan.
Another idea that passes for common sense on the right and center is that only educated and professional migrants are desirable. It is false. Desirable to whom? A country has no wishes; it is not a biological organism. There are only the statistics of the preferences of its current inhabitants. But what right does a resident have to demand anything about his future neighbor’s tastes or skillset? He may like baseball, but he cannot demand that of his neighbor. In a market economy, the skillsets of different people matter only insofar as one person hires another to do a job. The market will value people from all walks of life. One does not need a university degree to mow a lawn or to sell fast food at the mall. And often, it’s the “simpleton” immigrants who, given their newfound freedom and agency, become enterprising and soon outperform the native population.
However, this point is lost on the American intellectuals, even respected ones. They think that people must be checked at the border. For what, exactly? For instance, Thomas Sowell states (Columbus Dispatch, June 4, 2013):
Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries typically are people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills.
The very thought of formulating immigration laws from the standpoint of what is best for the American people seems to have been forgotten by many who focus on how to solve the problems of illegal immigrants, “living in the shadows.”
I’ll bite: what is best for American people is to have a legal system that protects individual rights. Does one have a right to demand productivity and intelligence in one’s neighbor who is already a citizen, or does this demand only applies to immigrants?
There is a better way to look at these issues. Harry Binswanger, an associate of Ayn Rand, writes (HBLetter):
Laws treating immigrants differently from citizens are exactly like laws treating Blacks differently from Whites. Would anyone care to make the parallel arguments:
“We in Chicago have too many Blacks already, we shouldn’t allow any more in. They’re basically criminals and we’d be better off if they were rounded up and sent somewhere, maybe to Africa. Chicago is our city, and we have the right and responsibility of saying who gets to live here.”
Nothing is changed if it’s not Chicago but the U.S., just as nothing is changed if it’s not Blacks but Jews—or Objectivists.
He states the corresponding principle:
There must be a total separation of state and immigration — just as for state and church, and for state and economics.
In regard to border-crossing, the government must be citizenship-blind. Except in wartime, the government cannot take any notice of the fact that someone is crossing the border.
Sovereignty is the government’s legal monopoly on the use of physical force within a defined geographical area.
Sovereignty means no “competing government,” no “Shariah law,” no foreign nations trying to enforce their law here.
Sovereignty does not mean collectivism. It does not mean “we” (some collective) get to exclude or even vet “them.”
Harry Binswanger is right, and while the world laments the mishandling of the Texas border during the Biden years, this mishandling should be celebrated! It is a boon to the country that, thanks to the negligence and mismanagement of the administration, barriers were lowered and more people were able to enter. It is when a statist government is disoriented to the point of paralysis that freedom gets a moment to breathe.
If you wish to avoid the paradox of celebrating government negligence, put your intellectual support behind the Anthemism initiative. It advocates for the creation of a laissez-faire state in which the border will be open.
