Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: U.S. must not accept a bill of wrongs
By Kenneth Hurst
Daily Bruin (UCLA)
04/06/2006

(U-WIRE) LOS ANGELES — The immigration bill currently being debated in the Senate - like all anti-immigration policies - violates the rights of both current and prospective Americans. For that reason the borders of the U.S. should be open to all who wish to come, with only minor restriction to search for terrorists and other criminals.

In the tired defense of the subject, broad claims that "we" don't want "them" on "our" land echo among the anti-immigration forces.

There is, however, no such "we" or land that is "ours" — the U.S. is a country of private property, not collective ownership. It is not the right of any other person or group to determine whom private citizens may allow onto their properties.

Restricting the access of foreigners to live and work in the U.S. is antithetical to their rights as human beings and the rights of the Americans who want to sell or rent property to them or offer them jobs. The property and jobs are solely under the jurisdiction of their owners.

One has no more a right to forbid the sale of property to or employment of immigrants than one could justly forbid conducting business with blacks, women or people born on a third Sunday of March.

As a human being you have the right to allow whomever you want onto your property or into your workforce (as long as they do not pose an objective threat to others, such as known terrorists or other criminals). And as an American you are entitled to the protection of your rights by the government.

Any attempt by pressure groups, lobbyists or congressmen to violate that right by forbidding or restricting immigrants from working or owning land should be met with the most intolerant dissent, as the rights to own property and earn a living are among the most fundamental any human can possess.

One of the most common objections to open borders is that immigrants are a drain on taxpayer-funded programs such as health care, welfare and public education.

This argument only addresses the symptom - not the root problem. Anti-immigration advocates are correct in denouncing the availability of welfare programs to immigrants, but they are wrong in not denouncing welfare as such.

These programs are funded with money taken from hardworking Americans who deserve to be able to use it for themselves and their families, not have it expropriated to satisfy the do-gooder whims of some power-lusting bureaucrat.

Whether it goes to immigrants, residents or single mothers with 10 children, programs of the welfare state are wrong because they steal wealth from those who produce it. Insofar as these programs exist, however, immigrants have no less a right than any other American to take full advantage of them.

Another common fallacy is contending that immigrants take jobs from Americans - as if jobs were cash at a bank and immigrants were merely bandits who steal it.

Quite the contrary, immigrants are often willing to work low-level jobs cheaply, which enables the workers formerly in those positions to advance in the workforce and businesses to cut costs, expand markets, improve efficiency and boost production.

Far from being the zero-sum game immigration's enemies portray, the capitalist system of free enterprise enables virtually limitless wealth to be produced - just witness the astounding progress of the U.S. over the last two centuries compared with the rest of the world.

The U.S. is the world's hotbed of innovation partly because its historic influx of immigrants expanded the workforce with populations that fled the oppressive, state-controlled economies of their former countries to become hardworking competitors in the marketplace.

To the Senators now debating over whether to enforce the rights of today's and tomorrow's Americans, I say: "Open the borders and shut your mouths."

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