Open borders: An idea whose time has come?

There is long-established precedent for getting rid of laws that are unenforceable. Back in the early 1930's, our leaders realized that our laws against beer sales were unenforceable and simply led to the creation of organized crime rings that made the cure worse than the disease. Here at Daily Kos, the great majority of people already favor legalization of pot and the general liberalization of drug laws, mainly because our laws are unenforceable. And I submit that our laws against illegal immigration are similarly unenforceable.

We already have historical precedent for deporting illegal immigrants. Back in the 1920's and 1930's, this country deported millions of illegal immigrants back to Mexico, much like nativists like John Tanton, Lou Dobbs, and Tom Tancredo are doing today. FDR interned millions of Japanese-Americans, even though there was not one single case of disloyalty among them. Yet within a generation, their children came right back into this country looking for jobs and opportunities. Thousands fought in World War II alongside our other troops.

Like our unenforceable laws against alcohol and against pot, it is time to review our immigration laws to make them more enforceable. If we cannot make them so, then we need to seriously consider switching to an open borders policy.

Many people advocate rounding up and deporting those whom we have here. Yet the problem with that is that any attempt to create a police state to deport 12 million people will inevitably be inherently racist. This is because it will create a climate of fear, where people will be profiled just because they are Latino. For every one who is here illegally, there are many more who are here legally. And the logistics of creating more courts and judges and police officers and planes and items of that nature have never been accounted for in any possible plan to create a more restrictive policy.

And on top of that, there is a huge legal problem with mass deportations -- the fact that we would wind up deporting US citizens -- under the Constitution, the children of even two parents who are illegal immigrants are considered US citizens. No plan to create mass deportations would pass Constitutional muster because of both the Citizenship Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. And while Tancredo may advocate repeal of the 14th Amendment, there is no way that would pass the muster of 2/3's of both houses as well as 3/4's of the states.

If we are to have any laws concerning immigration, then the burden of proof should be on those who support such laws to come up with the justification for such laws as well as how they plan to enforce such laws. Otherwise, the fair thing to do is for us to repeal all our laws against immigration and make citizenship as easy as applying for a citizenship card and taking an oath renouncing one's citizenship of their former country and swearing alliegance to this country.

There are those who justify laws restricting immigration on the grounds that it would create cheap labor. But my question is, are you willing to pay three times as high prices for your food? If not, then you have no case. And on top of that, the exact opposite would happen -- employers would lose their single biggest trump card to play on immigrant employees -- the threat of deportation if they unionize. Coupled with the John Edwards plan of making joining a union as easy as signing a card, liberalizing our immigration laws would pack a powerful 1-2 punch against the scourge of cheap labor. If someone is not happy with where they are working, they can always find another job or start their own businesses -- like immigrants are many times more likely to do than us.

There are those who would cite H1-B visas and other such laws as justification. But if we have open borders, then those categories of workers would be done away with altogether. Any workers who are hired from abroad would have the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else in this country. And what is really being described here is known as wage suppression -- which we should make a federal crime. If we create the crime of wage suppression -- firing a worker for the purpose of hiring someone for cheaper wages for the exact same task -- then that would be much easier to enforce and would be directed against the perpetrators of these crimes.

There are those who waited years to come here legally and who are jealous and resentful of those whom they see as cutting in line. But if we switch to an open borders system, then the waiting times would be cut altogether, and the system would be fair to everyone.

There are those who justify restrictions against immigrants by saying that every nation does it and that we will somehow lose our sovereignty as a nation if we were to switch to open borders. But the first argument is an appeal to peer pressure; just because everyone does it does not mean that it is right. Once upon a time, every country was some kind of a dictatorship or a monarchy; that did not mean that we had to stick to that form of government after we threw off the British. Furthermore, there are those who would say that we are a nation of immigrants, but that everyone used to come legally. But the fact of the matter is that we did not have laws against immigration before the 1880's, when Congress started passing laws against Chinese immigration. And we seemed to do just fine without such laws for over 100 years.

There are those who wonder why we would justify rewarding lawbreakers. But no reasonable person argued that we needed to continue to punish those who consumed alcohol after the laws against prohibition were repealed; and no reasonable person would argue for the need to keep people in jail for using pot if we were to legalize it in this country. It's not a matter of rewarding those who broke the law; it is a matter of recognizing that our laws, by any objective standard, are unenforceable like our laws against alcohol were and like our laws against pot are.

There are those who justify restrictions on immigration due to environmental issues. But such arguments target the wrong set of people. The people who pollute this country are the large corporations who demand special rights to discharge all manner of pollutants. We would accomplish a lot more by following the lead of Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General, who is working with counties in California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and who is preparing a lawsuit against the feds for refusing to follow the law and give them the right to tighten up our environmental laws. We would accomplish a lot more through a national energy plan similar to Energize America, which would get us off of foreign oil and onto alternative energy. We would accomplish a lot more through following the leads of Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are making movies about the need for protecting the environment and about what we can do.

There are those who think that the real agenda of the Latino immigrants is to return the Southwest back to Mexican control, which they lost during the Mexican War. But there is no proof of that beyond the hysterical rantings of Michelle Malkin; this is nothing more than a conspiracy theory that has no evidence to back it up. Out of all of the millions of people who demonstrated in the streets against HR 4437 in 2006, none of them advocated such a plan; all of them advocated participating in the political process to achieve change. And they were instrumental in our win in the 2006 election.

There are those who argue that if we get some kind of national ID system and require its use as a condition of employment, then we can better track those who come into this country. But this presupposes that the government is able to distinguish between those who are US citizens and those who are not. If they had been able to do so, then we would not be having this problem in the first place.

There are those who justify laws against immigration on the grounds that we must control crime or terrorism. But the fact of the matter is that we can better control crime or terrorism if we have open borders. That is because people will not be in the shadows in the first place, meaning that we will issue them ID's and will be able to track them better without laws against immigration. And if we are concerned about crime or terrorism, we can always change the appropriate laws and bring the perpetrators to justice. But these sorts of arguments presuppose guilt over innocence. And for those who would argue that we need to control terrorism, getting out of Iraq and tracking down Bin Laden is much more effective on that score than punishing the great majority of immigrants who do not engage in such acts of terrorism.

There are those who justify restrictions against immigration on the grounds that they will take our jobs away. But that is a factual error; in fact, immigrants create their own jobs:

"In India, they teach us if you live together and work together, you will be successful in your life," says Amrik Bhela. "When we came here, we watched our cousins and friends with restaurants work together. They make their own homes, buy their own cars, they succeed. We want to make the same life like them."

Entrepreneurial immigrants such as the Bhela families help more than themselves. Increasing evidence indicates that their mere presence in city neighborhoods is an economic catalyst. Cities with high percentages of immigrant entrepreneurs thrive. Those without, wither.

Michael E. Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and founder of economic development think tank Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, found in his latest report that inner cities with the greatest job growth count immigrants as nearly a third of their populations. Conversely, inner cities with low percentages of immigrants are losing jobs.

Immigrants form their own communities, form their own businesses, and create their own tax base and their own jobs. In fact, more jobs are created and everyone benefits. The Silicon Valley Revolution was created by immigrants who poured billions of dollars into creating the kind of electronic infrastructure that we have today. There was a whole study done on the economic effects of immigration on the Silicon Valley Region.

People may interject stories at this point about how they or someone they know were fired and pushed aside in favor of illegal immigrants. But that is an argument for open borders, not the other way around. Illegal immigrants, who work with the threat of deportation hanging over their heads, are much more easily controlled than you or I are. Get rid of laws against illegal immigration and you will get rid of the temptation to fire someone to hire an illegal immigrant to do the job for cheaper. And people who are making these kinds of arguments are targeting the wrong target -- here's a clue -- it was not the immigrants who decided to fire them. These stories are arguments for stronger unions and open borders, not the other way around.

There are those who justify restrictions on immigration by saying that allowing them in woul mean that much more money for welfare payments and that it would bankrupt the system. But first of all, if we get out of Iraq, we will have a lot more money to meet this challenge. Secondly of all, if we legalize pot and tax it similar to cigarettes and alcohol, then we would get billions of tax dollars from new businesses, workers, and the sales of pot which could go towards that. Thirdly of all, as I mentioned above, immigrants create their own jobs, meaning more jobs and tax money. Fourthly of all, if all of the 12 million immigrants were made legal, there would be a lot more increases in tax revenues, which could be used for that. Fifthly of all, if we combine this policy of open borders with making joining a union just as easy as joining Daily Kos, then we will see a rising standard of living, meaning less dependence on welfare. Sixthly of all, if we create a universal healthcare system, then more people will get preventative care, meaning less medical expenses. Senator Kent Conrad estimates that there are $300 billion of tax revenues that are uncollected every year; if we fully fund the IRS, then we can bring in $300 billion more every year.

In fact, if we are to create a universal healthcare system in this country, then it is vitally important to liberalize our immigration laws in this country. One of the main problems that we would have is waiting times, since more people will engage in elective care if it is free. The UK has a successful system because they are able to recruit doctors and nurses from all over the world, meaning that they are getting to the point where they are about to eliminate waiting times for elective care altogether. They would not be able to do so without liberal immigration laws in that country.

And on top of all this, there are further complications to the policy that we have now. If someone comes here at 3 years old, and they grow up to be 18, and then they find out that they were not born here, they would be an illegal immigrant under our current law. That means that they would be subject to deportation even though it was not their fault that they came here. Is this the kind of stance that those who favor our current system or who favor more restrictions on immigrants want? I challenge such people to explain why such a person should be considered an "illegal" when they did not come here of their own volition. Where do they draw the line?