How Immigration Restrictions Violate the Rights of Citizens
by Adam Reed
Most arguments against unrestricted admission of non-criminal immigrants focus on the fact that governments are set up by the people of a geographical area to protect their own rights. Therefore a government allegedly is not chartered to enforce the rights of people, such as potential immigrants, who are not already present in its territory. This argument ignores the fact that forcible intervention into any voluntary interaction among individuals violates the rights of all involved, including the rights of the government's citizens. It is the natural human right of each individual citizen to deal with all other people, including non-citizens of his choice, as he will, provided only that these dealings respect the individual rights of all persons. It is not possible for governments to restrict the immigration of non-criminal persons without, in the process of doing so, carrying out obscene violations of the rights of their own citizens.
Since I am a citizen of the United States, the examples I use below come from here - but the process is the same everywhere.
First, every adult person has the natural right to the society of non-criminal persons of his choice, and to share anything he owns and enjoys with the person of his choice. But one's right to choose whose society one privately enjoys is violated, when governments presume to control one's ability to share one's life and home with the person of one's choice. One of my friends was forced to live abroad for several years, until his bride was finally allowed to immigrate to the United States. The situation is worse for people in homosexual relationships, since their romantic partners or spouses have no possibility of immigration to the United States, forcing the citizen in these relationships to live outside his country - often for the rest of his life. During the Shoah, American citizens were forcibly prevented from offering refuge in their own homes to brothers, sisters, and parents trying to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. In some cases, permission to immigrate was denied to siblings and parents of American soldiers, even when those brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers of American soldiers were being rounded up and murdered.
Second, every adult person has the natural human right to lease or sell his property to whomever one wishes. When a government forcibly prevents a non-criminal person from moving into a home leased or bought from a citizen, the government is violating the citizen's right to engage in voluntary commercial transactions according to the individual citizen's will. For example, I was selling my previous home when Hong Kong was about to be abandoned to Communist China, and my best offer was from a citizen of Hong Kong who intended to move to the United States - a scientist with an offer of employment from Bell Labs, where I also worked at the time. The deal fell through when the buyer was forcibly prevented, by "my" government, from moving to the United States. It cost me close to $100,000 in the cost of carrying multiple mortgages for several months, and in eventual lower price. This is how governments confiscate the difference between the true value of properties on the world market, and a price that has been artificially depressed by the enforcement of immigration restrictions.
Third, every adult person has the natural human right to employ the consenting worker of his choice when they agree on the terms of employment. For example, one of my neighbors is having his bathrooms remodeled. He negotiated the remodeling to be done by a respected tile artisan from Mexico for $5,000, but the artisan was stopped at the border and not allowed to enter the United States. The job is now being done by a much less competent US citizen for over $10,000. It is an eggregious violation of the citizen homeowner's rights, for the government to confiscate from him over $5,000 in differential wages and in the value of craftsmanship, by forcibly preventing the immigration of his chosen worker.
In short, immigration controls against non-criminal potential immigrants inevitably violate the natural human rights of citizens: the right to the society, business, and contracts with other humans, irrespective of whether those humans are or are not on the government's list of government-approved people.
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