Intelligence Squared Debate: Let Anyone Take a Job Anywhere

Is there something special about being able to take a job anywhere compared to other exchanges that are prohibited or made more difficult by immigration laws? Why isn’t this just “live anywhere”? Does someone think people shouldn’t be able to buy houses or rent apartments anywhere (in the absence of being employed in that area) but that they should be able to take jobs anywhere? What would the justification for that be? (If it’s “being able to take care of yourself financially,” the person with significant wealth but no job does better on that than the person with no wealth and a low-wage job.)

I hope to see each and every one of you in New York City.

That’s a perfect location. If there is any place that disproves the resolution “Let Anyone Take a Job Anywhere,” it’s Manhattan.

With the highest per capita income of any county in the nation, Manhattan would be hopelessly overrun if it didn’t have strong laws and tight quotas restricting immigration from the rest of the US to it.

Vivek?!?

That’s an odd partner.

He has a tendency to want to privilege well educated immigrants and if someone says that such access shouldn’t be limited based on education levels, he calls them xenophobic or anti-progress.

He’s pro-immigration in a very narrow sense but Vivek is not the first person I think of when I think about open borders.

I think what the resolution writers have in mind with “Let Anyone Take a Job Anywhere” is that historically the principal reason for immigration restrictions is raw protectionism.

Hence if the big fear of “They took our jobs!” is resolved, then “Let Anyone Live Anywhere” will quickly follow.

Nice, I look forward to this debate.

I’m assuming your going in with your 3 step game plan (presumption of liberty unless massive harm, clearly no massive harm), as you did in a recent debate I saw on youtube.

For me, the counter-argument which is the hardest to un-root is that the country is like private property and there is no right for people to enter. Just like a mall owner can set rules on who can come in, or work there, or what they should wear, “we” get to set rules on who gets to come in the country.

This argument feeds on a deep belief system and is personalized with different flavors, so it is hard to address in a one-size-fits-all answer and limited time.
You may be able to convince people that marginally more immigration and a bit freer flow of labor is beneficial, but it will be hard to sway people on the categorical point (open borders) without butting against the notion that government is voluntary.

@MikeP:

This is a tangent, and I don’t have a strong opinion one way or another, I just want to explore the issue a bit. You said:

There are effectively no private property rights if they can be trumped by the government that claims dominion of the territory the property is in.

Imagine you own and live in a house on a 100 acre ranch just south of San Diego. One day the U.S. government declares that our southern border is to move 50 miles north, effective immediately. Your house is now no longer within the territory of the United States. You are an autonomous person living outside of any country, on a small piece of land you have all your life understood to be yours.

You can now hire anyone you like to work on your ranch, since there is no government there to stop you with silly immigration laws. Indeed, you can do all kinds of things that the U.S. government would not have allowed. You go to sleep happy that night, feeling empowered at finally having full dominion over your property. Freedom at last!

The next day, a bunch of guys with machine guns and bandanas park their pickup trucks on your land and kick their feet up on your living room couch, helping themselves to whatever’s in your fridge.

You get your shotgun and tell them to get out of your house.

“Why should I get out of my own house?” the leader asks you.

After a bewildering exchange, you go and get the deed and show it to him. He looks at it and asks what authority backs it up. Ultimately, you must concede that authority is the U.S. government.

“You’re not in the US. The US government has no jurisdiction here.”

“Fine,” you say, pumping your shotgun. “Then the authority is that of nature. I put my labor and time into this land. I paid for it with wages earned from my efforts. By every decent system known to man, this is my rightful property. Get out or I’ll fire upon you.”

The bandana-clad leader laughs and says “By the system known to me, this is my rightful property. Me and my boys drove all the way here in the hot sun, and we put effort into getting this place they way we’d get any other. I’ve been gracious in letting you stay this long, but my patience is wearing thin.” On cue, the other guys all turn and aim their guns at you.

So, what happens now? Who’s right? How is the situation resolved? What can we learn from it?

So, outside of some body politic trumping them–whether it be a government or a group of gunslinging banditos–what property rights can be said to effectively exist?

Does might, in the end, make right after all? Is it then simply a matter of opting for the most benevolent might available–and hoping they stay mighty enough to deter others with might who are less benevolent?

MikeP:

So, you believe in a reality in which property rights objectively exist regardless whether they are recognized, but you concede that “what happens” (i.e. the consequence) depends on whether these rights are secured by the mighty.

A right which is recognized but not secured will therefore have the same consequence as a right which is neither recognized nor secured–i.e. something that isn’t really a right at all. Since objective truth is determined by consequences, recognized rights can be distinguished from phoney-rights only subjectively.

This is complicated by the fact that some phoney-rights are secured as if they are real rights. Would you agree?

Doesn’t that mean that, in consequence, might indeed makes right after all?

@MikeP: NZ is just trying to get you to admit that the idea of ‘rights’ is made up; a secular mythology.

And that whether this ideology has a lot of adherents, or that widespread belief in and compliance with the system has psychologically and socially positive consequences, has no bearing on whether is has any scientific-type truth-value to it – which, duh, it doesn’t.

You could say the same things for any kind of religion; the centrality or not of any supernatural divine element is inconsequential to the analysis. You might as well be trying to convince someone that Veganism is ‘true’ – it has no truth outside of human preferences.

It’s one thing to live with a Vegan who has made a choice conform his own behavior to his opinions. It’s another thing to live with a Vegan who won’t hear dissent from the notion that Veganism has always been objectively true for everyone everywhere and should be enforced by whatever means necessary and practicable.

@NZ: Likewise, you might as well try to logically talk someone out of their faith, which usually just ends up irritating them. We don’t have the equivalent of a flying spaghetti monster parody of the theological nature of cosmically-grounded humanism, but there definitely ought to be one.

@MikeP:

Supreme authority may be irrelevant when considered next to supreme ability.

That said, I think your delineation of those two alternative views is logical. I’m just not sure I’ve ever heard them actually used to defend restrictions on immigration.

If someone says “Governments can restrict immigration because that’s simply part of the range of powers we understand governments to have,” I think that’s a bit different than “Governments can restrict immigration because they also secure private property.”

Are you arguing that defenders of immigration restriction ought not to invoke the authority of governments to keep out immigrants, and that instead they ought to simply observe that if governments are able to restrict immigration, then they may? If so, I’d probably agree with that.

After all, a hypothetical individual with enough firepower to protect his own property from anyone in perpetuity needs no government to secure his property rights for him.

I am arguing that defenders of immigration restriction should not try to draw analogies between individual rights of property and government authorities over territory. It is nothing but an attempt to use the language of property rights while disposing of the concept.

Yeah, I think I agree.

I trust you recognize the volumes of horrors throughout history that could be justified with exactly the same argument.

Something I’ve come to realize lately is that just because one person uses a concept to justify something horrible doesn’t mean another person should avoid that same concept. My brother refuses to acknowledge a link between race and average differences in IQ because he believes it could (or inevitably will) lead to people being put on trains.

So, it’s possible to take “might makes right” and wind up committing horrible atrocities with it, but on the other hand my experience tells me that it’s possible to enumerate a limited set of rights–and they can be derived arbitrarily from complex circumstances or linearly from one central right, but the point is they remain limited–and use might to secure them without extending might past those bounds. Yes, aberrations and abuses will occur, but I think some groups of people are capable of keeping these to a minimum, primarily because they’ve figured out they have an interest in doing so.