In his recent debate on immigration with my co-blogger Bryan Caplan with my friend Alex Nowrasteh, Mark Krikorian makes two interesting points.

The first is that the term “open borders” is not an accurate description of what many of us advocates of open immigration believe in. He does this well at approximately the 12:00 to 13:00 point. His proposed term, which he gives at about the 13:15 point, is “open borders light.”

The second, which goes from about 19:00 to 20:30, is that immigrants aren’t just hands, that is, not just workers, but are also people. He quoted Henry Ford complaining that when he hires a worker, he’s stuck hiring a person. Of course, it’s true that workers are people, but Krikorian seems to be making this as a criticism of immigration and I don’t get it. I find the fact that they’re people a positive on net, not a negative.