I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
It all boils down to this: In all the talk about freedom to leave or to enter, are we really interested in freedom, justice, and humanity, or are we only interested in scoring Brownie points in the Cold War game? If the former, we should not merely be content to condemn Russia or Cuba for not letting their people go; we should hail any occasion when some of their people do go, and we should welcome all of them to our shores with good fellowship and open arms. If we truly wish to be the land of the free, we must return to the traditional American policy before World War I of welcoming immigrants, of lifting our lamp by the golden door. America was built by immigrants, and we lost a good deal of our soul when the lamp nearly went out after World War I and immigration was sharply restricted by a combination of racism and labor union restrictionism. Let us return to our own noble heritage and be the beacon-light of freedom once more.
This is from Murray Rothbard, “From Cuban to American Socialism,” Reason, December 1980. It was highlighted today on the Reason web site here.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Nov 12 2020 at 11:54am
Wow. Great quote.
G. Wash
Nov 12 2020 at 4:06pm
I have no problem with immigrants, though I have a great problem with the current system.
In any case, for the folks who would like to open things up under the current arrangement, I say, ‘great!’ But make sure it’s your door that you’re opening. Don’t assume you can open mine as a sign of your moral virtue.
Jon Murphy
Nov 12 2020 at 4:45pm
Nothing about open borders implies you have to open your door. You may choose to do business (or not) with immigrants as you so wish. Just like opening commerce and allowing a new restaurant in town doesn’t compel you to eat there. Again, you may conduct business as you wish.
Marilyn Griffin
Nov 12 2020 at 6:58pm
Your viewpoint seems a simplistic one. You imply that millions upon millions of poor/uneducated/unskilled foreigners who have no concept of a republic or a democracy but just want material stuff, free if possible, but you imply that this will not impact any of we Americans as individuals. But you are terribly wrong. Everything that happens to our country impacts every single one of us in some way. When citizen X has to pay lots more taxes in order for our government to provide our wrkfare/public assistance services free to foreigners who are NOT US citizens, citizens X is mist certainly impacted. His hard earned money is being confiscated forcefully by his government to give to not only people who choose not to work/take care of themselves but to people who are not even citizens here and have NO RIGHTS to our citizen rights and benefits. Every time a US cituzen nake a phone call requiring him to select a language, he is not only impacted but beyond irritated by having to select English in America. When citizen X’s child in third grade is doing poorly because his teacher’s time and efforts are consumed by the 10 foreign non-English speaking kids in his class. The teacher’s hands are completely tied because she is held accountable for educating those foreign kids in order to hold her job and she is given no leeway or excuse because she and those kids speak different languages. When citizen X takes his family out to a fast food restaurant for supper, and the employee does not speak English, everyone except maybe that employee becomes extremely frustrated because this is the restaurant in their town in their state where English is the language. So, sir, never ever think that every American is not affected and completely impacted by this constant invasion of non-assimulating, economic opportunist, exploiting foreigners who want everything we have materially while refusing to actually join our society and country.
Jon Murphy
Nov 13 2020 at 8:55am
I imply no such thing. Mainly because both claims in your sentence are factually incorrect:
First: it is incorrect that immigrants, regardless of how skilled they are, are unlikely to have a concept of a republic or democracy. Indeed, they tend to have very much the same instincts regarding self-governance as native Americans. Furthermore, they are excluded from welfare for 5 years after immigration.
Second: Immigration will certainly have an impact on native Americans. If there was no impact, there’d be no reason to immigrate. That impact is overwhelmingly positive.
David Henderson
Nov 12 2020 at 6:23pm
I apologize for the misunderstanding. “Opening the door” is a metaphor for letting them in the country, not into your house or my house. If I say “the door to West Virginia is open,” I don’t mean that everyone in West Virginia must let anyone who comes into West Virginia enter his or her house. I mean simply that anyone can come to West Virginia.
If you knew Murray as I did back then, you would know that he wouldn’t have wanted to open his door either.
Jon Murphy has nicely clarified above.
By the way, on this blog I have defended freedom of association, something that some libertarians will no longer defend to the same extent I do and I’ve pointed out that if we had more freedom of association, there would be less hostility to immigration. See my post titled “Tradeoffs Between Immigration and Reduced Freedom of Association,” September 25, 2018.
robc
Nov 13 2020 at 10:05am
I think free association is a pretty obvious line between “thin” and “thick” libertarians. Thin libertarians support it, because principle. Thick libertarians oppose it, not on principle, but because it allows bad people to do icky things.
David Henderson
Nov 14 2020 at 9:41am
You make a good point. I’m not sure that all “thick” libertarians oppose freedom of association but it is true that many of them do.
Of course, the easiest thing in the world is to defend people’s right to do nice things. (Even that is often under attack. Various local governments have stepped in to prevent charitable people from feeding the homeless.) But the real test of one’s belief in freedom is whether he/she defends people’s right to do “icky” things.
Mactoul
Nov 13 2020 at 12:10am
The “noble heritage” was confined to Europeans. Previous to 1965, the non-Europeans were severely restricted from settling. So, could we interpret Rothbard as wishing to continue European-only immigration policy of 19th century?
Jon Murphy
Nov 13 2020 at 8:51am
That’s not strictly speaking correct. In the early days of the US, there were various legislation that prevented naturalization of many non-Europeans (such as the Naturalization Act of 1790), but immigration and settling in the US was actively encouraged (see, for example, the Immigration Act of 1864). It wasn’t until the late 1800s where the first restrictionist legislation started to come about. And even then things were quite mild (relatively speaking) until after World War I.
David Henderson
Nov 14 2020 at 9:38am
You ask:
First, as Jon Murphy has pointed out in response to you, this tilt to Europeans happened only in the late 19th century.
Second, I don’t think so for another reason. Murray was writing in 1980. By then we had had well over a decade of experience with the 1965 law and I’m guessing he was aware of that.
Thomas Hutcheson
Nov 14 2020 at 7:54am
I think we should be making the same kind of case against bad immigration laws as any other bad law: the costs relative to a better law are greater than the benefits. Given the difficulty of estimating either the cost or the benefits of zero restrictions and an uncertain number of immigrants or unknown characteristics, I think a better strategy is to argue for a policy of recruiting a few million highly skilled immigrant, evaluate, and then decide how many million more possible less skilled immigrants to recruit.
Jonathan Lingenfelter
Nov 24 2020 at 7:54pm
Rothbard later reversed his position on open borders in “Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation State. Journal of Libertarian Studies. 1994.
A slice: “However, on rethinking immigration on the basis of the anarcho-capitalist model, it became clear to me that a totally privatized country would not have ‘open borders’ at all.”
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