“The Whole World Would Come to America”

REMINDER: We have a change in schedule for our open-borders conference. I will be presenting this coming Monday, October 7, at 7 p.m.- 8 p.m. Eastern time. I invite everyone to participate. I welcome all questions and challenges regarding the concept of open borders. To receive your Zoom link, register here.

Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, which is being held on November 22-24 at the Dallas Marriott Downtown. My longtime friend Mike Swanson, whose two books (here and here) I highly recommend, is also speaking there. I hope to see you there!

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One of the common fears regarding the concept of open borders is that as soon as it is adopted, the entire world would come to the United States. It’s an irrational fear.

We have a system of open borders here within the United States. We take it for granted simply because we were born and raised under it and also because it’s been our system since the inception of our nation.

People are free to cross state lines without restriction. No vetting stations are at state crossing points. No state border patrol. No highway checkpoints. No controls on people moving from one state to another. No Berlin Walls or concertina wire around each state. Simply free, unrestricted movements of goods, services, and people.

Every day there are tens of thousands of people who leave Maryland, cross the Potomac River, and enter Virginia. Nobody is vetting them. They can consist of murderers, rapists, robbers, terrorists, Muslims, illegals, drug dealers, or people who are entering Virginia to steal our jobs or find spouses to marry. Nobody paces the floor or loses sleep. Nobody is calling for border controls.

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For several years, thousands of people have been escaping California and moving to Austin, Texas. I lived in Austin for three years back in the 1970s when I was attending law school at the University of Texas. I can attest that Austin is the finest city in the United States. There is good reason why so many people are moving to Austin.

Given such, there is a possibility that everyone in the nation will suddenly decide to move to Austin. You can’t deny it, just as I cannot deny that there is a possibility that everyone in the world could suddenly decide to move to the United States under a system of international open borders.

So, why wait for that possibility to materialize? Why not let Texas enact border controls all around the state? That would ensure that if the entire nation were suddenly to decide to move to Austin, the state could prevent that from happening.

For that matter, the same situation applies to New York City. There is a possibility that the entire nation could suddenly decide to move there, joining the millions of people who have already done so. You can’t deny that that is a possibility. Could New York City handle another 333 million people? A system of state border controls would prevent this possibility from happening. We should act now to address this possibility. Tomorrow could be too late.

Indeed, I hear that Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is one of the most beautiful places in the country. Everyone in the country could suddenly decide to move there. You can’t deny that it’s a possibility. So, why don’t all the people living in Jackson, Mississippi, suddenly move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, or to Austin or New York City?

Two reasons: They prefer to live in Jackson or elsewhere for whatever reason. Or they find it too expensive to move to those places. In fact, go check out the hotel rates in Jackson Hole and you’ll see what I mean.

Value is subjective. While many people find Austin to be attractive, millions of others find other places to be relatively more attractive, especially when one considers things like living near grandchildren, job opportunities, where people were born and raised, cost of living, culture, music, and other factors.

Consider Austin. Over the past several years, the cost of housing has soared because of the influx of thousands of new people. So, some people today think, “I’d love to move to Austin but it’s just too expensive for me.” So, they move elsewhere. The same phenomenon has occurred with respect to people escaping New York and New Jersey. They head to Florida but discover really nice places to live in North Carolina and Georgia, where they decide to settle instead.

The same principles of supply and demand apply to foreigners. I know that this might come as a shock to Americans but not everyone considers the United States to be an attractive place to move to. In fact, there are quite a few Americans who are deciding to leave the country because they no longer find the United States an attractive place. Think of those million Americans who have decided to retire in Mexico.

Moving to another country is extremely difficult. Not many people have the intestinal fortitude to do that. Leaving family, friends, home, culture, language, and employment to go to a totally different country is not for the faint-hearted, especially when it means learning the language, finding work, and putting up with lots of abuse. Moreover, as more people move into a country (or a city), the price rise in, say, housing dissuades others, such as what we see in Austin. In other words, the same law of supply and demand that operates with domestic open borders works with international open borders.

So, why does it seem that the whole world would come to the United States if the border was opened? Because there is a big backlog of people trying to get into the United States because of the socialist central-planning system we have in place. Under that system, the planners set an arbitrary number of immigrants they are going to permit into the United States and also the type of immigrants. But there are many more who want to come in than the arbitrary number that has been assigned. That produces the backlog, which then causes people to think that the entire world is waiting anxiously to come to the United States. The same phenomenon would have occurred if Texas had a system of border controls that prevented everyone from California from freely moving to Austin.

Actually, if the borders were opened, the backlog would immediately clear out and the regular law of supply and demand would manifest itself. The flows of people into and out of the United States would become as normal as the flows of people into and out of the 50 states. In fact, no one would know who was a citizen and who was a foreigner, and no one would care. People would simply interact as human beings. No more immigration crisis. No more deaths and suffering. No more immigration police state. Just freedom, free markets, economic prosperity, and harmonies among people. As we have seen domestically, open borders work and they are the only system that is consistent with sound moral, religious, economic, and freedom principles.

REMINDER: We have a change in schedule for our open-borders conference. I will be presenting this coming Monday, October 7, at 7 p.m.- 8 p.m. Eastern time. I invite everyone to participate. I welcome all questions and challenges regarding the concept of open borders. To receive your Zoom link, register here.

Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, which is being held on November 22-24 at the Dallas Marriott Downtown. My longtime friend Mike Swanson, whose two books (here and here) I highly recommend, is also speaking there. I hope to see you there!