[Editor’s note: our immigration
roundtable is a series of articles presenting the views of prominent Austrian
and libertarian thinkers. By necessity each article provides only a
basic overview of those views, with links to original sources.]
Our
goal is to present each thinker’s views on immigration by excerpting his or her
writings on the subject.
Earlier articles in this series addressed the views
of Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, and Walter Block. This article discusses the
views of Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is
well-known in Austro-libertarian circles as a critic of “open borders” and an
advocate for purely private communities. In his earlier works (1980s and
1990s) on socialism, private property, and argumentation ethics, Hoppe demonstrates
his unyielding support for absolute property rights. This perspective informs
his later work on trade, immigration, and borders, in well-known publications
like Democracy: The God that Failed.
We start with his seminal
1998 article from the Journal of Libertarian Studies titled
“The Cases for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration,”
where Hoppe first challenges the analogy between trade restrictions on goods
and immigration restrictions:
I
will argue that this thesis and its implicit claim are fundamentally mistaken.
In particular, I will demonstrate that free trade and restricted immigration
are not only perfectly consistent but even mutually reinforcing policies. That
is, it is not the advocates of free trade and restricted immigration who are
wrong, but rather the proponents of free trade and free immigration. In thus
taking the “intellectual guilt” out of the
free-trade-and-restricted-immigration position and putting it where it actually
belongs, I hope to promote a change in the present state of public opinion and
facilitate substantial political realignment.
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Because goods and people are
not the same thing, Hoppe argues, even a provable overall increase in
national income does not address the subjective nature of “wealth”:
From
the outset, it must be emphasized that not even the most restrictive
immigration policy or the most exclusive form of segregationism has anything to
do with a rejection of free trade and the adoption of protectionism. From the
fact that one does not want to associate with or live in the neighborhood
composed of Mexicans, Haitians, Chinese, Koreans, Germans, Catholics, Moslems,
Hindus, etc., it does not follow that one does not want to trade with them from
a distance. Moreover, even if it were the case that one’s real income would
rise as a result of immigration, it does not follow that immigration must be
considered “good,” for material wealth is not the only thing that counts.
Rather, what constitutes “welfare” and “wealth” is subjective,
and one might prefer lower material living standards and a greater distance
from certain other people over higher material living standards and a smaller
distance. It is precisely the absolute voluntariness of human association and separation — the absence of any form of forced
integration — which makes peaceful relationships — free trade—between racially,
ethnically, linguistically, religiously, or culturally distinct people
possible.
Furthermore, the incentive to
emigrate from low-wage countries to higher-wage countries is reduced by free trade policies:
The
relationship between trade and migration is one of elastic substitutibility
(rather than rigid exclusivity): the more (or less) you have of one, the less
(or more) you need of the other. Other things being equal, businesses move to
low wage areas, and labor moves to high wage areas, thus effecting a tendency
toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as
the optimal localization of capital. With political borders separating high-
from low-wage areas, and with national (nation-wide) trade and immigration
policies in effect, these normal tendencies — of immigration and capital export
— are weakened with free trade and strengthened with protectionism. As long as
Mexican products — the products of a low-wage area — can freely enter a
high-wage area such as the U.S., the incentive for Mexican people to move to
the U.S. is reduced. In contrast, if Mexican products are prevented from
entering the American market, the attraction for Mexican workers to move to the
U.S. is increased. Similarly, when U.S. producers are free to buy from and sell
to Mexican producers and consumers, capital exports from the U.S. to Mexico
will be reduced; however, when U.S. producers are prevented from doing so, the
attraction of moving production from the U.S. to Mexico is increased.
Hoppe
then makes his critical distinction between “invited” goods imported by a
willing buyer and an individual’s desire to move at will. Uninvited mass
migration, he argues, frequently makes one party or parties (current
inhabitants of the recipient nation) subjectively worse off in their view. Thus
immigration is not always analogous to “win-win” trade exchanges.
The phenomena of trade and
immigration are different in a fundamental respect, and the meaning of “free”
and “restricted” in conjunction with both terms is categorically different.
People can move and migrate; goods and services, of themselves, cannot.
Put
differently, while someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone
else wanting him to do so, goods and services cannot be shipped from place to
place unless both sender and receiver agree. Trivial as this distinction may
appear, it has momentous consequences. For free in conjunction
with trade then means trade by invitation of private households and firms only;
and restricted trade does not mean protection of
households and firms from uninvited goods or services, but invasion and
abrogation of the right of private households and firms to extend or deny
invitations to their own property. In contrast, free in conjunction
with immigration does not mean immigration by invitation of individual
households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration; and restricted immigration actually means, or at least can
mean, the protection of private households and firms from unwanted invasion and
forced integration. Hence, in advocating free trade and restricted immigration,
one follows the same principle: requiring an invitation for people as for goods
and services.
However,
with respect to the movement of people, the same government will have to do
more in order to fulfill its protective function than merely permit events to
take their own course, because people, unlike products, possess a will and can
migrate. Accordingly, population movements, unlike product shipments, are
not per se mutually beneficial events because they
are not always — necessarily and invariably — the result of an agreement
between a specific receiver and sender.
Furthermore,
the reality of modern welfare states means that an influx of people
(unlike an influx of goods) can be disastrous:
According
to proponents of unconditional free immigration, the U.S. qua high-wage area
would invariably benefit from free immigration; hence, it should enact a policy
of open borders, regardless of any existing conditions, i.e., even if the U.S.
were ensnarled in protectionism and domestic welfare. Yet surely, such a
proposal strikes a reasonable person as fantastic. Assume that the U.S., or
better still Switzerland, declared that there would no longer be any border
controls, that anyone who could pay the fare might enter the country, and, as a
resident then be entitled to every “normal” domestic welfare provision. Can
there be any doubt how disastrous such an experiment would turn out in the
present world?. The U.S., and Switzerland even faster, would be overrun by
millions of third-world immigrants, because life on and off American and Swiss
public streets is comfortable compared to life in many areas of the third
world. Welfare costs would skyrocket, and the strangled economy disintegrate
and collapse, as the subsistence fund — the stock of capital accumulated in and
inherited from the past — was plundered. Civilization in the U.S. and
Switzerland would vanish, just as it once did from Rome and Greece.
What
then, is Hoppe’s answer to the essential conflict posed by
immigration rules — i.e., the desires of some residents of a country to
permit immigration, and the desire of others to prohibit it? Not open borders,
he says, which are inconsistent and contradictory. Some immigration
restrictions must exist, but what restrictions? The only consistent and
workable answer to that question is nothing less that a full anarcho-capitalist model
for property, where private owners invite immigrants onto their
property after assessing the benefits and costs. Neither forced
integration nor forced exclusion should be permissible:
The
guiding principle of a high-wage-area country’s immigration policy follows from
the insight that immigration, to be free in the same sense as trade is free,
must be invited immigration. The details follow from the further
elucidation and exemplification of the concept of invitation vs. invasion and forced integration.
For this purpose, it is
necessary to assume first, as a conceptual benchmark, the existence of what
political philosophers have described as a private property anarchy,
anarcho-capitalism, or ordered anarchy: all land is privately owned, including
all streets, rivers, airports, harbors, etc. With respect to some pieces of
land, the property title may be unrestricted, that is, the owner is permitted
to do with his property whatever he pleases as long as he does not physically
damage the property of others. With respect to other territories, the property
title may be more or less restricted. As is currently the case in some
developments, the owner may be bound by contractual limitations on what he can
do with his property (restrictive covenants, voluntary zoning), which might
include residential rather than commercial use, no buildings more than four
stories high, no sale or rent to unmarried couples, smokers, or Germans, for
instance.
Clearly,
in this kind of society, there is no such thing as freedom of immigration, or
an immigrant’s right of way. What does exist is the freedom of independent
private property owners to admit or exclude others from their own property in
accordance with their own restricted or unrestricted property titles. Admission
to some territories might be easy, while to others it might be nearly
impossible. Moreover, admission to one party’s property does not imply the
“freedom to move around,” unless other property owners have agreed to such
movements. There will be as much immigration or non-immigration, inclusivity or
exclusivity, desegregation or segregation, non-discrimination or discrimination
as individual owners or owners associations desire.
When
government intrudes, however — with its arbitrary borders and sanctioned
passports — bureaucrats rather than invested property owners make the
immigration rules. Thus what ought to be a private system becomes political:
In
order to realize what this involves, it is necessary to explain how an
anarcho-capitalist society is altered by the introduction of a government, and
how this affects the immigration problem. Since in an anarcho-capitalist
society there is no government, there is no clear-cut distinction between
inlanders (domestic citizens) and foreigners. This distinction appears only with
the establishment of a government. The territory which a government’s power
extends over then becomes inland, and everyone residing outside of this
territory becomes a foreigner. State borders (and passports), as distinct from
private property borders (and titles to property), come into existence, and
immigration takes on a new meaning. Immigration becomes immigration by
foreigners across state borders, and the decision as to whether or not a person
should be admitted no longer rests exclusively with private property owners or
associations of such owners but with the government qua domestic security
producer. Now, if the government excludes a person while there exists a
domestic resident who wants to admit this very person onto his property, the
result is forced exclusion; and if the government admits a person while there
exists no domestic resident who wants to have this person on his property, the
result is forced integration.
How would a process of
“invited” immigrants work, per Hoppe? Through contractual admission, which in
effect makes the inviting party the sponsor of such immigrants:
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Qua contractual
admission, the inviting party can dispose only of his own private property.
Hence, the admission implies negatively — similarly to the scenario of
conditional free immigration — that the immigrant is excluded from all publicly
funded welfare. Positively, it implies that the receiving party assumes legal
responsibility for the actions of his invitee for the duration of his stay. The
invitor is held liable to the full extent of his property for any crimes the
invitee commits against the person or property of any third party (as parents
are held accountable for the crimes of their offspring as long as they are
members of the parental household). This obligation, which implies practically
speaking that invitors will have to carry liability insurance for all of their
guests, ends once the invitee has left the country, or once another domestic
property owner has assumed liability for the person in question (by admitting
him onto his property).
The
invitation may be private (personal) or commercial, temporally limited or
unlimited, concerning only housing (accommodation, residency) or housing and
employment (but there cannot be a valid contract involving only employment and
no housing). In any case, however, as a contractual relationship, every
invitation may be revoked or terminated by the invitor; and upon termination,
the invitee — whether tourist, visiting businessman, or resident alien — will
be required to leave the country (unless another resident citizen enters an
invitation-contract with him).
Dr.
Hoppe closes the article with an admonition against the automatic grant of
voting and citizenship rights to immigrants:
Becoming
a citizen means acquiring the right to stay in a country permanently, and a
permanent invitation cannot be secured other than by purchasing residential
property from a citizen resident. Only by selling real estate to a foreigner
does a citizen indicate that he agrees to a guest’s permanent stay (and only if
the immigrant has purchased and paid for real estate and residential housing in
the host country will he assume a permanent interest in his new country’s
well-being and prosperity). Moreover, finding a citizen willing to sell
residential property and being prepared and able to pay for it, although a
necessary requirement for the acquisition of citizenship, may not also be
sufficient. If and insofar as the domestic property in question is subject to
restrictive covenants, the hurdles to be taken by a prospective citizen may be
significantly higher. In Switzerland, for instance, citizenship may require
that the sale of residential property to foreigners be ratified by a majority
of or even all directly affected local property owners.
Moving forward to 2001, when
Dr. Hoppe releases his famous political polemic Democracy:
The God that Failed. Here he presents his full exposition of
how and why democratic processes are incompatible with property and laissez-faire. He builds on his central arguments:
trade protectionism and migration restrictions are not the same, neither forced
integration nor forced exclusion are defendable, and only a system of fully
private property can justifiably and practically resolve conflicts over
immigration.
He
opens chapter 7 of the book, titled “On Free Immigration and Forced
Integration,” with a synopsis of the classical liberal argument for free
immigration as increasing overall standards of living:
The
classical argument in favor of free immigration runs as follows: Other things
being equal, businesses go to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage
areas, thus affecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the
same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital. An influx
of migrants into a given-sized high-wage area will lower nominal wage rates.
However, it will not lower real wage rates if the population is below its
optimum size. To the contrary, if this is the case, the produced output will
increase over-proportionally, and real incomes will actually rise. Thus,
restrictions on immigration will harm the protected domestic workers qua
consumers more than they gain qua producers. Moreover, immigration restrictions
will increase the “flight” of capital abroad (the export of capital which
otherwise might have stayed), still causing an equalization of wage rates
(although somewhat more slowly), but leading to a less than optimal allocation
of capital, thereby harming world living standards all-around.
But
again, the Austrian perspective requires us to understand value subjectively:
The
problem with the above argument is that it suffers from two interrelated
shortcomings which invalidate its unconditional pro-immigration conclusion
and/or which render the argument applicable only to a highly unrealistic — long
bygone — situation in human history. The first shortcoming will only be touched
upon. To libertarians of the Austrian School, it should be clear that what
constitutes “wealth” and “well-being” is subjective. Material wealth is not the
only thing that has value. Thus, even if real incomes rise due to immigration,
it does not follow that immigration must be considered “good,” for one might
prefer lower living standards and a greater distance to other people over
higher living standards and a smaller distance to others. Instead, a second,
related shortcoming will be the focus here. With regard to a given territory
into which people immigrate, it is left unanalyzed who, if anyone, owns
(controls) this territory. In fact, in order to render the above argument
applicable, it is implicitly assumed that the territory in question is unowned,
and that the immigrants enter virgin territory (open frontier). Obviously,
today this can no longer be assumed. It this assumption is dropped,
however, the problem of immigration takes on an entirely new meaning and
requires fundamental rethinking.
Hoppe
expands the analysis to consider the likely differences in immigration policies
under two scenarios, namely monarchy and democracy. First he considers a
monarchical ruler:
It is
time to enrich the analysis through the introduction of a few “realistic”
empirical assumptions. Let us assume that the government is privately owned.
The ruler owns the entire country within state borders. He owns part of the
territory outright (his property title is unrestricted), and he is partial
owner of the rest (as landlord or residual claimant of all of his
citizen-tenants real estate holdings, albeit restricted by some preexisting
rental contracts). He can sell and bequeath his property, and he can calculate
and capture the monetary value of his capital (his country). Traditional
monarchies — and kings — are the closest historical examples of this form of
government. What will a king’s typical immigration and emigration policy be?
Because he owns the entire country’s capital value, he will tend to choose
migration policies that preserve or enhance rather than diminish the value of
his kingdom, assuming no more than his self-interest.
He
contrasts this with democratic leaders, whose time preferences reflect only
their tenure in office:
Migration policies become
predictably different once the government is publicly owned. The ruler no
longer owns the country’s capital value but only has current use of it. He
cannot sell or bequeath his position as ruler; he is merely a temporary
caretaker. Moreover, “free entry” into the position of a caretaker government
exists. In principle, anyone can become the ruler of the country. As they came
into existence on a worldwide scale after World War I, democracies offer
historical examples of public government. What are a democracy’s migration
policies? Once again assuming no more than self-interest (maximizing monetary
and psychic income: money and power), democratic rulers tend to maximize
current income, which they can appropriate privately, at the expense of capital
values, which they can not appropriate privately. Hence, in accordance with
democracy’s inherent egalitarianism of one-man-one-vote, they tend to pursue a
distinctly egalitarian-nondiscriminatory-emigration and immigration policy.
As
far as immigration policies are concerned, the incentives and disincentives are
likewise distorted, and the results are equally perverse. For a democratic
ruler, it also matters little whether bums or geniuses, below or above-average
civilized and productive people immigrate into the country. Nor is he much
concerned about the distinction between temporary workers (owners of work
permits) and permanent, property owning immigrants (naturalized citizens). In
fact, bums and unproductive people may well be preferred as residents and
citizens, because they create more so-called “social” problems,” and democratic
rulers thrive on the existence of such problems. Moreover, bums and inferior
people will likely support his egalitarian policies,
He
concludes the chapter with a robust call for radical decentralization of
immigration policy as the least-bad approach in democratic systems:
The
current situation in the United States and in Western Europe has nothing
whatsoever to do with “free” immigration. It is forced integration, plain and
simple, and forced integration is the predictable outcome of democratic
one-man-one-vote rule. Abolishing forced integration requires the de-democratization
of society and ultimately the abolition of democracy. More specifically, the
power to admit or exclude should be stripped from the hands of the central
government and reassigned to the states, provinces, cities, towns, villages,
residential districts, and ultimately to private property owners and their
voluntary associations. The means to achieve this goal are decentralization and
secession (both inherently undemocratic, and anti-majoritarian). One would be
well on the way toward a restoration of the freedom of association and
exclusion as is implied in the idea and institution of private property, and
much of the social strife currently caused by forced integration would
disappear, if only towns and villages could and would do what they did as a
matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the
United States: to post signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and
once in town for entering specific pieces of property (no beggars, bums, or
homeless, but also no Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Catholics, etc.); to expel as
trespassers those who do not fulfill these requirements; and to solve the
“naturalization” question somewhat along the Swiss model, where local
assemblies, not the central government, determine who can and who cannot become
a Swiss citizen.
Finally, in articles
like A Realistic Libertarianism Hoppe makes
the case for treating the net taxpayers of any political jurisdiction as the
rightful owners of “common” or government property — with political officials
acting as trustees of that property.
Those trustees should ensure that property owners who invite immigrants bear
the full cost of their impact on taxpayer-funded commons:
In a
world where all places are privately owned, the immigration problem vanishes.
There exists no right to immigration. There only exists the right to trade, buy
or rent various places. Yet what about immigration in the real world with
public property administered by local, regional or central State-governments?
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First off: What would
immigration policies be like if the State would, as it is supposed to do, act
as a trustee of the taxpayer-owners’ public property? What about immigration if
the State acted like the manager of the community property jointly owned and
funded by the members of a housing association or gated community?
At least in principle the
answer is clear. A trustee’s guideline regarding immigration would be the “full
cost” principle. That is, the immigrant or his inviting resident should pay the
full cost of the immigrant’s use made of all public goods or facilities during
his presence. The cost of the community property funded by resident taxpayers
should not rise or its quality fall on account of the presence of immigrants.
On the contrary, if possible the presence of an immigrant should yield the
resident-owners a profit, either in the form of lower taxes or community-fees
or a higher quality of community property (and hence all-around higher property
values).
What
the application of the full cost principle involves in detail depends on the
historical circumstances, i.e., in particular on the immigration pressure. If
the pressure is low, the initial entry on public roads may be entirely
unrestricted to ‘foreigners’ and all costs insofar associated with immigrants
are fully absorbed by domestic residents in the expectation of domestic
profits. All further-going discrimination would be left to the individual
resident-owners (this, incidentally, is pretty much the state of affairs, as it
existed in the Western world until WW I). But even then, the same generosity
would most likely not be extended to the use made by immigrants of public
hospitals, schools, universities, housing, pools, parks, etc.. Entry to such
facilities would not be “free” for immigrants. To the contrary, immigrants
would be charged a higher price for their use than the domestic resident-owners
who have funded these facilities, so as to lower the domestic tax-burden. And
if a temporary visitor-immigrant wanted to become a permanent resident, he
might be expected to pay an admission price, to be remitted to the current
owners as compensation for the extra-use made of their community property.
He
also rejects the “accelerationist” view of some libertarians, namely that
free immigration rules would overwhelm modern western welfare systems and thus
hasten the demise of their respective governments:
Absent any other, internal or
local entry restrictions concerning the use of domestic public properties and
services and increasingly absent also all entry restrictions regarding the use
of domestic private property (owing to countless anti-discrimination laws), the
predictable result would be a massive inflow of immigrants from the third and
second world into the US and Western Europe and the quick collapse of the
current domestic ‘public welfare’ system. Taxes would have to be sharply
increased (further shrinking the productive economy) and public property and
services would dramatically deteriorate. A financial crisis of unparalleled
magnitude would result.
Yet
why would this be a desirable goal for anyone calling himself a libertarian?
True enough, the tax-funded public welfare system should be eliminated, root
and branch. But the inevitable crisis that a “free” immigration policy would
bring about does not produce this result. To the contrary: Crises, as
everyone vaguely familiar with history would know, are typically used and often
purposefully fabricated by States in order to further increase their own power.
And surely the crisis produced by a “free” immigration policy would be an
extraordinary one.
He
concludes with another admonition regarding the incompatibility of mass
immigration and democracy, where political leaders bear no cost when they
subsidize immigrants rather than act as trustees for property owners:
The
immigration policies of the States that are confronted with the highest
immigration pressure, of the US and Western Europe, have little resemblance
with the actions of a trustee. They do not follow the full cost principle. They
do not tell the immigrant essentially to “pay up or leave.” To the contrary,
they tell him “once in, you can stay and use not just all roads but all sorts
of public facilities and services for free or at discounted prices even if you
do not pay up.” That is, they subsidize immigrants — or rather: they force
domestic taxpayers to subsidize them. In particular, they also subsidize
domestic employers who import cheaper foreign workers, because such employers
can externalize part of the total costs associated with their employment — the
free use to be made by his foreign employees of all resident public property
and facilities — onto other domestic taxpayers. And they still further
subsidize immigration (internal migration) at the expense of resident-taxpayers
in prohibiting — by means of non-discrimination laws — not only all internal,
local entry restrictions, but also and increasingly all restrictions concerning
the entry and use of all domestic private property.
Ultimately,
Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s positions on immigration and borders are
logically consistent with a private property order — one where owners of said
property bear the benefits and burdens of immigration. Government ownership of
real estate, particularly in democratic welfare states, clouds the immigration
issue and forces us to analyze the “least bad” policies.
Note: The
views expressed on Mises.org are
not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Jeff
Deist [send
him mail] is president of the Mises Institute, a tax attorney, and a
former staffer for Ron Paul.