Immigration Laws Are Made to Be Broken

My opening statement for the Hankinson-Caplan debate

While I’ve done many debates on immigration, this is the first time that you can figure out the correct side without knowing anything about immigration. The resolution states: “Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should complete its mandate to deport all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States” — and all means all. Which is a crazy view about the enforcement of even the best law imaginable. If we were debating “The NYPD should complete its mandate to imprison all murderers currently residing in New York City,” every person here should still vote nay.

How can I say such a thing? This is the basic economics of crime. Solving and prosecuting all murders would be astronomically expensive. Some murders virtually solve themselves, others require the proverbial 48 hours, others require years of police work, and others might remain unsolved even if the entire NYPD indefinitely focused 100% of its attention on the crime. About 70% of murders committed in NYC currently end in a conviction, but the NYPD couldn’t get to 100% even if they had 100% of the city’s GDP to deploy.

Astronomical expense aside, however, stricter enforcement means more false positives. The easiest way to punish every murderer is to lower the burden of proof. But the lower the burden, the more innocent people you end up punishing. Bukele offers a clean demonstration: He got El Salvador’s murder rate below 2 per 100,000 by treating facial tattoos as a sufficient reason for indefinite imprisonment. He could probably get it down to .2 per 100,000 by imprisoning every male between 15 and 40 years old. But if he wanted to imprison every murderer, even that crazy policy would not suffice.

Deporting all illegal aliens currently residing in the United States has exactly the same insuperable problems. The cost would be astronomically high, probably exceeding total GDP because the goal is impossible to achieve. And even if it could be achieved, there would be massive collateral damage along the way. You can also think about it like this: To deport every illegal alien, you would have to deport everyone with a 50%, a 10%, or even a 1% chance of being an illegal alien. Otherwise, you will miss some.

Once you accept these two obvious-once-you-think-about-them facts, you really are obliged to vote nay. You’re obliged to vote for me even if you think that an illegal immigrant is as bad as a murderer! But since I have ten minutes left, I’m going to add a bunch of extra arguments to reinforce the conclusion. And along the way, I’m going to tell you exactly what I really think.

To start: Murderers are obviously worse than illegal immigrants. Much worse. Draconian tactics that might be justified against the heinous crime of murder are definitely not justified against people who peacefully live and work in the U.S. without proper paperwork. Everyone here has failed to obtain proper paperwork on occasion. Remember Covid? If it’s perfectly fine to do something with paperwork, it can’t be very bad to do the same thing without paperwork.

I know that many people reply, “The law is the law.” This is obviously a bizarre position for libertarians, who routinely cheer scofflaws — and are often scofflaws themselves. But on reflection, “Always follow the law” is a bizarre position from almost any point of view. If a law is totally evil, then it’s fine to break it and wrong to enforce it. I suspect my opponent agrees, but we’ll find out soon enough.

What’s more striking: Normal human beings don’t just guiltlessly break totally evil laws. They also guiltlessly break laws that are merely mildly stupid. Unless you’ve never driven a car, you’ve broken the speed limit. And unless you never drive again, you’re going to break the speed limit again. When you mail order from other states, you’ve almost certainly failed to pay use tax. And unless you never mail order again, you’re going to fail to pay use tax again. This isn’t mere hypocrisy, because you don’t condemn others who break the same mildly stupid laws that you do.

So what? Well, a law that forbids a person from living in the United States and having a job is, at minimum, mildly stupid. Why should anyone on Earth need permission from the U.S. government to wash dishes, clean toilets, or take care of kids? Work is good. Production is good. No one should need the permission of any government to work, to produce. If you think it’s OK to break a law against driving 56 mph in the desert, you should think that it’s OK to break a law against mowing grass for money.

On further reflection, though, laws against foreigners living and working here without government permission are worse than mildly stupid. Even unreasonably strict speed limits are only a minor inconvenience. Immigration laws, in contrast, are a terrible burden on everyone without the good fortune to be born a citizen of the First World. Standard estimates say that moving from the Third World to the First World multiplies migrants’ incomes by a factor of 5x, 10x, or 15x. The flip side is that successfully enforcing immigration laws divides migrants’ incomes by a factor of 5x, 10x, or 15x. That is a terrible thing to do to another human being just for doing a normal job without proper paperwork. Imagine if the U.S. government passed a law that divided your income by a factor of 10. It would be a massive harm, and almost everyone — not just libertarians — would demonize not people who broke this law, but those who enforced it.

I previously debated immigration at LibertyCon right after the release of Ross Ulbricht. The attendees were overjoyed that the founder of the Silk Road was out on the street. So was I, but I understand the other side. So what? Simple: It’s very odd to support an American’s right to sell narcotics and weapons on the dark web, but not a foreigner’s right to wash dishes and pick vegetables on a U.S. farm.

I know that some libertarians view illegal immigration as trespassing, so it’s a serious offense after all: “You can’t live in my house without my permission, so you can’t come to the U.S. without the U.S. government’s permission.” But this only makes sense if you accept the socialist view that U.S. government is the true owner of the whole country. Otherwise, all that matters is that the immigrant’s employer and landlord welcome him, which they naturally do. And if you’re still tempted by the parallels between private and public property, note that you also aren’t allowed to set up a business, open a church, or have a baby in a house without the owner’s permission either. Truly, this so-called “libertarian” argument logically opens the door to full-blown totalitarianism.

I am well aware that people have many complaints about immigration in general, and illegal immigration in particular. But none of these arguments remotely justify deporting people who are merely living and working here without government permission. If they’re actually committing violent or property crimes, punish them like anyone else. If you’re worried about welfare state dependence, take comfort in the fact that illegal immigrants are not only ineligible for most benefits, but have already paid hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes using invalid Social Security numbers on which they will never collect. This is why Milton Friedman, despite his famous quote about the impossibility of open borders in a welfare state, specifically praised illegal immigration.

What should be done about illegal immigration? Simple: We should make it legal. A massive apology would also be nice, but I don’t ask for miracles. What about all of the problems caused by mass immigration? They’re minor compared to the massive gains of moving hundreds of millions of workers from countries where their productivity is low to countries where it is high. If you’re still worried, then adopt the massively successful immigration policies of countries like the United Arab Emirates, almost 90% foreign-born, which welcomes immigrants of all skill levels to live and work, but not to receive government benefits or participate in politics. Statists call this slavery, but that’s utter nonsense. People around the world voluntarily move to the Emirates by the millions, because they make five times as much money in the UAE as they do at home.

But to repeat, even if you disagree with every favorable thing I’ve said about immigration, you have to vote for me. Why? Because my opponent agreed to defend an indefensible resolution. Even if you think illegal immigration is as bad as murder, trying to deport all illegal immigrants is doubly absurd. Achieving 100% deportations would be unbelievably expensive. In fact, it would take more resources than exist on Earth. And to get to 100%, you would have to accept sky-high levels of false positives. To repeat: You can’t deport every illegal immigrant unless you’re willing to deport everyone with a greater than 0% chance of being an illegal immigrant. That’s not pro-immigration advocacy. It’s basic logic.