This is one of your worst arguments for your position, of which I'm already in complete agreement. Who does this convince, that aren't already convinced? It's very easy for anti-immigrant people to say that blacks were citizens by the Constitution, so Jim Crow was wrong, but that they still prefer compatriots over foreigners.
I think this shows the weakness of moral reasoning when applied to policymaking more than anything. Noncitizens have no standing in our democracy, by design. They are literally second-class ‘citizens’ (you know what I mean) and the only way to change that would be to get rid of the concept of citizenship completely. They are systematically and pervasively discriminated against and that discrimination is a defining aspect of our country and virtually every other. It’s a beautiful and useful thing, that discrimination. Borders, passports, citizenship-all arbitrary, unequal, coercive, and all absolutely necessary to the maintenance of a nation-state and an attractive country. I find it telling that Trump’s immigration agenda has won a great deal of support from (legal) immigrants themselves.
We’ve never been a nation-state! America is mostly just a big blob of mostly-classically-liberal principles and behaviors. Blobs like this don’t need borders, passports, citizenship to be beautiful! In fact, the less they care about these things, the more beautiful and less Jim Crow-y they become…
Jim Crow may have been unjust, but I don't think it can be said that America was never a nation-state. Immigration and naturalization laws were explicitly pro-Occidental until 1965.
The fundamental reason your argument fails is that it is up to the citizens of the United States (represented in Congress by those who passed the immigration laws and the elected presidents who have signed them) who is allowed to enter the United States, live and work here, and become citizens. There is no legal or moral basis to admit anyone who does not go through the procedures created by law. Illegal aliens are people - however decent - who have chosen to come here without obeying the law. Perhaps our laws favor skilled immigrants who will assimilate and disfavor those who may become a burden on the taxpayers and/or may not assimilate. Just because someone wants to come to the US and live and work here does not create any right to be here./
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, we had virtually unrestricted immigration (though the unhealthy were routinely rejected at Ellis Island or other ports of entry and we had the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), but we also did not have any welfare state and there was strong pressure for real assimilation. Again, that was the choice of the citizens of the US. The citizens changed their minds in the 1920s, and again in the mid-1960s about the numbers and sources of immigrants. There was another legislative and executive compromise in 1986. But, our immigration policy is our prerogative. Those who wish to come either come on our terms or not at all.
Is it true that it's up to the citizens what immigration policy is though? How many voters are aware of the classification practices of USCIS? How much discretion is afforded to citizens to make that call? Assuming even that the political theory of the founding is sound, we do not have any direct discretion over who comes here and becomes a citizen, and in fact the several states each has different procedures for citizenship matters. Must we adopt a moral polylogism?
And in either case, could not the same defense be offered of segregationist goals? "Whether black or not, no matter how decent, without the birthright to be here, you are not among those conferred the special status of citizen, and thus whatever moral framework we'd use to evaluate human conduct in general, our political-theoretic conclusion must be that Rosa Parks gets up from her seat. Such is simply true by virtue of existing legal procedures, regardless of their own merits."
The individual citizen may or not be aware of, or be interested in, the particulars of immigration law. Constitutionally, we have delegated those decisions to our representatives in Congress and our elected executive. We - collectively, but not individually - do indeed have absolute discretion over who comes here and becomes a citizen…and naturalization to American citizenship is uniform, and does not vary among the states. There is no polylogism as far as I can see.
You could not offer the same defense of segregationist goals, at last not after the 13-15th amendments. Blacks are citizens and citizens are not to be deprived of the equal protection of the laws, etc.
We fought a civil war in which slavery was a primary - but not the only - issue. The issues were resolved on the battlefield.
The concern I raised has nothing to do with collective consent. What I'm saying is, it's literally not the case that we have any discretion, individually or collectively, over many facets of immigration policy, and if we don't have reason to think we know it at all, how would we be delegating, rather than abdicating that responsibility? I think that problem is only made worse by the fact that it isn't so explicit in the Constitution that this is the case, and that historically states had more discretion on these matters.
And in any event, I still do see the polylogism. If what launders the discrimination is merely obedience to legal procedures, not moral parity, then it literally is the case that on this view, discrimination against blacks was fully laundered until the adoption of the 15th amendment. You're disclaiming any moral compunction against it prior to that or the civil rights laws that came later. That's affirming Caplan's point; if the southerners attempted to do all at once what they did piecemeal with Jim Crow and simply restrict citizenship or make citizenship multi tiered, you'd have nothing to say on it.
We speak past each other. Since the Constitution, the states have had no say in the matter, and before that, state discretion was because the states were seen as separately sovereign, during the brief decade between the end of the War of Independence and the ratification of the
Constitution. Moreover, I would argue that we do, collectively have discretion over immigration policy. Immigration policy is not a matter of moral obligation to non-citizens. I simply don’t see it at all.
I would argue the question of black citizenship differs in kind because the black slaves were brought involuntarily to this country. There is simply no moral equivalency with those who come here of their own volition.
Your premise is wrong. States had great discretion in the antebellum period. I'm referring to the period prior to the Reconstruction amendments and the 14th in particular, not the Founding. This has come up a lot in the birthright citizenship debate because in part, the dispute is about what state citizenship determination practices were, and they varied. The 14th (arguably) federalized those practices by setting a floor on what discretion states had to proscribe citizenship.
I just don't see the discretion. Immigration policy is one of many in the basket of policies affected by the election of representatives, in which their primary responsibility is to their constituencies, not to the collective will of the country, assuming such a fiction. From there, those legislators may or may not sit on committees that oversee agencies that may or may not publicize their practices that may or may not affect the quality and quantity of immigrants. No one would set up a trust this way. To me it's an obvious double standard where the moment politics comes up, people's evidentiary standards sink so low you can't tell what is or isn't permissible, so long as it has the aesthetic of formalism around it.
But this would apply to Jim Crow though, this seems to just bite the bullet! "Blacks have another school/bus seat/bathroom/water fountain/neighborhood they can go to and ought to go to given US law of the day, regardless of the moral merits."
"Imagine that instead of abolishing Jim Crow laws, the American public had resolved its cognitive dissonance by simultaneously (a) stripping blacks of their citizenship, and (b) declaring that “All citizens are entitled to equal treatment.” Would that have made the Jim Crow laws any less reprehensible? (Answer: no, because stripping people of their citizenship is a bad thing).
But I don't think the Jim Crow schools, water fountains, were "separate but equal", and I don't think that the separation was mutually agreed. So that's not really the same either.
Illegal immigrants do not agree to separate. Like integrationist blacks of their day, they want to be here.
And it sure sounds to me like the only moral issue then is that citizenship was granted and revoked. This to me is granting more of Caplan's point than you seem to think, that the only issue is pulling the rug out from under people. This is interesting to me because even on its own terms, it means discretionary revocations of visas and green cards would be immoral. But more to the point, it means the most proximate mistake was granting citizenship in the first place. They shouldn't have been mandated to provide something and then tried to weasel out of it; the mandate shouldn't have happened, and the 14th amendment was a mistake. If Caplan had simply suggested that they successfully challenge the legitimacy of the adoption of the citizenship provision of the 14th, such that blacks *never* had citizenship, it sure seems like you'd still be firmly on the segregationist line of things.
No, I wouldn't. That doesn't follow at all. You've ascribed to me an opinion I haven't stated, don't hold, and that doesn't follow from anything I said. I explicitly said stripping people of their citizenship would be a bad thing.
Because the case you made doesn't tether that to a moral principle, just that stripping people of preexisting legal entitlements is bad. My revised hypothetical is such that it wasn't a legal entitlement in the first place, it was a mistake carrying with it no legal authority. As presented, your argument doesn't account for this, and there would be parity.
Because blacks during Jim Crow didn't want the room and board, cash, healthcare, and other free welfare, and didn't want to be absolved of past crimes nor given free rein to commit future crimes.
Get rid of the free welfare and crime forbearance, put immigrants back to depending on family and friends, hard work, and cultural adaptation, and I'm all for open borders.
And stop flying in "refugees" who didn't want to come here, don't like the communities they end up in, and take up housing the community doesn't have to spare.
ETA: And stop ignoring this issue! I have not read a single pro-open borders screed which addresses all the free benefits, crime forbearance, and fake refugees. It destroys your credibility to pretend those issues don't matter.
I’m pretty sure — I’ve read your comment several times — you didn’t mention whites on welfare, and didn’t cite any sources for your racist implied supposition that blacks suck up more welfare and commit more crimes than whites.
Or were you thinking of per-capita adjusted figures? I’m pretty sure — having reread your comment several more times — you didn’t say so.
How careless of you. I’m pretty certain — based on supposition as vague as yours — that you won’t respond with the missing source cites.
I didn't bring up whites because the question was about a comparison between Jim Crow (affecting blacks) and immigration restrictions (affecting illegal immigrants). Obviously, I meant everything in per-capita figures.
It's unfortunate that there are multiple people replying here who did not seem to read the part asking whether Jim Crow would be fine if black Americans had been stripped of citizenship. James M.'s argument that discriminating against non-citizens is necessary for the nation to exist would apply equally and even more clearly in the case of Jim Crow. Dominic Ignatius, another commenter, seems to mysteriously provide moral weight to whatever the Constitution says and then skip the question of whether Jim Crow would be fine if black Americans weren't citizens. They all seem to be subtly admitting that they really *do* believe segregation would have been morally permissible if black Americans weren't citizens.
Caplan should have modified his hypothetical. There are those who think the 14th amendment was ratified under duress; suppose instead of simply reamending the Constitution, Southern states had successfully challenged the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment and removed the citizenship clause. They didn't take black citizenship away; they established that legally, they never had it.
It sure seems like most of the commenters believe that in this event, it's not just permissible, it's a moral imperative to maintain the nation state, to avoid the shock caused by the onset of so many new people on the public purse, infrastructure, culture, the competing businesses..
How many former slaves were still alive who had been kidnapped from Africa? I know importing slaves was illegal after 1808 or so, but that didn't stop the slave trade. Was there any discussion, then (1895, Plessey) about deporting any back to Africa where they had been kidnapped from?
I don't know any details about any of these arguments. I had never heard of any suggestions about stripping black citizenship. It wouldn't surprise me to know there was some, but I would be surprised if it ever got to the stage of bills in Congress.
Arguments for deportation were rarer than arguments for separation. Segregation was a mechanism by which similar goals were achieved, including rationing of public resources and limiting effect on political bodies by virtue of geographically defined districts and jurisdictions coinciding with racially defined polities. Caplan's point was that they were already doing de facto what could have been done de jure, and as such, if the argument against that was political-theoretic, what happens if you launder the exact same things through bicameralism and presentment?
The victims of Jim Crow were not allowed to calculate the utility or disutility of its impact on them. Illegal immigrants can - do, must - perform such a calculation. Literally 100% of the time, by definition, they judge it better to be illegal immigrants in the country they invaded and whose laws they scoffed at, and whose income tax they do not pay, than to go back to wherever they came from, and improve that country into the bargain.
Most of them who work have fake social security numbers - often stolen from citizens who can have no end of trouble sorting it out! I had a SSN identity theft a dozen years ago and it was a mess - I still have to get a special PIN every year to file my tax return! No sympathy at all here!!
This argument would be stronger if you actually addressed very real harms from too much immigration, accompanied by abuse of welfare and loose voting restrictions. Making a strong case for lots of healthy immigration (which I favor) can't be done well without addressing the very real concerns of those who think we are literally losing the country.
Would you have any objection if 500 million Muslims (to pick an arbitrary example) flooded to the US and voted in Sharia Law? Or Communism? Or some other non-liberty thing?
I favor abolishing monopoly government and handling social issues like civilized anarcho-capitalists, but given where we are, I think pro-immigration types (who I largely agree with) should make less naive arguments. You can't act like the current problems don't exist.
Adam, I'm not sure how this would be naive. Since Bob isn't around to steelman this one, it's up to a degenerate hair-haver to do it.
The southerners had concerns about conferring citizenship and integration upon former slaves and their descendants too, famously. The concerns were not merely founded in racism (though many were). The same concerns about the displacement by integration were raised, and in both directions. Black pride types to this day sometimes talk about how integration was badly handled and ended up severely hurting black owned businesses and artistry. The severe and sudden impacts on public infrastructure, the fear of the retaliatory voting bloc, as well as the pervasive racist concerns of southern whites were factors as well. The Southern Manifesto deigned to warn others of agitators using integration as a front to lobby for and destroy the public schools, much like immigrants would burden and change welfare systems.
Insofar as Caplan's resurrected EconLib post here merely attempts to draw a parity argument, it seems to me like incorporating the concerns you cited only helps his case. The policy arguments seem to me to directly parallel those raised during the period of mass resistance in the South. The differences I see that are legitimate are political-theoretic, premised on notions of citizenship and allegiance, much like what the Claremont conservatives advocate. I suspect you don't share those views, devoted ancap you are.
I said his argument would be stronger if he addressed these things — making the argument less naive in my framing. I wasn’t trying to use the word insultingly.
Leaving the issues I mentioned unaddressed makes his argument much less persuasive.
And there’s another consideration I just thought of. The number of former slaves was known. This is not true of immigration with a completely open border.
All I’m saying is that leaving obvious counter-examples and obvious concerns unaddressed makes an argument less persuasive.
This is an interesting thought experiment. But like several other commenters here—who, like me, already agree with you from a policy perspective—I think this argument explicitly and implicitly illustrates that, legally AND morally, immigration restrictions are *not* worse than Jim Crow laws.
Just an aside but this is missing forest for the trees if what you genuinely care about is "rights" as opposed to trying to strawman pro immigration argument... If you want to look at modern Jim Crow, or even worse TBH, you might want to be writing about sex offender registries and restrictions. Hell in South Dakota for example they can't even pass out petitions in public and in Missouri, it's illegal for them to leave their house on Halloween. Throughout large parts of modern America the worry isn't "oh whitey won't sell me a house because I'm black" but "I will literally get arrested for even looking at a house with mandatory one year minimum prison times". Even blacks during Jim Crow could leave home, travel, go to the park, etc and they didn't have mandatory arrest laws if they slept over at their boyfriend's house more than three times a year without telling the police first or don't notify the local prosecutor office within two days every time they use a new smartphone app that has a username (i.e. internet identifier) or every time (in some states) their ISP given DHCP address changes so they have to disable 5G on their smartphone to avoid getting a new IP every time they leave the house via random wifi's. But yeah, immigrants have it so hard lol.
Whatever slight may or may not exist against non-citizens is nothing compared to how we treat our own actual citizens and no those restrictions aren't "while on probation or parole", but lifetime but they they aren't a civil right violation because they are "civil, not criminal". If only the Jim Crow South knew in 1960's they should have just made all those restrictions civil penalties (with the crime being "failure to follow the civil rule") so the SCOTUS would sign off on them then after all, "it's not inconvenient to ask blacks to register with cops every time they want to travel, it's just like getting a passport" (yes the SCOTUS said that). And these are Americans even, not illegals, not foreigners.
Bryan, you highlight that less than 4,000 blacks were lynched. How many Whites died in the Civil War, arguably in support of emancipation, in part? How many *more* Whites have been murdered by blacks (than blacks murdered by Whites) since the passage of the Civil Rights Act?
Seriously, I can tell if your post is an epic troll or just one of the weakest, weirdest arguments I've heard from you.
This is a foolish argument and beneath your normally clear head. What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? No one I know has a problem with LEGAL immigration. Follow the law, wait your turn, and I will gladly greet you as a fellow citizen.
I have ALMOST as much of a problem with (high levels of) LEGAL immigration. I do NOT TRUST the government to manage this process effectively, honestly, nor in the best interests of the people already living in the US. THAT is the best argument for open borders. Government wrecks everything it touches.
So similarly, if Southern states challenged the 14th amendment as having been adopted under duress and shown that it is infact not lawful to grant citizenship to blacks, would you gladly segregate them as noncitizens? Or do our moral principles extend beyond a snapshot of US law as we imagine it to be in 2025?
A majority of Americans support immigration laws. You may have strong feelings about immigration but having an influx of people come illegally not only undermines our laws but overwhelms our ability to vet. I don’t know anyone who supports unvetted immigration.
If you make it very difficult for a worker to get a job at your factory, it doesn’t mean someone has a right to show up and work demanding payment.
Comparing the treatment of a nation’s own citizens to that of people with no legal right to be there is a ridiculous equivalence. National sovereignty exists. We have borders for a reason. It isn’t one world.
Jim Crow was a racial hierarchy system. Immigration law is about controlling the border. I’m sorry if the overlap evades me. It’s bizarre to say well if we stripped black people of citizenship would Jim Crow be okay? Slaves were sold by other Africans who had no right to sell them to euros and Americans who had no right to buy them. Slavery has always existed and it continues to but these were not consensual agreements so they went well beyond other forms of servitude.
It’s morally grotesque even for what you believe to be a moral cause to compare people brought against their will abused and forced to work and later naturalized to people who never endured slavery and never were naturalized because they entered illegally.
You’re ignoring intent and agency entirely to try to tug at emotion and guilt which is beyond weak and actually offensive imo.
You can apply this inverted argument easily. Homeless people are worse off than slaves because slaves had housing. Both have their own tragic predicaments and they are not comparable.
many illegal immigrants do work. Some people don’t want to hire them bc it’s breaking the law. The fact that so many do work shows you how loose the system is. Having open borders turns people against immigration legal included and incentivizes anyone to come over. If you’re going to receive all basic welfare and not get kicked out just by claiming refugee status then you don’t necessarily need a strong work incentive to come. I still believe a majority of people come to work but because of our porous borders and sanctuary policies we’ve also had an influx of criminals from failed countries. We don’t have the same immigration problems as Europe but we could. An open door policy precludes vetting. I’m sorry you don’t see any national issue there with cohesion or security or how tax dollars are spent.
Jim Crow deliberately tried to keep black Americans impoverished based on race not any reasonable national or other self interest. If anything Jim Crow worked against self interest. Lynching was a form of terrorism. I can’t even fathom what the analog is with immigration.
Modern immigration law does allow illegal immigrants access to school. This is historically illiterate and morally lazy. And we have a huge crisis educating our own citizens. I am not thrilled with spending more on education for people not working within the system. Because the system is flawed doesn’t give people the right to flout it or advocates of a better system to defend flouting it.
I’ve thought more than a handful of your arguments were absurd and poorly reasoned but I certainly support many of your ideas generically. But you’re going off a deep end here because it’s not just absurd and poorly reasoned.
You’re insulting the memory of people who were stuck under Jim Crow.
This is one of your worst arguments for your position, of which I'm already in complete agreement. Who does this convince, that aren't already convinced? It's very easy for anti-immigrant people to say that blacks were citizens by the Constitution, so Jim Crow was wrong, but that they still prefer compatriots over foreigners.
Isn't that just the flip side of the birthright citizenship argument though?
I think this shows the weakness of moral reasoning when applied to policymaking more than anything. Noncitizens have no standing in our democracy, by design. They are literally second-class ‘citizens’ (you know what I mean) and the only way to change that would be to get rid of the concept of citizenship completely. They are systematically and pervasively discriminated against and that discrimination is a defining aspect of our country and virtually every other. It’s a beautiful and useful thing, that discrimination. Borders, passports, citizenship-all arbitrary, unequal, coercive, and all absolutely necessary to the maintenance of a nation-state and an attractive country. I find it telling that Trump’s immigration agenda has won a great deal of support from (legal) immigrants themselves.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-low-trust-society
We’ve never been a nation-state! America is mostly just a big blob of mostly-classically-liberal principles and behaviors. Blobs like this don’t need borders, passports, citizenship to be beautiful! In fact, the less they care about these things, the more beautiful and less Jim Crow-y they become…
Well, you did have to be free and white, and de Toqueville called us the Anglo-Americans.
well sure but the whole point of the Jim Crow intuition pump is that this was a bad and unjust way for the country to be!
Jim Crow may have been unjust, but I don't think it can be said that America was never a nation-state. Immigration and naturalization laws were explicitly pro-Occidental until 1965.
The fundamental reason your argument fails is that it is up to the citizens of the United States (represented in Congress by those who passed the immigration laws and the elected presidents who have signed them) who is allowed to enter the United States, live and work here, and become citizens. There is no legal or moral basis to admit anyone who does not go through the procedures created by law. Illegal aliens are people - however decent - who have chosen to come here without obeying the law. Perhaps our laws favor skilled immigrants who will assimilate and disfavor those who may become a burden on the taxpayers and/or may not assimilate. Just because someone wants to come to the US and live and work here does not create any right to be here./
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, we had virtually unrestricted immigration (though the unhealthy were routinely rejected at Ellis Island or other ports of entry and we had the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), but we also did not have any welfare state and there was strong pressure for real assimilation. Again, that was the choice of the citizens of the US. The citizens changed their minds in the 1920s, and again in the mid-1960s about the numbers and sources of immigrants. There was another legislative and executive compromise in 1986. But, our immigration policy is our prerogative. Those who wish to come either come on our terms or not at all.
Is it true that it's up to the citizens what immigration policy is though? How many voters are aware of the classification practices of USCIS? How much discretion is afforded to citizens to make that call? Assuming even that the political theory of the founding is sound, we do not have any direct discretion over who comes here and becomes a citizen, and in fact the several states each has different procedures for citizenship matters. Must we adopt a moral polylogism?
And in either case, could not the same defense be offered of segregationist goals? "Whether black or not, no matter how decent, without the birthright to be here, you are not among those conferred the special status of citizen, and thus whatever moral framework we'd use to evaluate human conduct in general, our political-theoretic conclusion must be that Rosa Parks gets up from her seat. Such is simply true by virtue of existing legal procedures, regardless of their own merits."
The individual citizen may or not be aware of, or be interested in, the particulars of immigration law. Constitutionally, we have delegated those decisions to our representatives in Congress and our elected executive. We - collectively, but not individually - do indeed have absolute discretion over who comes here and becomes a citizen…and naturalization to American citizenship is uniform, and does not vary among the states. There is no polylogism as far as I can see.
You could not offer the same defense of segregationist goals, at last not after the 13-15th amendments. Blacks are citizens and citizens are not to be deprived of the equal protection of the laws, etc.
We fought a civil war in which slavery was a primary - but not the only - issue. The issues were resolved on the battlefield.
The concern I raised has nothing to do with collective consent. What I'm saying is, it's literally not the case that we have any discretion, individually or collectively, over many facets of immigration policy, and if we don't have reason to think we know it at all, how would we be delegating, rather than abdicating that responsibility? I think that problem is only made worse by the fact that it isn't so explicit in the Constitution that this is the case, and that historically states had more discretion on these matters.
And in any event, I still do see the polylogism. If what launders the discrimination is merely obedience to legal procedures, not moral parity, then it literally is the case that on this view, discrimination against blacks was fully laundered until the adoption of the 15th amendment. You're disclaiming any moral compunction against it prior to that or the civil rights laws that came later. That's affirming Caplan's point; if the southerners attempted to do all at once what they did piecemeal with Jim Crow and simply restrict citizenship or make citizenship multi tiered, you'd have nothing to say on it.
We speak past each other. Since the Constitution, the states have had no say in the matter, and before that, state discretion was because the states were seen as separately sovereign, during the brief decade between the end of the War of Independence and the ratification of the
Constitution. Moreover, I would argue that we do, collectively have discretion over immigration policy. Immigration policy is not a matter of moral obligation to non-citizens. I simply don’t see it at all.
I would argue the question of black citizenship differs in kind because the black slaves were brought involuntarily to this country. There is simply no moral equivalency with those who come here of their own volition.
Your premise is wrong. States had great discretion in the antebellum period. I'm referring to the period prior to the Reconstruction amendments and the 14th in particular, not the Founding. This has come up a lot in the birthright citizenship debate because in part, the dispute is about what state citizenship determination practices were, and they varied. The 14th (arguably) federalized those practices by setting a floor on what discretion states had to proscribe citizenship.
I just don't see the discretion. Immigration policy is one of many in the basket of policies affected by the election of representatives, in which their primary responsibility is to their constituencies, not to the collective will of the country, assuming such a fiction. From there, those legislators may or may not sit on committees that oversee agencies that may or may not publicize their practices that may or may not affect the quality and quantity of immigrants. No one would set up a trust this way. To me it's an obvious double standard where the moment politics comes up, people's evidentiary standards sink so low you can't tell what is or isn't permissible, so long as it has the aesthetic of formalism around it.
Taking the question in good faith, surely the answer is that illegal immigrants have another country that they can go to and should go to.
But this would apply to Jim Crow though, this seems to just bite the bullet! "Blacks have another school/bus seat/bathroom/water fountain/neighborhood they can go to and ought to go to given US law of the day, regardless of the moral merits."
I was really referring to this section:
"Imagine that instead of abolishing Jim Crow laws, the American public had resolved its cognitive dissonance by simultaneously (a) stripping blacks of their citizenship, and (b) declaring that “All citizens are entitled to equal treatment.” Would that have made the Jim Crow laws any less reprehensible? (Answer: no, because stripping people of their citizenship is a bad thing).
But I don't think the Jim Crow schools, water fountains, were "separate but equal", and I don't think that the separation was mutually agreed. So that's not really the same either.
Illegal immigrants do not agree to separate. Like integrationist blacks of their day, they want to be here.
And it sure sounds to me like the only moral issue then is that citizenship was granted and revoked. This to me is granting more of Caplan's point than you seem to think, that the only issue is pulling the rug out from under people. This is interesting to me because even on its own terms, it means discretionary revocations of visas and green cards would be immoral. But more to the point, it means the most proximate mistake was granting citizenship in the first place. They shouldn't have been mandated to provide something and then tried to weasel out of it; the mandate shouldn't have happened, and the 14th amendment was a mistake. If Caplan had simply suggested that they successfully challenge the legitimacy of the adoption of the citizenship provision of the 14th, such that blacks *never* had citizenship, it sure seems like you'd still be firmly on the segregationist line of things.
No, I wouldn't. That doesn't follow at all. You've ascribed to me an opinion I haven't stated, don't hold, and that doesn't follow from anything I said. I explicitly said stripping people of their citizenship would be a bad thing.
Because the case you made doesn't tether that to a moral principle, just that stripping people of preexisting legal entitlements is bad. My revised hypothetical is such that it wasn't a legal entitlement in the first place, it was a mistake carrying with it no legal authority. As presented, your argument doesn't account for this, and there would be parity.
Because blacks during Jim Crow didn't want the room and board, cash, healthcare, and other free welfare, and didn't want to be absolved of past crimes nor given free rein to commit future crimes.
Get rid of the free welfare and crime forbearance, put immigrants back to depending on family and friends, hard work, and cultural adaptation, and I'm all for open borders.
And stop flying in "refugees" who didn't want to come here, don't like the communities they end up in, and take up housing the community doesn't have to spare.
ETA: And stop ignoring this issue! I have not read a single pro-open borders screed which addresses all the free benefits, crime forbearance, and fake refugees. It destroys your credibility to pretend those issues don't matter.
I am pretty sure blacks get much more free welfare and commit many more harmful crimes than illegal immigrants do.
I’m pretty sure — I’ve read your comment several times — you didn’t mention whites on welfare, and didn’t cite any sources for your racist implied supposition that blacks suck up more welfare and commit more crimes than whites.
Or were you thinking of per-capita adjusted figures? I’m pretty sure — having reread your comment several more times — you didn’t say so.
How careless of you. I’m pretty certain — based on supposition as vague as yours — that you won’t respond with the missing source cites.
I didn't bring up whites because the question was about a comparison between Jim Crow (affecting blacks) and immigration restrictions (affecting illegal immigrants). Obviously, I meant everything in per-capita figures.
It's unfortunate that there are multiple people replying here who did not seem to read the part asking whether Jim Crow would be fine if black Americans had been stripped of citizenship. James M.'s argument that discriminating against non-citizens is necessary for the nation to exist would apply equally and even more clearly in the case of Jim Crow. Dominic Ignatius, another commenter, seems to mysteriously provide moral weight to whatever the Constitution says and then skip the question of whether Jim Crow would be fine if black Americans weren't citizens. They all seem to be subtly admitting that they really *do* believe segregation would have been morally permissible if black Americans weren't citizens.
Caplan should have modified his hypothetical. There are those who think the 14th amendment was ratified under duress; suppose instead of simply reamending the Constitution, Southern states had successfully challenged the legitimacy of the 14th Amendment and removed the citizenship clause. They didn't take black citizenship away; they established that legally, they never had it.
It sure seems like most of the commenters believe that in this event, it's not just permissible, it's a moral imperative to maintain the nation state, to avoid the shock caused by the onset of so many new people on the public purse, infrastructure, culture, the competing businesses..
How many former slaves were still alive who had been kidnapped from Africa? I know importing slaves was illegal after 1808 or so, but that didn't stop the slave trade. Was there any discussion, then (1895, Plessey) about deporting any back to Africa where they had been kidnapped from?
I don't know any details about any of these arguments. I had never heard of any suggestions about stripping black citizenship. It wouldn't surprise me to know there was some, but I would be surprised if it ever got to the stage of bills in Congress.
Arguments for deportation were rarer than arguments for separation. Segregation was a mechanism by which similar goals were achieved, including rationing of public resources and limiting effect on political bodies by virtue of geographically defined districts and jurisdictions coinciding with racially defined polities. Caplan's point was that they were already doing de facto what could have been done de jure, and as such, if the argument against that was political-theoretic, what happens if you launder the exact same things through bicameralism and presentment?
The victims of Jim Crow were not allowed to calculate the utility or disutility of its impact on them. Illegal immigrants can - do, must - perform such a calculation. Literally 100% of the time, by definition, they judge it better to be illegal immigrants in the country they invaded and whose laws they scoffed at, and whose income tax they do not pay, than to go back to wherever they came from, and improve that country into the bargain.
Have the illegal immigrants got Social Security numbers? How does the IRS calculate how much income tax they have paid, or need to pay?
Most of them who work have fake social security numbers - often stolen from citizens who can have no end of trouble sorting it out! I had a SSN identity theft a dozen years ago and it was a mess - I still have to get a special PIN every year to file my tax return! No sympathy at all here!!
They don't pay (income) taxes? Do tell!
Not if they get paid in cash under the table.
Like my housekeeper. And yours?
I don't pay myself.
Very interesting post, you've successfully convinced me that Jim Crow was good.
This argument would be stronger if you actually addressed very real harms from too much immigration, accompanied by abuse of welfare and loose voting restrictions. Making a strong case for lots of healthy immigration (which I favor) can't be done well without addressing the very real concerns of those who think we are literally losing the country.
Would you have any objection if 500 million Muslims (to pick an arbitrary example) flooded to the US and voted in Sharia Law? Or Communism? Or some other non-liberty thing?
I favor abolishing monopoly government and handling social issues like civilized anarcho-capitalists, but given where we are, I think pro-immigration types (who I largely agree with) should make less naive arguments. You can't act like the current problems don't exist.
Adam, I'm not sure how this would be naive. Since Bob isn't around to steelman this one, it's up to a degenerate hair-haver to do it.
The southerners had concerns about conferring citizenship and integration upon former slaves and their descendants too, famously. The concerns were not merely founded in racism (though many were). The same concerns about the displacement by integration were raised, and in both directions. Black pride types to this day sometimes talk about how integration was badly handled and ended up severely hurting black owned businesses and artistry. The severe and sudden impacts on public infrastructure, the fear of the retaliatory voting bloc, as well as the pervasive racist concerns of southern whites were factors as well. The Southern Manifesto deigned to warn others of agitators using integration as a front to lobby for and destroy the public schools, much like immigrants would burden and change welfare systems.
Insofar as Caplan's resurrected EconLib post here merely attempts to draw a parity argument, it seems to me like incorporating the concerns you cited only helps his case. The policy arguments seem to me to directly parallel those raised during the period of mass resistance in the South. The differences I see that are legitimate are political-theoretic, premised on notions of citizenship and allegiance, much like what the Claremont conservatives advocate. I suspect you don't share those views, devoted ancap you are.
I agree.
I said his argument would be stronger if he addressed these things — making the argument less naive in my framing. I wasn’t trying to use the word insultingly.
Leaving the issues I mentioned unaddressed makes his argument much less persuasive.
And there’s another consideration I just thought of. The number of former slaves was known. This is not true of immigration with a completely open border.
All I’m saying is that leaving obvious counter-examples and obvious concerns unaddressed makes an argument less persuasive.
The USA floats on a sea of Latin labour. Wait till American consumers start to squeal about more expensive vegetables etc.
As for deporting the parents of US-born children that seems to raise serious legal issues.
This is an interesting thought experiment. But like several other commenters here—who, like me, already agree with you from a policy perspective—I think this argument explicitly and implicitly illustrates that, legally AND morally, immigration restrictions are *not* worse than Jim Crow laws.
Just an aside but this is missing forest for the trees if what you genuinely care about is "rights" as opposed to trying to strawman pro immigration argument... If you want to look at modern Jim Crow, or even worse TBH, you might want to be writing about sex offender registries and restrictions. Hell in South Dakota for example they can't even pass out petitions in public and in Missouri, it's illegal for them to leave their house on Halloween. Throughout large parts of modern America the worry isn't "oh whitey won't sell me a house because I'm black" but "I will literally get arrested for even looking at a house with mandatory one year minimum prison times". Even blacks during Jim Crow could leave home, travel, go to the park, etc and they didn't have mandatory arrest laws if they slept over at their boyfriend's house more than three times a year without telling the police first or don't notify the local prosecutor office within two days every time they use a new smartphone app that has a username (i.e. internet identifier) or every time (in some states) their ISP given DHCP address changes so they have to disable 5G on their smartphone to avoid getting a new IP every time they leave the house via random wifi's. But yeah, immigrants have it so hard lol.
Whatever slight may or may not exist against non-citizens is nothing compared to how we treat our own actual citizens and no those restrictions aren't "while on probation or parole", but lifetime but they they aren't a civil right violation because they are "civil, not criminal". If only the Jim Crow South knew in 1960's they should have just made all those restrictions civil penalties (with the crime being "failure to follow the civil rule") so the SCOTUS would sign off on them then after all, "it's not inconvenient to ask blacks to register with cops every time they want to travel, it's just like getting a passport" (yes the SCOTUS said that). And these are Americans even, not illegals, not foreigners.
Bryan, you highlight that less than 4,000 blacks were lynched. How many Whites died in the Civil War, arguably in support of emancipation, in part? How many *more* Whites have been murdered by blacks (than blacks murdered by Whites) since the passage of the Civil Rights Act?
Seriously, I can tell if your post is an epic troll or just one of the weakest, weirdest arguments I've heard from you.
This is a foolish argument and beneath your normally clear head. What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? No one I know has a problem with LEGAL immigration. Follow the law, wait your turn, and I will gladly greet you as a fellow citizen.
I have ALMOST as much of a problem with (high levels of) LEGAL immigration. I do NOT TRUST the government to manage this process effectively, honestly, nor in the best interests of the people already living in the US. THAT is the best argument for open borders. Government wrecks everything it touches.
So similarly, if Southern states challenged the 14th amendment as having been adopted under duress and shown that it is infact not lawful to grant citizenship to blacks, would you gladly segregate them as noncitizens? Or do our moral principles extend beyond a snapshot of US law as we imagine it to be in 2025?
Small correction: illegal immigrants are free to fly domestically with a foreign passport. The TSA doesn't care about your immigration status.
A majority of Americans support immigration laws. You may have strong feelings about immigration but having an influx of people come illegally not only undermines our laws but overwhelms our ability to vet. I don’t know anyone who supports unvetted immigration.
If you make it very difficult for a worker to get a job at your factory, it doesn’t mean someone has a right to show up and work demanding payment.
Comparing the treatment of a nation’s own citizens to that of people with no legal right to be there is a ridiculous equivalence. National sovereignty exists. We have borders for a reason. It isn’t one world.
Jim Crow was a racial hierarchy system. Immigration law is about controlling the border. I’m sorry if the overlap evades me. It’s bizarre to say well if we stripped black people of citizenship would Jim Crow be okay? Slaves were sold by other Africans who had no right to sell them to euros and Americans who had no right to buy them. Slavery has always existed and it continues to but these were not consensual agreements so they went well beyond other forms of servitude.
It’s morally grotesque even for what you believe to be a moral cause to compare people brought against their will abused and forced to work and later naturalized to people who never endured slavery and never were naturalized because they entered illegally.
You’re ignoring intent and agency entirely to try to tug at emotion and guilt which is beyond weak and actually offensive imo.
You can apply this inverted argument easily. Homeless people are worse off than slaves because slaves had housing. Both have their own tragic predicaments and they are not comparable.
many illegal immigrants do work. Some people don’t want to hire them bc it’s breaking the law. The fact that so many do work shows you how loose the system is. Having open borders turns people against immigration legal included and incentivizes anyone to come over. If you’re going to receive all basic welfare and not get kicked out just by claiming refugee status then you don’t necessarily need a strong work incentive to come. I still believe a majority of people come to work but because of our porous borders and sanctuary policies we’ve also had an influx of criminals from failed countries. We don’t have the same immigration problems as Europe but we could. An open door policy precludes vetting. I’m sorry you don’t see any national issue there with cohesion or security or how tax dollars are spent.
Jim Crow deliberately tried to keep black Americans impoverished based on race not any reasonable national or other self interest. If anything Jim Crow worked against self interest. Lynching was a form of terrorism. I can’t even fathom what the analog is with immigration.
Modern immigration law does allow illegal immigrants access to school. This is historically illiterate and morally lazy. And we have a huge crisis educating our own citizens. I am not thrilled with spending more on education for people not working within the system. Because the system is flawed doesn’t give people the right to flout it or advocates of a better system to defend flouting it.
I’ve thought more than a handful of your arguments were absurd and poorly reasoned but I certainly support many of your ideas generically. But you’re going off a deep end here because it’s not just absurd and poorly reasoned.
You’re insulting the memory of people who were stuck under Jim Crow.