Open borders, political externalities, and tipping points
In a comment addressed to David Henderson, Mark Crankshaw makes an interesting argument about the political externalities of immigration, raising the concern that unrestricted immigration may lead to a...
View ArticleThe story behind the “double world GDP” estimates
[UPDATE: I have added a new blog post titled gains from migration: GDP versus surplus that covers an issue that I didn’t adequately address in this blog post: that even though the contribution to GDP...
View ArticleVictor Davis Hanson
I made the following comment about Victor Davis Hanson at EconLog, in response to David Henderson’s recent post: Hanson’s argument seems to consist entirely of anecdotal evidence. Well, here’s my...
View ArticleIntroducing John Lee
The first blog post on the Open Borders blog (written by Vipul Naik) was published back on March 18, 2012. Shortly thereafter, Nathan Smith joined with an inaugural blog post on Hong Kong. Alex...
View Article“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I am no recent convert to the cause of open borders, but like others in the blogosphere, including Vipul himself, I have become increasingly convinced that this is the most important moral cause of our...
View ArticleArizona-Style Immigration Laws Hurt the Economy
This piece originally appeared in Forbes here, and is reproduced with permission from the author. It is written specifically in the context of United States politics. With the “papers please” portion...
View ArticleGains from migration: GDP versus surplus
A couple of days back, I wrote a blog post titled the story behind the “double world GDP” estimates. Yesterday, I chanced upon a blog post by Michael Clemens titled Do the Gains from International...
View ArticleBenefits and harms to migrants: a meta-response
I just published a blog post titled gains from migration: GDP versus surplus where I make arguments similar to those in the blog post by Michael Clemens titled Do the Gains from International Migration...
View ArticleWhat do open borders advocates really want?
How do we translate the cause of open borders into specific policy recommendations? The range of policies entailed by “looser border controls” is wide — and the range of policies which might be...
View ArticleWhy are academia and Silicon Valley pro-immigration?
Restrictionists often argue that immigration suppresses native wages. How, then, do they explain the significant economist consensus in support of more expanded immigration? They rely on a mix of...
View ArticleMore responses to Caplan’s critics
NOTE: All commenters are referred to as “he” in the text below. I did this because the only commenters whose pen names were gendered were male, and in my experience, most commenters on libertarian...
View ArticleCrime in the US under open borders
Crime is a common concern regarding immigration among US restrictionists. The statistics on immigration and crime in the United States show pretty clearly that as things stand today, the foreign-born...
View ArticleIQ and double counting the harms of immigration
Nathan just published a lengthy and detailed critique of various critics of open borders. I think he gets many things right, but in some ways he underestimates restrictionist arguments. This isn’t...
View ArticleAn offbeat argument for immigration restriction
I’m always on the lookout for new, innovative arguments against immigration. Restrictionists tend not to disappoint in coming up with creative arguments, but usually these are modest permutations and...
View ArticleRawlsian Locational Choice (a highly abstract open borders metric)
I’ve been thinking more about how the openness of the world’s borders might be quantified (see here for the beginning of this topic). In that post, I suggested several criteria– right to invite,...
View ArticleAbe Lincoln would be a Russian now
The subject of 19th-century immigration almost inevitably comes up in open borders debates. Open borders advocates see a lot to desire and emulate in the 19th century approach to immigration — namely:...
View ArticleLifting the Cuban Travel Ban Is Good for U.S.
This piece originally appeared at the Cato-at-Liberty blog here and is reproduced with permission from the author. This morning the Cuban government announced reforms of its 52 year old travel ban. In...
View ArticleWhoever he is, the next US President will be wrong on immigration
Josh Barro of Bloomberg has a good piece on 5 terrible policies which both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney endorsed in last night’s US presidential debate. My only complaint about Barro’s article: its...
View ArticleOpen borders and climate change
Could climate change be good? Wikipedia’s article on “Regional effects of climate change” lists a wide variety of effects of climate change, all of which seem to be bad. That seems odd. Unless the...
View ArticleHonduras
Bad news from Honduras: The Honduran Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional a project to build privately-run cities, with their own police and tax system. The “model cities” project was backed by...
View ArticleClosed borders kill people
Open borders advocates have long seized philosophical hypotheticals to argue that open borders would, quite literally, save lives. Restrictionists tend to jump through all kinds of hoops to argue that...
View Article“The Christian Perspective on Immigration”
I was struck by the beginning of this article published at the website of the anti-immigration group, Center for Immigration Studies: What are They Thinking: A Look at the Roman Catholic “Doctrine” on...
View ArticleWage discrimination’s elephant in the room
Besides illuminating the horror of both candidates’ immigration policies, the 2nd US presidential debate this year was noteworthy for other reasons, such as Mitt Romney’s by-now infamous “binders full...
View ArticleChilecon Valley
Post by Nathan Smith (regular blogger for the site, joined April 2012). See: all posts by Nathan Smith Nathan Smith's personal statement From The Economist: THE world’s most valuable resource is...
View ArticleCharter city constitutions: filling in the blank
This post may seem off-topic, but from my point of view it’s relevant because I think of charter cities as part of the “master plan” for open borders. My master plan has four parts: Advocacy and moral...
View Article“I couldn’t accept that aging rulers simply decreed: “‘You can’t leave the...
Der Spiegel has an interesting story on how one East German couple plotted to emigrate “legally” to West Germany. It’s an interesting read, and it calls to mind one of the most fundamental moral...
View ArticleHow persuasive are open borders advocates? The case of Bryan Caplan
To make any comment about the extent to which resources should be devoted to open borders advocacy, and the way the resources should be allocated, one must have at least some idea of how effective...
View ArticleThe citizenist case for open borders
The term “citizenism” is not exactly a household word, but it seems to be becoming more current, at least among the EconLog/Open Borders circle of discussants. Good! I am certainly no citizenist...
View Article“Pro-immigrant” restrictionists — the fine print
NOTE: This post is mostly US-specific, but some of the observations may also apply in other countries. I don’t have enough knowledge to comment about other countries. The US’s leading restrictionist...
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Immigration, a worse crime than child sex exploitation
I want you to read this story about the families — the American families — who have been separated by US immigration laws. It is heart-wrenching. Most offenses, civil or criminal, have statutes of...
View ArticleOpen borders and the libertarian priority list: part 2
This is the second of a planned series of three blog posts regarding where open borders fit in the libertarian priority list. In part one, I laid out the overall agenda of the series: I aim to consider...
View ArticleImmigration, emigration, and the rule of law
Large numbers of people in the United States (and possibly elsewhere) draw a sharp distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Common refrains include, “I have nothing against immigration, only...
View ArticlePlace premium versus race premium
Co-blogger John Lee has written an interesting post on the place premium — the extent to which a person’s current location affects that person’s earnings — and how it compares with various estimates...
View ArticleAre immigrant rights activists friends of open borders?
NOTE: This article focuses on the United States, though some of its points may be more generally applicable. In a blog post I’m currently drafting (which will hopefully be published shortly after this...
View ArticleChristianity vs. citizenism
In my most recent post, I wrote the following passage: I am certainly no citizenist myself. In fact, for purposes of the present post, I’d rather not admit what my attitude to citizenism as a...
View ArticleCitizenism versus collective property rights, and voters versus representatives
The term citizenism has been much in vogue lately. Sonic Charmer’s blog post I, Citizenist started the trend. My co-blogger Nathan wrote two blog posts on citizenism, one on the citizenist case for...
View ArticleThe nation-state is militarily obsolete
If Germany were invaded by Russia, Germans would probably trust their army of 70,000 (maybe 200,000+ deployable in all forces), with little combat experience, to attempt to defend them against the...
View ArticleNon-Refoulement (and “Secretary Hildebrand”)
In 1077, the monk Hildebrand who had become pope and taken the name Gregory VII, excommunicated the German emperor, causing a collapse of his power, on the grounds that the latter had usurped the...
View Article“Only high IQ immigrants” fails to understand comparative advantage
OK, it’s time to give some strong back talk to this meme of “only high IQ immigration is good” which we’re getting in the comments. The simple rebuttal to “only high IQ immigration is good” is that...
View ArticleImmigrants are Important for Disaster Reconstruction
This piece was originally published at the Cato-at-Liberty blog here and is reproduced with permission from the author. Hurricane Sandy walloped the East Coast yesterday. The strongest part of the...
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