Open Borders? Sure! But Only if We Treat People as a Product

Politicians of both parties are making excuses for amnesty and open borders. We understand that the free trade of goods is beneficial for the buyer and seller. That is an incomplete argument about immigration because we don’t usually treat people as products. We don’t normally have a half-price sale on people when they become old or unpopular. We don’t have an open market for the import of children and relatives where we also provide them free education and welfare along with the right to work and vote. People are more than a commodity and a source of “labor hours”. Imported shoes don’t become citizens.

The deliberately unasked question is if we can provide social benefits for the world’s poor without treating people as products. Are we willing to treat people like an old pair of shoes and throw away the people we don’t want? Some politicians say “Yes”.

The world’s poor will pour across our open borders. Their children will have access to our free schools and in-state tuition to many of our colleges. They will receive free medical care and social support benefits. More to the point, the flow of poor immigrants will continue as long as it benefits them to cross the border. Most of our taxes already go to pay for social programs, and the US budget has not been balanced in my lifetime. The deficit ballooned under Obama, and open borders would cause the deficits to explode. Let’s talk about that.

Some immigrants will want work and some employers will be eager to hire them. We now have the smallest fraction of Americans working than we’ve seen for the last 40 years. Thank you, President Obama. The obvious solution is to get rid of labor laws. Once we are treating people like products we don’t care how much we use them. There is always another immigrant who wants the job. That means our kids will compete with the world, because we will bring the world’s poor to live here. There are millions and millions of people who will gladly work for a dollar a day. They will gladly collect unemployment if the minimum wage is $15 dollars an hour and there is no work for them. Let’s talk about that.

We will have to get rid of welfare if we want open borders and to pay our government debts at the same time. Shoes don’t collect welfare and we’re now treating people like products.

Open borders means that children go to work. Small shoes get worn just like large shoes. That is what happens when we open our borders and treat people like products.

We have to get rid of state provided education. Most states are not paying their debts right now. Who will pay for the world’s children who are dumped into America? Shoes don’t need schooling to become productive citizens.

Free trade has limits. We forget that we don’t want to buy products from countries that have state sponsored slave labor factories. We’d call that exploitation. The immigration debate pretends we have a free market for labor and jobs. You would know that business is crushed by regulation if you tried to create a job recently. If you’ve traveled, then you’ve noticed that the people who clean your hotel room probably don’t speak English.

Free trade is an imperfect analogy for human trafficking, and we clearly don’t want to treat people as products. Do we want to export the America’s poor to third world countries because it is cheaper for them to live there? That is what an open border really means.

The real reason we are discussing open borders is political rather than humanitarian. Large companies want to crash the labor market. Large companies want cheap labor along with US laws. Large-government politicians have already crashed our job market, so they want to buy more votes from the welfare rolls even if they have to import the world’s poor to do it.

I want people to thrive. America was supposed to be a beacon of liberty that other countries would model around the world. Other countries were supposed to become like us. That didn’t happen. We became like them. We’ve adopted the large-government model with its all-knowing and ever-present bureaucracy. Tell me how open borders leads us to a smaller government and more freedom. Please.

I think open borders are the last step, not the first. I’ve heard the theory of open borders. Let’s talk about reality. We need to have that debate now that we’ve aired the unmentionable issues. Maybe Emperor Obama will open the borders by decree with his pen and his phone.

Maybe you disagree. If open borders are such a good idea, then you go first. Leave a comment that your doors are unlocked and your table is set. The world’s poor will be right over.

Image: Courtesy of: http://americanhistoryrules.wikispaces.com/slavery_legacy