Richman, Liebowitz & Immigration

TGIF: Immigration vs. Settler Colonialism

The people performing those mind-boggling contortions to justify, on libertarian grounds, state violence against migrants without papers—restrictatarians, I call them—cite a 1994 article by Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) in support of their double-jointed acrobatics. Rothbard was correct about many things, but a position is not correct merely because Rothbard held it. I expect no disagreement over that.

As a general matter, Rothbard's importance to the shaping of the modern libertarian movement needs no documentation. He was accomplished in economics, social theory, and history. In his time, he was known as Mr. Libertarian, the guardian of the plumb line. (He was also my friend and, informally, my teacher.) His words carry much weight for people who love liberty. It's therefore appropriate to show why, in this case, in 1994, Rothbard was stunningly wrong about immigration, or the freedom to move.

The article is "Nations by Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State" (Journal of Libertarian Studies, Fall 1994). In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Rothbard wrote:

The question of open borders, or free immigration, has become an accelerating problem for classical liberals. This is first, because the welfare state increasingly subsidizes immigrants to enter and receive permanent assistance, and second, because cultural boundaries have become increasingly swamped. I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the cultures and languages of these peoples. Previously, it had been easy to dismiss as unrealistic Jean Raspail's anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints, in which virtually the entire population of India decides to move, in small boats, into France, and the French, infected by liberal ideology, cannot summon the will to prevent economic and cultural national destruction. As cultural and welfare-state problems have intensified, it became impossible to dismiss Raspail's concerns any longer.

What might Rothbard be saying here? Note this: "I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the cultures and languages of these peoples." This has been quoted many times. Sometime in the past, Rothbard explained, a horde of ethnic Russians was sent into the Baltic states with bad intent. We must conclude that unrestricted immigration is bad. QED. Really?

Rothbard further wrote that the fact of Baltic Russification became clear to him as—meaning not until?—the Soviet Union was falling apart in the late '80s and early '90s. But that cannot be. Rothbard was a student of Russian and Soviet history, so he must have been aware of the past episodes of Russification under the czars and Stalin's Soviet regime long before the Soviet Union's disintegration. Furthermore, he must have known that one of its primary objectives was cultural transformation. None of this could have been news to Rothbard when he wrote his article.

So why would Rothbard lead us to believe that he did not know about Russification until the early '90s? I hate to say this, but perhaps at that moment, he needed a respectable-sounding excuse for announcing his change of mind about free immigration.

Here is how Gemini replied to my question about Rothbard's statement (emphasis added):

The mass migration of ethnic Russians into the Baltic states occurred during the Soviet occupation (1944–1990), not after they gained independence in 1991.... After regaining independence, the Baltic states experienced a net outflow of ethnic Russians, not a "flood" into them. Many ethnic Russians left the Baltic states to return to the Russian Federation in the early 1990s.

Gemini added that the "intensive" Soviet Russification of the Baltics "became a major international and internal issue from the 1950s through the 1980s." (For scholarly treatments of Stalin's Russification of the Baltics, see, for example, this and this. On the outflow of Russians from the Baltic states after independence, see this.)

The Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states, including Lithuania, in 1940 under the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Ribbentrop-Molotov Cocktail Treaty. Stalin lost control of those states to the Nazis, but reoccupied them when the Nazis were defeated.

ChatGPT agreed with Gemini and added details:

• After annexing the Baltic states in 1940 and again after the Nazi occupation (1941–1944), the Soviet authorities encouraged large-scale migration of ethnic Russians and other Soviet citizens into the Baltic republics.
• This migration was part of broader industrialization and urbanization policies. Factories and military installations were established, and workers were brought in from other parts of the USSR to fill labor shortages.
• Though Soviet leaders often justified this as economic modernization, historians widely recognize that it also served political aims—to integrate the Baltic states more tightly into the USSR and dilute local national identities.

In other words, the episode that Rothbard referred to had nothing to do with free immigration or open borders at all. It was Soviet settler colonialism. The Baltic states did not become captives of the Soviet Union after an influx of subversive ethnic Russian immigrants. On the contrary, the influx of ethnic Russians was made possible by the Soviet annexation. Stalin exiled Baltic people to Siberia to make room and open jobs for the Russians. Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania could not have closed their borders to the ethnic Russians between 1940 and 1990 because those countries, as captive nations, could have had no policies independent of the Soviet Union.

Again, that was classic settler colonialism, a threat that Americans do not face. How in the world did Soviet settler colonialism in the 1940s prompt Rothbard, in 1994, to change his mind about free immigration? It had nothing to do with immigration. Zip. Zilch. Bupkis. As Rothbard might have put it, his case against freedom is a floperoo.

Even though Rothbard's history is incorrect, a takeaway could run as follows: a hostile state might send a significant portion of its population, armed and dangerous, into a neighboring state for some malign purpose. Such an influx of belligerents, of course, would resemble a military invasion and should be treated accordingly. That's not immigration. That's war.

However, what if an overwhelming mass of migrants just wanted to find jobs, rent apartments, buy homes, engage in all other sorts of trade, and so on? As the economist and my friend Gene Epstein points out, that's too unlikely a scenario to be taken seriously.

Here's why. The migrants would want to know that the host country had ample job openings and affordable rents. They wouldn't want to leave familiar environs to become jobless, homeless, and hungry in a strange place where they'd have difficulty speaking the language: strangers in a strange land. Remember, many migrants come to America to earn money to send home to their families. Those remittances dwarf foreign aid. As more workers moved, however, conditions could become less and less amenable (unless economic growth from the last wave of immigrants boosted economic growth). As is their wont, new migrants would then write home to tell their friends and family that now was not the time to come: job openings were scarce, wages weren't extraordinary, and the cost of living was high. So-called illegal immigration into the United States has waxed and waned with the job outlook. Thus, the chance of an economically motivated, sudden, overwhelming mass migration is practically nil.

Mightn't they come for the welfare, as Rothbard warned in 1994? Not if they couldn't qualify for several years—as they cannot for the most part in the United States. Moreover, Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute has found that, even if current welfare laws in the U.S. remained on the books, the fiscal effects of immigration on the state are about neutral when we factor in the taxes immigrants pay through their high rates of employment. When we include the value they produce in those jobs—almost entirely in the private sector!—the U.S. economy comes out ahead.

Using the welfare state to justify restricting the liberty of individuals born on the far side of a political boundary is a textbook example of Ludwig von Mises's "critique of interventionism," according to which, the problems that government interference with the free market inevitably creates ostensibly necessitate more government interference. How will we ever get rid of the welfare state if it is sheltered from the predictable stresses and strains?

At any rate, regardless of immigration, the welfare state ought to be abolished. Forcing the productive to support the unproductive is unjust. Help ought to be left to voluntary charity. (Aside: does anyone believe  the restrictatarians would change their minds about open borders if the welfare state were abolished?)

A state powerful enough to be prepared for all manner of imagined emergencies, no matter how unlikely, should be too much state for any libertarian's taste.

TGIF: Damn Those Innovators!

The problem of survival is never "solved," once and for all, with no further thought or motion required. More precisely, the problem of survival is solved, by recognizing that survival demands constant growth and creativeness....

Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress. It creates the optimum social conditions for man to respond to the challenges of nature in such a way as to best further his life. It operates to the benefit of all those who choose to be active in the production process, whatever their level of ability. But it is not geared to the demands of stagnation. Neither is reality.

—Nathaniel Branden, "The Divine Right of Stagnation"

Our lives are improved in all sorts of ways by courageous, risk-bearing entrepreneurs, who seek to change the world at a profit. For that reason alone, we should jealously safeguard an environment friendly to entrepreneurship. As the economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has shown through indefatigable research, when society is marred by envy of the richer and highly successful, we all suffer. Widespread prosperity soars, McCloskey demonstrates, when a culture in effect erects huge neon signs brightly flashing the message, "You think you have a great idea? Well, give it a go!"

That is not how people have felt through most of history. Envy that bred a fear of pioneers smothered innovation. Thomas Sowell has documented the horrors, including massacres, inflicted on "middleman minorities," such as Jews in Europe, Chinese in Southeast Asia, and Indians and Lebanese in Africa. The economically illiterate masses could not understand why middlemen got rich "doing nothing," never asking themselves why they nevertheless availed themselves of those allegedly unproductive services. That the relatively rich middlemen were usually different ethnically from the majority population made persecuting them with a clear conscience all the easier.

The point is that our lives, health, and comfort depend on innovators and entrepreneurs, and that they need freedom and security of life and property if they are to render their services. I don't think people fully understand that, even today.

Capitalism Can't Be Everything Its Foes Say It Is

"Nothing is more unpopular today than the free market economy, i.e., capitalism. Everything that is considered unsatisfactory in present-day conditions is charged to capitalism. The atheists make capitalism responsible for the survival of Christianity. But the papal encyclicals blame capitalism for the spread of irreligion and the sins of our contemporaries, and the Protestant churches and sects are no less vigorous in their indictment of capitalist greed. Friends of peace consider our wars as an offshoot of capitalist imperialism. But the adamant nationalist warmongers of Germany and Italy indicted capitalism for its “bourgeois” pacifism, contrary to human nature and to the inescapable laws of history. Sermonizers accuse capitalism of disrupting the family and fostering licentiousness. But the “progressives” blame capitalism for the preservation of allegedly outdated rules of sexual restraint. Almost all men agree that poverty is an outcome of capitalism. On the other hand many deplore the fact that capitalism, in catering lavishly to the wishes of people intent upon getting more amenities and a better living, promotes a crass materialism. These contradictory accusations of capitalism cancel one another. But the fact remains that there are few people left who would not condemn capitalism altogether."

—Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, 1947

TGIF: The Right to Move

If people individually own themselves and have a right to be free of aggressive force, then they have a right to change their location in ways consistent with other people's rights. Whether you call this moving around relocating, emigrating, or immigrating, doesn't much matter. The default position is that each individual may rightfully move to somewhere else permanently or temporarily.

Inside the United States, nobody questions this. People freely move from state to state, etc., sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. They need no one's permission.

Why should things be different when we talk about countries rather than smaller jurisdictions and when the individuals who do the moving are not recognized as citizens of the destination country? An opponent of the freedom to move might begin by rejecting self-ownership and nonaggression, so the argument with him would take place at that basic level. But what if the opponent of the freedom to move espouses support for self-ownership and nonaggression? That's a different kettle of fish.

Recent Writing in Defense of Free Immigration

"The Trumpian Ice Age: The Frigidity of Collectivism"

"Immigration Policy in an Nth-Best World"

"Free Movement Increases Wealth"

"Static Analysis Clouds Immigration Debate"

"More on Immigration and Public Property"

"Immigration Control Threatens the Rule of Law"

"Immigration and Free Association"

"Reverse Scapegoating in the Immigration Debate"

"Immigration and Liberty"

"No One Has a Right to Make Immigration Policy"

"Immigration Foes, What's the Beef?"

"Heartless Immigration Restrictions Need Replacing"

"Glenn Loury's Collectivist Immigration Policy"

"A Refreshing Way to Think about Immigration"

"The Logical Flaw in Immigration Law"

"Trump & Co.'s Vile Anti-Immigrationism"

"Immigration and Social Engineering"

Report Card

What's the problem? So far the Trump administration has been Pretti Good.

Parallax Views Podcast: The Government Murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti

J. G. Michael invited me on his podcast to talk about the U.S. immigration agents' recent murders of two American citizens in Minneapolis.

TGIF: Inept Con Man in the White House

Trump is hardly the first con man in the White House, but he is by far the most flagrant, and his scale is gargantuan. He's also rather inept. His latest confession came in a recent message to Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store:

Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

I've italicized confession. Here is Trump admitting that, in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, he prioritized something over "what is good and proper for the United States of America." In year two of his second term, that will change, he warns.

What did he put ahead of America's interest? Peace. There's another confession.

You hear that, MAGA? You got that, America Firsters? Your Dear Leader acknowledges that he has not been an America Firster at all, but a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump Firster. His goal wasn't to Make America Great Again, but to make his White House or Mar-a-Lago mantelpiece great.

Alas, the Nobel committee gave the prize to Venezuela's opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, a deserving recipient. Having lost the prize, presumably out of Norwegian spite, Trump has now reduced the cause of peace to merely one of several concerns.

So much is wrong with what Trump wrote to Store. First, Trump has not been thinking "purely of peace" since Jan. 20, 2025—far from it. He's aided and abetted Israel in its savage battering of the people of the Gaza Strip. His touted ceasefire, which Israel has violated over a thousand times, is a farce. He, along with Israel, attacked Iran while pretending to negotiate with its diplomats. His conduct regarding Russia's war against Ukraine hardly speaks of a person who thinks purely of peace. He invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro. He has bombed boats and executed their crews in the Caribbean. He's bombed Somalia repeatedly, along with several other countries, including Syria. I'm sure I've missed some things.

Don't get me wrong. Trump does not lie. Lying implies one knows the truth and says something else. In contrast, he seems sincerely to believe, or hope, that what he says will shape reality. How can you be lying if your words create the facts? He's the ultimate primacy-of-consciousness subjectivist. As I observed in Trump's first term, the only way to shut him up is to inject him with sodium pentathol, i.e., truth serum.

One may wonder why Trump complained to the Norwegian prime minister. He doesn't pick the Peace Prize winner. Greenland, over which Trump had threatened tariffs against Western Europe, is a territory of Denmark, not Norway (as Trump acknowledged further on). And what does Greenland have to do with the Nobel Peace Prize? At any rate, not winning the prize hardly justified Trump's damaging tantrum, after which he claimed he did not care about the prize, classic sour grapes. Isn't it time he grew up?

Notwithstanding his embarrassing bluster at Davos over Greenland—which he several times called Iceland; could he have meant Graceland?—Trump (for now) has backed down. Europe and the stock market pushed back, and Trump again caved. He says he won't use force. He's cancelled the tariffs, and he claims, vaguely, that he and NATO have worked out a "framework of a future deal" for Arctic security. The top man at NATO says the sovereignty of Greenland, which Trump had insisted was absolutely necessary, was no part of the post-speech discussions.

In other words, Trump antagonized friendly nations and shook the world economy—then settled for the status quo. An open-ended security arrangement with NATO and Denmark has existed in treaty form since 1951! Did no one tell Trump? It must have been a blow to his ego. If he thinks he's saved face, he's pathetically mistaken. He looks like a damned fool, and everybody knows it.

Trump's monomaniacal quest for adoration and gratitude is so warped that he seems oblivious to the harm he does. Noninterventionist libertarians have opposed U.S. membership in NATO since its founding in 1949 because a strictly limited government would not obligate its taxpayers or military to defend other countries. Preparation for war is the health of the state. It's also provocative. So the U.S. should leave NATO. However, gracefully leaving an alliance and nihilistically smashing it on the way out are two different things. While Trump clearly has no intention of leaving NATO, he seems intent on wreaking havoc anyway.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson cautioned against "entangling alliances." That was good advice. But Trump is showing that things could be worse than the current alliance system. Presidential pugnacity toward people who bear us no ill will is bad for them and us. Jefferson also called for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations." Trump must have missed part.