Publisher’s NOTE: In July of this year (2015) I had occasion to have an email conversation with contributing writer, Mike Gaddy. I open this column with this offering from Mike. (JB)
I was a section leader for the Minuteman Project in Arizona in 2005 and spent the entire month of April there. At the time I was writing for LRC. I wrote the article in this link and was mildly surprised when Lew refused to print it. This was the beginning of our split and it widened when he also refused to print a piece I did titled “We will Run the Little Bastards back home.” Of course it all went to hell when he refused to print the article I did which was critical of the Oathkeepers and three days later the FBI was sitting in my yard questioning my motives for writing the article.
Anyway, if you think it would be worth it considering the blow-up over Trump feel free to re-publish this one. ~ Mike
August 27, 2015 ~ In the month of April I traveled to the Arizona border and worked as a volunteer with the Minuteman Project. Upon returning I wrote an article that appeared at LRC. For several days that followed I received many emails, including fellow writers at LRC who took issue with my stance on protecting our borders. I understand the issue this raises with those who believe in the open border policy advocated by many Libertarians. My question is: can we live with the theory of open borders when obviously what we are experiencing is not people immigrating for a better way of life, but an invasion?
The one question that I never received an answer to from all those who wrote me in opposition to my position was: with the current open border policy and the welfare state how do we protect the private property of not only those who live on the U.S. side of the border, but others whose private property is being destroyed by the criminal element that constantly flows across our porous borders?
While one of my most respected writers at LRC, Anthony Gregory, touches briefly on the objections to free immigration in a welfare society by Hans-Hermann Hoppe in his work, I believe there was absent a delving into the meat of Hoppe’s argument in which he addresses what he believes to be an invasion as opposed to free immigration.
In Hoppe’s work On Free Trade and Restricted Immigration, he states:
“In light of steadily mounting immigration pressure from the world’s low-wage regions, three general strategies of dealing with immigration have been proposed: unconditional free immigration, conditional free immigration, and restrictive immigration. While our main concern will be with the latter two alternatives, a few observations regarding the unconditional free immigration position are appropriate, if only to illustrate the extent of its intellectual bankruptcy.”
As for unconditional free immigration, Hoppe’s words are certainly relevant if one is a close up observer of our basically unprotected borders today, and the millions here illegally who demand their share of welfare “entitlements,” and politicians who seek votes by insisting these immigrants receive the fruits of the labor of others.
“Since unconditional free immigration must be regarded as a prescription for national suicide, the typical position among free traders is the alternative of conditional free immigration. According to this view, the U.S. and Switzerland would have to first return to unrestricted free trade and abolish all tax-funded welfare programs, and only then should they open their borders to everyone who wanted to come. In the meantime, while the welfare state is still in place, immigration would have to be made subject to the condition that immigrants are excluded from domestic welfare entitlements.”
Here Hoppe draws a distinction between free trade and free immigration.
“There is no analogy between free trade and free immigration, and restricted trade and restricted immigration. The phenomena of trade and immigration are different in a fundamental respect, and the meaning of “free” and “restricted” in conjunction with both terms is categorically different. People can move and migrate; goods and services, of themselves, cannot. Put differently, while someone can migrate from one place to another without anyone else wanting him to do so, goods and services cannot be shipped from place to place unless both sender and receiver agree. Trivial as this distinction may appear, it has momentous consequences. For free in conjunction with trade then means trade by invitation of private households and firms only; and restricted trade does not mean protection of households and firms from uninvited goods or services, but invasion and abrogation of the right of private households and firms to extend or deny invitations to their own property. In contrast, free in conjunction with immigration does not mean immigration by invitation of individual households and firms, but unwanted invasion or forced integration…”
Hoppe elaborates on the view that illegal immigrants are nothing more than foreign invaders, forcing themselves on those who have no choice but to receive them.
“…with respect to the movement of people, the same government will have to do more in order to fulfill its protective function than merely permit events to take their own course, because people, unlike products, possess a will and can migrate. Accordingly, population movements, unlike product shipments, are not per se mutually beneficial events because they are not always —necessarily and invariably—the result of an agreement between a specific receiver and sender. There can be shipments (immigrants) without willing domestic recipients. In this case, immigrants are foreign invaders, and immigration represents an act of invasion. Surely, a government’s basic protective function includes the prevention of foreign invasions and the expulsion of foreign invaders. Just as surely then, in order to do so and subject immigrants to the same requirement as imports (of having been invited by domestic residents), this government cannot rightfully allow the kind of free immigration advocated by most free traders.”
In my view, Hoppe could not be more correct in his belief that the government should protect its citizens from the foreign invasion of those who enter our country illegally. In fact our Constitution demands it.
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion…” ~ Article 4 Sec. 4 of the U.S. Constitution
I understand how one can idealistically look at free immigration and believe that to place restrictions on the free flow of people is inconsistant with liberty. Those who support this view should travel to the border and see first hand the destruction being wrought on the private property of our citizens; slaughtered livestock, water lines dug up from the ground and left running in an environment where water is as valuable as gold, fences destroyed, homes invaded and burned, citizens literally afraid to walk to the mailbox unarmed, private property owners who have actually deserted their property to avoid the constant harrassment, threats and violence and the refusal/inability of our government to protect them from this destruction.
In fact, many of our politicians, including Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, have sought federal intervention against those private property owners who seek to protect their property from these invaders. His words on the subject speak volumes.
“An atmosphere exists in southern Arizona that threatens to ignite in a flashpoint of violence. The words and actions of these groups (read private property owners) are evidence of an armed racial movement intent on taking the law into their own hands. We cannot allow the complex issues in U.S.-Mexico border policy to be hijacked by individuals who have chosen to break faith with our government and take matters into their own hands.”
In my view, this issue is one of national security more than any other. Our run away government’s reckless foreign policy has created a plethora of enemies who seek our destruction, not just of our government but of the citizens as well. Allowing those who wish to destroy us unfettered access to our property and our lives is ridiculous in the extreme.
Our insane policy concerning those who are invading our country and seek to do us harm is most obvious in the following: when natives of Mexico are apprehended after crossing illegally into this country, they are fingerprinted, given food and water, medical attention if needed and then transported back to Mexico, but an illegal from any other country, including those with whom we are at war, even though these wars are illegal and immoral, are taken to a city such as Tucson, processed, given a trial date to appear in court and then released! Should it come as a big surprise that less than 5% ever return to honor their court date?
To doubt the millions crossing our border and the millions already here constitute an invasion is baffling. Immigrants migrate for a better way of life while invaders come to dominate and control. One need only listen to the words and writings of the invaders and their supporters, many of who are teaching in our institutions of higher learning here in the United States.
“California is going to be a Hispanic state and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave. They should go back to Europe.” ~ Mario Obledo
“The border remains a military zone. We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation. And they want us to discuss civil rights. Civil rights. What law made by white men to oppress all of us of color, female and male. This is our homeland. We cannot—we will not—and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population.” ~ Jose Angel Gutierrez, Professor and Attorney, University of Texas Arlington.
“The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.” ~ Miguel Perez of Cal State-Northridge’s MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) chapter.
“As an academic mission I’m proposing it (El Norte) as a thesis. But I’m also an advocate of the idea, I myself-through the way I teach my classes and to the students I help form in the classroom-that’s my activism. The main incentive would be so people of the same culture, language, and identity could develop their own nation-state under the principal of self- determination.” ~ Chicano Studies Professor Charles Truxillo at the University of New Mexico who advocates that California, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona secede from the United States to form the Chicano republic of El Norte.
Professor Truxillo, is a self-described disciple of Chicano-Marxist terrorist Reies Lopez Tijerina. Tijerina and his terrorist group have been advocating retaking the southwest since the mid ’60s. In June 1967, Tijerina led his gang in an assault on the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. During the attack, he proved that his violence was non-discriminatory. They shot fellow Mexican-American jailer Eugolio Salazar in the face, pistol whipped fellow Mexican-American Undersheriff Dan Rivera, and killed fellow Mexican-American Deputy Sheriff Nicainor Saizan.
Professor Truxillo claims that the new nation of El Norte should be established “by any means necessary.”
“These are the critical years for us as a Latino community. We’re in a state of transition. And that transformation is called ‘the browning of America’. Latinos are now becoming the majority. Because I know that time and history is on the side of the Chicano/Latino community. It is changing in the future and in the present the balance of power of this nation. It’s a game – it’s a game of power – who controls it. You (to MEChA students) are like the generals that command armies. We’re in a state of war…What this means is a transfer of power. It means control.” ~ Armando Navarro, Prof. Ethnic Studies, UC Riverside.
Are the above the words of those who seek only economic opportunity?
While I am in complete agreement with Anthony Gregory and others that the State will only use this issue to pass more oppressive legislation against its citizens, I hardly see how allowing the free flow of immigrants who are determined to colonize the Southwestern United States will stop this oppression. If the ignorant among us show an unwillingness to buckle to the desires of the State, there will always be another “New Pearl Harbor.”
I was asked on two separate occasions this past week to be a guest on talk radio out of Mexico City. During my appearance, I asked the host if he locked the doors of his home at night and when he was away. He finally, after repeating the question until he answered, said that he did. When I asked him why, he said to keep unwanted people out of his home—people who might steal his property or harm his family. My question to him and to others is: Why should we not control our borders for the same reason?
June 27, 2005
Michael Gaddy, an Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. He is also the honorary editor for The Price of Liberty.
