I agree with so much that Andrew Napolitano says that it frustrates me that he's so wrong-headed about immigration, as he is in this article, Immigration is a Natural Right, at reason.com.
Yes, humans have a fundamental freedom of movement. I agree with that in principle, just as I agree that people have fundamental freedoms of speech, self-defense, freedom from unreasonable searches, etc.
Now, does protecting these freedoms for Americans entail protecting them for the entire world? Should we go sticking our nose into every nation that doesn't meet our standards of freedom of speech or the right to keep and bear arms?
I think most libertarians would say no.
A libertarian government exists to protect the rights and liberties not of every person in the world, but of its own citizens. That's why a reasonable person would make the implied contract with the government. As libertarians, we expect the government to refrain from infringing our freedom of speech. We don't expect it to spend our tax money to go around the world protecting everyone else's freedom of speech.
We also accept that there are limitations to free speech, such as the classic "fire in a crowded theater" restriction or libel and slander laws.
Our respect of freedom of movement is similar. We expect our government to respect it for citizens, and we don't expect our government to go around forcing China to grant complete freedom of movement of its subjects.
The right also has limitations. Your freedom to move stops at the border of my property. We don't expect government to prioritize freedom of movement over the right to control one's own property. I think most sane libertarians agree that I have a right to kick trespassers off my farm -- they can't just walk onto my property and start building a house on my back acreage, because "it didn't look like I was using it for much." It's mine to do with as I want.
Now, in a pure libertarian society, there might be no public property at all -- no public roads or parks, etc., everything would be privately owned, thus all questions of border policing would be local -- maybe foreigners have a right to move freely, but they don't have a right to cross *my* property without permission in order to do it.
But that's not a world we're ever likely to live in. We're unlikely to have a libertarian society that completely does away with the concept of public space -- public roads, government buildings, etc.
What is public space? It's space that's owned by the public, the citizenry, as a group. It follows that we expect the government to protect our property rights to public property. That would mean that the government would protect it from trespassers. Who is a trespasser? Anyone who's not a citizen. This applies not only to actual public roads and other public spaces, but to the public wealth of the nation -- our tax money and how it is spent.
Just as we expect the government to protect our private property from takings, a reasonable libertarian can expect the government to protect our government property (and thus wealth) from takings, as well.
It is also reasonable that we would want to have some way to invite people onto our public property and that the way we would do so would be to have duly passed laws defining how these invitations would be offered.
Thus, I see no conflict between the libertarian concept of a fundamental right to freedom of movement, and controlling the nations' borders and immigration requirements.
People might say that this implies that they should be able invite foreigners into their private property without government interference. I'd agree in principle, except that it's effectively impossible for a foreigner to come to a nation and make no use of its public property. Do they use public roads to go to a grocery store? Do they expect to benefit from the laws protecting workers? Such laws cost money to administer, money taken from citizens to hire government workers. Will they make use of public utilities? Will they expect to be able to go to public schools or public hospitals? Any foreigner ends up taking advantage of the nation's public wealth in some way.
We, as the citizens who have granted the government a portion of our wealth and allowed it to administer property in our name, have the right to control who gets use of that wealth and that property.
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