Binswanger on Open Immigration at USC

[Roger Bissell]

Becky and I motored up to L.A. to hear Harry Binswanger talk to a crowd of about 150 people at the University of Southern California last night (Mar. 2). His topic was open borders, open immigration, etc. It was a very good presentation, and the QA session was excellent. I have a newfound respect and appreciation for the man. More details, if anyone is interested.

REB

[Barbara Branden]

Roger, you wrote: "More details, if anyone is interested." I'm interested.

Barbara

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger:

[....] I have a newfound respect and appreciation for the man. More details, if anyone is interested.

Just don't let on to him that you're on friendly terms with the Brandens if you want to remain on such with him. ;-) I assume he'd consider a friendship with either of the Brandens even worse than one with David Kelley. And there's recent evidence of how he'd view the latter, provided by a brief exchange between Larry (my husband) and Harry following the ARS session in December.

Arnold Baise, who was watching this incident, told Larry afterward that Larry should write down what happened while both Arnold and Larry exactly remembered. The story is short:

Larry (walking up to Harry after the meeting and holding out his hand): "Hi, Harry."

Harry (not holding out his hand): "Aren't you my enemy?"

Larry: "Am I? Do you have so many enemies you can't keep track?"

Harry: "Aren't you a friend of David Kelley's?"

Larry: "Yes."

Harry: "Then you're my enemy."

Larry: Laughter.

Harry: "I'm serious."

Larry (said in sacrastic tones while walking away): "That's nice, Harry."

ES

PS: I'm nonetheless interested in hearing about what he said in the talk. Harry is smart, though he can be silly.

___

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

Are you taking lessons from Phil? You announce something like that and then sit on it?

Dayaamm!

Come on, man! Out with it!

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Jeez, Michael, you're so impatient! Some of us work for a living. Dayaaam!

Harry's main point was that we should do away with the borders and the INS, and we should welcome immigrants from all nations without numerical restriction. He would phase this in over a 10 year period or so, he said. We would still deport criminals, and we would turn back those with obvious serious communicable diseases, but we would no longer have checkpoints where people were examined without probable cause. He argued that it is a practical impossibility to seal the borders.

In answer to the objection about terrorism, he said that if we had a real cowboy President like GWB is accused inaccurately of being, we wouldn't have this problem today. The Islamofascists see us as weak, because we either don't respond or we respond half-heartedly. Also, Harry said that we should be attacking Iran and Syria and putting those regimes out of power, not messing around in Iraq.

In answer to the objection about welfare, he said that the lethargic, parasitic types don't come here in large numbers, but instead the ambitious ones eager to work and improve their family's condition. He doesn't approve of any taxpaid medical care, but he was appalled that people were OK with free prescription drugs for old people but not with free emergency medical care for a Mexican woman who is 9 months pregnant and wants her baby to be born an American citizen.

He got in a lot of other really good licks. 1. Not only militant fundamentalist religion should be opposed, but all religion. 2. Public education is a bad thing and should be ended; private education could take up the slack and would be better quality and morally better. 3. Drugs should be legalized. 4. Voting is not such a big deal; it's not why people are clamoring to come here; citizenship should not be immediately granted as some argue, but instead at least 5 years as present, and preferably 10 years, so that people can properly assimilate and know the system they are participating in. 5. Taxes are bad and should be eliminated, but if government was limited to defending rights, taxes could be cut by 80% or more; taxation with or without representation is not a serious issue.

One more thing that really tickled me. He mentioned that parents should not have more children than they can afford to care for and educate, because they have a moral and legal obligation to educate them for adult living, and they should be willing to avail themselves of loans to send their children to private schools. When someone asked him to elaborate on the moral and legal justification to support one's children, he gave essentially the same arguments I have been using for the past 30 years. First, he said, if through your chosen actions, you bring a helpless child into the world, you are responsible for his being that way, and you are responsible for helping him to become able to take care of himself. And he gave the analogy to breaking another person's arm. You are responsible for fixing his arm so that he can use it in supporting his own life; this is similar to my argument about hitting someone with your car and causing him to be a helpless quadriplegic, which makes you morally and legally obligated to support him until and unless he is able to support himself.

I thought the entire performance was very good, but this last bit was particularly cheering to me. I hope my broad, sustained grin was not too unsettling to him. :-) He is the first Objectivist I have heard say anything in support of the parental obligation beyond Branden's and Peikoff's mere assertion that there was one, and it really gave me a big jolt of optimism about the Objectivist movement, that someone high-up would come out and say what needed to be said about this 500-pound gorilla issue.

As for those worrying that I might become too enamored of Harry, or that I might get entangled in something I will have difficulty coping with...not to worry. I don't anticipate becoming his bosom buddy any time soon. From what I gather, he previously thought of me (whether or not he does at all these days) as being crazy, based on my various applications of Rand's "fallacy of the frozen abstraction." (I have said that Hitler was both moral within his chosen system of morality and evil by an objective standard of value, but that you couldn't judge him as immoral, because he had not chosen the Objectivist ethics or any similar pro-life ethics as his moral code. "Evil," to Objectivists means that something is anti-life, and Hitler certainly was in spaces. But "immoral," to Objectivists, means something more specific: that someone is in violation of his chosen moral code, which in Hitler's case was not Objectivism. Anyway, whether or not you agree with me, that line of argument, as forwarded to him several years ago, is what prompted Binswanger's brief comment about me.)

More questions are welcome, though I don't particularly want to go into more detail on what I've already commented on. I'm not capable of regurgitating the entire talk, and if I even tried to be accurate in detail, I would surely mess something up and misrepresent Harry, plus chew up a lot of time I'd rather spend doing something else! I trust what I've shared here is enough to satisfy those curious about Harry's take on immigration. Suffice it to say, he has out-libertarianed the libertarians in re domestic policy, and out-hawked the hawk in re foreign policy.

REB

[Philip Coates]

Roger, I'm going to have to do this quickly and not address every issue, but basically Binswanger is grotesquely wrong on a number of issues regarding the right to immigrate, borders, and terrorism. (I'm assuming there weren't any other pieces to his arguments than the ones you've reported.)

1. You can't do away with all threats of terrorists coming across the borders by "scaring the Islamofascists". First of all, you can scare governments like Iran, but not individuals or small cells. And there are dozens of terrorist groups, it's no longer all Al Qaeda. Harry should read a magazine or a book or follow the news and educate himself regarding basic facts about terrorism instead of constructing the rationalistic fallacy that a "cowboy" would make them all magically disappers. Nor would any such results be instant (let alone universal)...so, yippee, open the borders and dismantle Homeland Security.

2. As far as it being impossible to seal the borders, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Platonic perfection is not the standard. You patrol the streets in a city or hunt for terrorists to reduce crime or lessen the threat, not to eliminate it 100%.

3. A major reason for not allowing unlimited immigration is that we are not a free society and immigrants from collectivist societies who have not shaken off the "welfare state/regulatory state/legislate morality" ideas...which almost all still retain, once they acquire the vote, whether it be in five or ten years, can vote to abrogate your rights and further shred the Constitution. There is no right to admit people who choose to seize your money and property and freedom once they come here. As long as the system allows people to come here and point a gun at you via "democracy", an Objectivist must be against unlimited immigration. [in fact the most recent immigrant groups *overwhelmingly* vote on the side of expanding government services, interventionism, social interventionism, state support of religion, anti-abortion, pro-drug laws, and a generally paternalistic state.]

Here's a thought experiment: Suppose there is unlimited immigration for twenty years. The population of the United States doubles in that period. (That's conservative. Remember that -everyone- wants to come to America.) The new voters never grew up in schools that taught them about the Bill of Rights and the virtues of capitalism and inalienable rights. They vote to repeal the Constitution (not outright of course) and shred the Bill of Rights, an alien document unlike anything they had in their country of origin.

So would Harry Binswanger just say, well too bad it turned out that way, but I didn't want to violate the rights of the immigrants, so too bad they shifted the delicate balance and voted overwhelmingly for the most socialistic Democrats and voted our freedoms out of existence?

"Well, maybe the last, best hope of freedom for the human race is gone, but at least we didn't impede their freedom to travel and our economy is a little stronger."

[Barbara Branden]

Roger, I must agree with Phil on the subject of open immigration. I, too, think Binswanger is grotesquely wrong and incredibly naive.

Barbara

[Kat]

I also think Biswanger is taking it too far. Sounds like libertarian wackoism to me. I don't think the borders should be completely open. There are procedures in place like work visas and family unification that allow people to be brought into this country because they have a job waiting for them or family here. I also think that if someone has a successful business in another country which they wish to expand into the American market, they should be allowed in.

I would also like to see some type of expanded work permit program which would put more working immigrants on the tax rolls and make it easier for smaller companies to put people on the payroll. People shouldn't be able to come here, work under the table and collect government benefits. Phil made some wonderful points about the mindset of people who come to this country from collectivist countries. We are also at war and so national security is an issue. There needs to be some oversight to ensure that people coming in are productive and not parasitical or dangerous.

Kat

[Roger Bissell]

I briefly discussed this with Becky, and we agree that Phil has a good point. Becky suggested that, in fact, the fairly liberal immigration that we already have may be a significant factor behind our society's continuing to tip more and more in a statist direction. This goes back a lot of years, back beyond World War 1, back at least to the Civil War, but accelerating in the 20th century. We have admitted a lot of people to this country who eventually assimilated, but not without putting a lot of statist-directed pressure on the system (for government controls on the economy, especially, to fight the predations of big business, don't you know).

There is no doubt that new people invigorate the country because of their desire to work and improve their lives. They revitalize the American sense of life, and their desire for freedom and opportunity is obvious and stronger than many native Americans. This is an observable fact. The lethargic ones stay behind. But their explicit philosophies sometimes/often push in the opposite direction. It is vital that we get these people assimilated -- and not just assimilated to multiculturalism and environmentalism, which is what the public schools tend to shove down the throats of the newcomers who do learn to read. (The inner city schools are failing at an alarming rate; 50% fail to graduate high school in L.A. county.)

REB