Doug Casey on Immigration

(Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator

L: So, Doug, a while back there was a big furor among many people, including some of your libertarian friends, about the new immigration law – or anti-illegal-immigration law – passed by the state of Arizona. We had other fish to fry at the time, and then the markets got all jittery, but I know you have thoughts on the subject of immigration, so let ‘er rip – what do you make of all this?

Doug: I think it's incumbent upon a free person to go anywhere he or she wants.

L: And that they have every right to do so, without restriction?

Doug: Absolutely. Everyone should be able to travel, whether they're coming or going, without the approval of a state. As I'm sure you're aware, it was only a hundred years ago that almost anybody, from almost anywhere, could go almost anywhere else, without a passport.

L: The good old days.

Doug: At least from that point of view. In a free society, all property is privately owned. Immigrants, like other travelers, would only have to make sure they have a place to lay their heads down at night.

L: Some people might argue that it was different back then because travel was long, arduous, and expensive, so you wouldn't get masses of poor and poorly educated people flooding into rich countries the way you would today. The world is a different and far more dangerous place today, and such idealistic policies from the past are no longer workable.

Doug: Well, they would be wrong. Anyone who thinks the world was a safer place back in the U.S. Civil War era, or when the Indians were watching the Europeans arrive, or during the crusades, or during the Black Death, or during the rise of Rome, or during the last ice age… Well, ignorant is about the best that can be said for them. And as for the poor masses, that's exactly what America came to be filled with, in wave after wave.

For example, in the 1840s and ‘50s, there were the starving and penniless from Ireland fleeing the potato famine. Over the centuries, most of the immigrants to the new world were not rich adventurers on holiday, coming over to see the exotic flora and fauna. They were typically the most persecuted and impoverished people from all over Europe. These were desperate and sometimes dangerous people, fighting for survival. The ones who did so successfully were among the most resourceful, driven, and creative – in other words, just the sort of people who can add value to an economy.

So no, that thinking is just plain wrong and wrong-headed. It's always been the poor, the hungry, huddled masses.

L: As Emma Lazarus' famous poem about the Statue of Liberty goes: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

You know, I shouldn't be surprised – because, as you like to point out, after hydrogen, stupidity is the most common thing in the universe – but it somehow always does manage to surprise me when I run into obstinate anti-immigrant bigotry. This entire country was built by immigrants. We're all immigrants. Even the "native" Americans are just older immigrants. How can any American possibly be so blind as to fail to see the hypocrisy of being against immigration?

Doug: Just so. You know, that poem also says: "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" I've always rather liked that line, because it's quite anti-elitist. It's truly a sad thing that the Statue of Liberty has become an empty symbol, as meaningless as the Declaration of Independence. It's another sign of the death of America, which has gone from being the land of the free and the home of the brave to the land of tax slaves and the home of welfare recipients. And it's precisely because it was the land of the free and brave that America was so fearless of immigrants; Americans were not afraid to work hard and compete with anyone from anywhere.

The statistics tell us that now, however, about 47% of Americans don't pay income tax; they look forward to April 15 as a day the government sends them money. Of course I don‘t believe in the income tax – or any other taxes, for that matter. But the U.S., like Europe, has turned into a place where most people feel entitled to have the state – or rich people – take care of them. They certainly don't want to compete. They want free handouts and will keep voting for them, come hell or high water. Forty million Americans are on food stamps, and I promise you that number is going much higher.

L: I think they'll get both hell and high water as a result. But didn't immigrants cause some problems back then? I know there were anti-Irish sentiments, to continue with your example. "No Irish need apply," etc.

Doug: There were certainly problems. Look, life isn't just full of problems; life is problems. Though I'd guess that even back then, more problems were caused by the people already in America than by those arriving. But that doesn't mean the new arrivals were bad for America. Just the opposite. The kind of people who would leave wherever they were born and make their way – as long and arduous as you say – to America would have been the best class of people. They clearly had the most "get up and go…"

L: Literally.

Doug: [Chuckle] Yes. They were the most opportunity-seeking and generally the most freedom-loving. Those poor wretches were not a net drain, as their modern counterparts are seen today, but a huge boon to the country – and the same could be true today, if we had the right policies.

L: Well, look what Australia has built on foundations of being a prison colony. It seems pretty clear that whom you let in doesn't matter, it's what the systems in place encourage people to do once they get there that matters.

But one more challenge; some people would say that back then America had wild frontiers, beyond which anyone could go and hack a living out of the wilderness. Now the U.S. has no open frontier; it's a closed system with limited resources, resources newcomers may take from those already on board.

Doug: They're wrong too, and self-serving in their myopia. The U.S. still has vast, vast stretches of empty land, owned by the federal government, which could be re-opened to homesteading. And Space Ship One has shown that there is an infinite frontier opening up for those daring enough to go colonize it.

But this is the 21st century. Homesteading shouldn't mean hacking a farm out of the wilderness anymore, it should mean launching a technology company, or engineering some new solution to an expensive problem, or offering a valuable service to people who need it, and so forth. Space isn't the final frontier, opportunity is, and it's infinite. It serves no useful purpose whatsoever to try to limit people's access to opportunity – and if the U.S. stops the best and the brightest among us from following new opportunities here, they will do it elsewhere, and the U.S. will get left behind.

L: So, you don't see any problems with throwing the borders wide open today? Let anyone into the U.S. who wants to live the American Dream – maybe they'll bring it back to life?

Doug: Well, to start with, it's not America anymore, it's the United States, a welfare-warfare state that offers perverse incentives to be non-productive and goes around the world creating enemies with an extremely aggressive foreign policy. So I expect there would indeed be problems if opening the borders were the only change made.

As long as the U.S. is mass-producing enemies in the Middle East and elsewhere, it does make some sense for it to try to erect walls to protect itself. Welfare is a disaster, but while the U.S. is handing out expensive goodies and subsidies, it makes sense for the U.S. to try to limit how many people it has to support. In both cases, however, the answer is to get rid of these destructive and counterproductive policies, not to close the border. If you get rid of the welfare-warfare state, you solve the perceived immigration problem. The U.S. needs to return to being America.