This piece by Christopher Freiman originally appeared in Bleeding Heart Libertarians on October 28th, 2015. Read an excerpt below but be sure to head over to BHL to read the whole thing.
Patrick Lynch wrote an interesting and provocative piece the other day arguing that immigration restrictions are consistent with libertarianism. An earlier post of mine explains why I disagree but I wanted to take the chance to say more on the issue. Lynch says:
Support for open borders implies the elimination of national boundaries for the purposes of political organization and is much more consistent with anarchism than with classical liberalism— both of which are now commonly referred to as libertarian. It’s a position that rejects the entire experiment in constitutional governance and different political systems that has been a foundational belief in liberalism for hundreds of years.”]
I’m not sure why support for open borders implies support for the elimination of meaningful national boundaries. Think of it this way: there’s an open border between Virginia and West Virginia but that doesn’t mean that we’ve eliminated state boundaries for the purposes for political organization. It just means that the state of Virginia can’t forcible exclude West Virginians from entering.”]