The problem of immigration enforcement has always been a thorny issue for those who prefer to reduce federal power, rather than expand it. This is why Lew Rockwell, years ago, referred to “the tragedy of immigration enforcement.” The agents of the state encourage immigrants to flood across the border and spend taxpayer’s welfare dollars. Then, conservatives—themselves reliable supporters of the regime—tell us that the only answer lies in giving the federal government more police power and spending more taxpayer money on federal police.
Many supporters of the free market reluctantly go along with efforts to use federal police to reduce immigrant populations. These opponents of immigration see how, on average, immigrants are costly for taxpayers via welfare programs, schools, and other “freebies” that go to both legal and illegal aliens. A 2023 CBO report, for example, showed that the 2021 surge in immigrant produced significantly more government spending then government revenue.
In America today, immigration is heavily subsidized by the taxpayers.
But, it is understandable why many defenders of freedom and free markets might balk at the idea of giving even more power to federal agents. After all, if there is anything that Americans don’t need, its federal agents walking around demanding to see our “papers.” We already put up with enough of that from the regime’s unconstitutional checkpoints at “border zones” that were invented after the Second World War. Many who would approve of the use of ICE as a last resort may nonetheless be alarmed by the agency’s willingness to arrest people with no warrants and no due process.
But given the costs to the native population and the longtime taxpayers, let’s investigate if there are ways to limit immigration that do not involve giving the federal government any additional powers.
It turns out there are at least three ways.
One: Moratorium on Naturalization
The first is to enact a moratorium on all naturalization. This requires not a single tax dollar be spent, and it requires no new government employees be hired. In fact, a moratorium on naturalization would allow for a reduction in the federal workforce since the bureaucrats who administers naturalization programs would become unnecessary.
Moreover, it would not violate anyone’s property rights in any way. Naturalization, after all, is about extending the right to vote and hold office. In modern America citizenship is all about voting and politics. It is not a property right. Real property can be obtained through homesteading and contract. Naturalization, on the other hand, is a strictly a matter of administrative and political status.
The fact that naturalization and citizenship are entirely separate from property rights can be seen in the fact that there is no right to citizenship or naturalization in the Bill of Rights. Rather, the authors of the Bill of Rights sought to protect property through amendments like the first, fourth, and fifth amendments. Moreover, the authors of the Bill of Rights clearly intended that it be applicable to everyone, regardless of citizenship status.
If citizenship were necessary to the protection of property rights, one would think that it would at least be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The words “citizen” and “naturalization” do not occur in the Bill of Rights at all.
So why would a moratorium on naturalization help limit immigration? In practice, citizenship is held out as an incentive to potential immigrants. Immigrants know that if they can emigrate to the US and obtain legal residency, and then they can obtain citizenship in only five years. With citizenship comes more opportunities to access the American welfare state. And, of course, with citizenship comes the right to vote and the opportunity to vote for even more social benefits paid for by less costly native-born Americans.
We know that many immigrants are happy to exploit the American welfare state. Immigrant households in the United States tend to collect more government benefits than than native-born population. For example, accoriding to this study, “53 percent of households headed by immigrants — naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal immigrants — used one or more major welfare programs. This compares to 37 percent for U.S.-born households.”
The abolition of naturalization for five, ten, or twenty years would send the message that it’s about the get harder to exploit the American taxpayer.
Two: Cut off All Welfare to Immigrants (Both Legal and Illegal)
Limits on naturalization will likely be the most effective if done in tandem with cutting off access to government benefits.
It is not enough to merely limit access to citizenship and naturalization. After all, the welfare state can be accessed by non-citizen residents as well. This is true of both legal and illegal aliens, and contrary to a common conservative myth, it is not true that illegal aliens are the most likely to use social benefits in the US. Indeed, legal immigrants have more access to federal benefits programs than illegal aliens. The distinction between legal and illegal immigrants is often purely arbitrary and often does not reflect the productivity or cost of any particular immigrant.
The only consistent answer to this is to limit access to government benefits for both legal and illegal immigrants and to completely end the ongoing process by which foreign-born residents of any kind can access taxpayer funded amenities.
New limits on immigrant welfare would then work hand in hand with a moratorium on naturalization to limit the size and scope of the welfare state overall.
Three: Abolish Anti-Discrimination Laws
For decades, one way that the federal government intervenes to push for more immigration is to outlaw free association—also known by the propaganda term “discrimination.”
By now, most American adults are aware that the federal bureaucracy prohibits any discrimination on the basis of “citizenship ... place of birth, first language, accent, or other national origin indicator.” The Justice Department has made it clear that it is illegal for, say, a family business to have a policy of hiring only US citizens. Similarly, business owners are also not allowed to refuse service to anyone based on “national origin.” No restaurateur or hotelier can legally elect to do business only with native-born Americans, as was legal for all of American history until the 1960s.
For advocates of mass immigration, it’s not enough that American taxpayers be forced to pay for schools and food stamps and health care for immigrants. These advocates also want to make sure that Americans are not allowed even a modicum of free association. That might make immigrants feel slightly uncomfortable, you see, and then they might go back to where they are more comfortable.
To outlaw this so-called “discrimination,” the federal government employs an army of bureaucrats who investigate and harass employers who are targets of complaints about “discrimination.” There need not even be any material evidence. These bureaucrats will identify “patterns” that merely suggest that employers are not hiring the “correct” number of foreign nationals.
If our goal is to limit state power, then it is clear that the federal “anti-discrimination” state must be entirely abolished. This would be the right thing to do even if it has no effect on total immigration one way or the other. Even a modest and rudimentary respect for property rights requires that people be allowed to hire whom they wish, and to do business with whomever they prefer. Moreover, if this “civil rights” leviathan were dismantled, all the employees of these bureaucracies would be forced to get real jobs. Immigrants would no longer receive special treatment from the federal government at the expense of the property-owning native-born population.
Reducing State Power While Reducing the Effects of Mass Immigration
None of these changes would expand the size of government, and they would only reduce federal power. In the case of the freeze on naturalization, the changes would favor the native-born taxpayers who have paid taxes for many years and ought not be forced to pay for new residents who have yet to contribute in a similar way. This can all be done without a hiring a single ICE agent or building another inch of border wall.
However, were we to attempt any of these changes the regime would mightily and strenuously oppose our efforts. That would be the best indicator yet that we’re on the right track.
