Immigration

An Immigration Conversation with a Conservative

by Richard M. Ebeling November 12, 2024

Donald Trump’s reelection as president of the United States has been partly identified with his promise to “close the border” to illegal immigration and the threat of a mass deportation of millions of those who have been living in America, sometimes for almost a lifetime. If this threat is carried out, it would be one of the largest forced ...

FFF’s New Online Conference: “The Case for Open Borders”

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 22, 2024

We are pleased to announce The Future of Freedom Foundation's newest online conference entitled, “The Case for Open Borders.” As with our previous online conferences, it will consist of a series of weekly presentations via Zoom. The presentations will start at 7 p.m. Eastern Time and last for one hour. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

No, It’s Not Time to Ban Sports Gambling Again

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2024

Writing for The Atlantic, Charles Fain Lehman claims that legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake. “If you follow sports, gambling is everywhere. Ads for it are all over broadcasts; more than one in three Americans now bets on sports,” he laments. Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, gets his history right if ...

Frédéric Bastiat and Immigration

by Ken Schoolland August 23, 2024

In writing his famous ‘Candlemakers’ Petition’, the famous 19th Century French economist, Frédéric Bastiat, did not address the issue of immigration, but he did write about the treatment of Polish refugees who had fled persecution and were being harassed and deported by French authorities. Wrote Bastiat: …the most ardent wish of a refugee, after the one of ending his exile, ...

Right-Wing Obtuseness on Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2024

A columnist for the Washington Post named Jim Geraghty recently chided me in his column for wanting to “abolish the Border Patrol and ICE and all controls on the free movements of people across borders.” With sarcasm dripping from his keyboard, Geraghty concluded, “I suppose that by declaring it to be legal for everyone to cross the border, you ...

Border Tyranny

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 5, 2024

Libertarian advocates of immigration controls always focus solely on the issue of immigration controls and never on the police state that comes with them. That’s because the police-state aspects of an immigration-control system make them extremely uncomfortable given the fact that a police state is the opposite of a libertarian society. I believe that it’s important to constantly remind people ...

America’s Forever Immigration Morass

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2023

All my life I have witnessed America’s ongoing, never-ending, perpetual immigration morass, along with the endless laments, anguish, anxiety, and depression among American statists that have accompanied it. All of this mental anguish has caused immigration-control advocates for the last several decades to ceaselessly cry out for Congress to enact “comprehensive immigration reform” designed to finally — finally! — ...

Immigration Socialism, the Drug War, and a Police State

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2022

I grew up on a farm a few miles outside Laredo, Texas, which is located on the U.S.-Mexico border. Our farm was situated on the Rio Grande, so we irrigated our fields from water taken from the river. When we would drive down to the river to fix our irrigation pump, we could see Mexico and would oftentimes wave ...

The Case for Open Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2019

Every American living today has lived his entire life under an immigration crisis. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. America’s system of immigration controls is based on the concept of central planning, which is a core feature of socialism, which, as anyone from North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela will attest, always produces crises. Government officials centrally plan the movements of millions ...

Freedom Is Why Immigrants Come to America

by Richard M. Ebeling May 23, 2019

America! The word has meant hope, opportunity and freedom for tens of millions of people over the last two and half centuries. For a good part of those 250 years, the words on the Stature of Liberty in New York harbor have rang true: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse ...

Libertarian Angle: Trump’s Immigration Plan

by Future of Freedom Foundation May 22, 2019

Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss President Trump's new immigration reform plan and show why it, like all other immigration reform plans, is doomed to fail.

Wall or No Wall

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2019

One would have to have had his head in the sand for the past two years not to know that Donald Trump is committed to the idea of building a wall between the United States and Mexico. Trump famously said during his official announcement that he was a Republican candidate for president, I would build a great wall, ...