{"id":5118,"date":"2026-05-15T06:33:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=5118"},"modified":"2026-05-15T06:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T06:34:30","slug":"5118","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/?p=5118","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/td>Immigration IS The Viagra Of The State, Dammit<\/a>

My struggle against boneheaded Libertarians, including (until recently?) Charles MurrayPeter Brimelow<\/a>May 15

\u00a0The indicted Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019<\/a>s favorite picture of Charles Murray. Maybe they were hoping he was about to give a Nazi salute<\/em>PeterBrimelow.com is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Upgrade to paid<\/a>Recently, Charles (\u201c<\/a><\/strong><\/em>The Bell Curve<\/a><\/strong>\u201d<\/a>) Murray tweeted\/ XedIn other words, my book <\/a><\/strong><\/em>ALIEN NATION: Common Sense About America\u2019s Immigration Disaster<\/a>,<\/strong> which came out in 1995, a year after <\/strong><\/em>The Bell Curve<\/strong>, made no impression on Charles, although we knew each other well.<\/strong><\/em>

I had already sort of intuited that.I responded:Charles, to his credit, replied:This exchange inspired the following comment, heartwarming to me personally (thanks Matt!):Gone but not forgotten! Of all the factions I encountered during Alien Nation\u2019s brief but intense moment in the MSM spotlight<\/a>, Libertarians were by far the most bone-headed. This was a mild sorrow to me because I had been deeply influenced by my encounter with libertarianism after coming to the U.S. from England to study at Stanford in 1970. (Libertarianism simply did not exist at the University of Sussex back then). I spent a lot of time working through the relationship between libertarianism with immigration patriotism\u2014in fact, with any kind of patriotism\u2014as Greg Johnson recently discussed in his review of Quinn Slobodian\u2019s 2025 <\/a><\/strong><\/em>Hayek\u2019s Bastards<\/a><\/strong>, a book which paradoxically is the closest thing to an intellectual biography I\u2019m ever likely to get. (Greg\u2019s parallel podcast interview with me is here)<\/a>.Of course, by then I\u2019d realized that many Libertarians, seeking for a once-size-fits-all explanation of the world, were psychologically similar to the dogmatic Student Marxists<\/a> who had so brightened up my undergraduate days (and who now rule Britain). Although, of course, the Libertarians\u2019 one-size-fits-all panacea was immeasurably superior.But there was one exception to this: the \u201cPaleolibertarians,\u201d a factional split led by the brilliant (and famously factional) economist Murray Rothbard<\/a>. Paleolibertarians were enthusiastically willing to consider what the new issue of post-1965 mass, non-traditional, immigration meant to libertarianism, partly because it so irritated what Rothbard gleefully termed The Kochtopus<\/a> e.g. the Cato Institute<\/a>. And they did so until Rothbard\u2019s untimely death in 1995, at what now seems to me to be the early age of 68. Thereafter their chief internet forum LewRockwell.com<\/a>, edited by Mises Institute founder Lew Rockwell, regressed to left-Libertarianism<\/a>, probably following its donors, and the Paleolibertarian faction was eclipsed.But not completely. Rothbard\u2019s most prominent student<\/a>, Hans-Hermann Hoppe,<\/a> who has been described as \u201cThe Last Paleolibertarian, \u201d<\/a> founded the Property and Freedom Society<\/a> in 2006 and sustained the tradition. (I am sorry to learn that Hoppe\u2019s long relationship with the Mises Institute has recently, abruptly, been Cancelled<\/a>).I spoke to his PFS conference in 2008. The issue hasn\u2019t gone away. (Sigh again)<\/strong><\/em>“<\/a>Immigration Is The Viagra Of The State”\u2014A Libertarian Case Against Immigration<\/a>First published on VDARE.com, 06\/04\/2008<\/em>

Ladies and Gentlemen:I want to start off by thanking Hans [-Hermann Hoppe<\/a>] and Guelchin [Imre, his wife and owner of the equally beautiful Karia Princess Hotel<\/a>] for hosting this conference <\/a>and in particular for inviting me to speak here today.We\u2019re at a peculiar moment in the history of liberty. It\u2019s been almost seventeen years since the Soviet Union<\/a> collapsed. (I\u2019m acutely aware of this because my son was born that day<\/a>, making him, as I like to think, the very first post-Communist baby!) At that time, even a life-long American academic socialist<\/a> like Robert Heilbroner was compelled to confess<\/a>, in a celebrated essay in the New Yorke<\/em>r magazine, [The Triumph Of Capitalism<\/a><\/em>, January 23, 1989] that the century-old battle between capitalism and socialism is over<\/a> and capitalism has won.Yet in the US it\u2019s very probable that the party of free markets<\/a>\u2014perhaps

I should say the alleged <\/a>party of free markets\u2014is going to be annihilated in this year\u2019s election and that the party of statism may be in power for a generation.There are obviously a number of reasons for this reversal. But one of them, I think, is that (at least in the US) libertarianism rested on its laurels and simply did not address the next generation of problems that came to the fore amid the wreckage of socialism. One of those is problems is immigration and, ultimately, the role of the national community, the nation-state.<\/a> As I understand it, the role of the Property and Freedom Society <\/a>is to address those problems and to rearticulate the libertarian vision.Hans-Hermann Hoppe did address the problem of immigration, in his own writings and by arranging for a special issue of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, the summer 1998 issue [Volume 13, Number 2<\/a>] guest edited by Ralph Raico<\/a>, which was devoted to the subject. It\u2019s a seminal volume of essays, revealing for example that the dean of American libertarian philosophers, John Hospers<\/a>, who actually received one electoral college vote <\/a>when he ran for President as the Libertarian Party candidate in 1972, rejected Open Borders and the notion that if you support free trade, you have to support free immigration.<\/a> [A Libertarian Argument Against Opening Borders<\/em>(PDF<\/a>). ]I don\u2019t think the debate among libertarians has moved much further forward, greatly to the discredit of the Libertarian Establishment.<\/a> Hans should really be giving this talk today. But I guess he believes in the Division Of Labor!So my topic today is \u201cA Libertarian Case Against Immigration\u201d.

I am myself an immigrant<\/a> (or an emigrant<\/a>, depending how you look at it) from Britain to the U.S. with some years<\/a> in Canada<\/a>. So I\u2019m not saying that immigration is absolutely a bad thing. But I am saying that it can be a bad thing, and that in the US today\u2014and also Europe\u2014it is a bad thing. In the U.S., we\u2019re constantly told by immigration enthusiasts, a distinct subspecies among American intellectuals, that immigrants do dirty jobs <\/a>Americans won\u2019t do. And, I tell them, here I am!I\u2019m going to make this case with special reference to the example of the U.S., partly because that\u2019s where I\u2019ve lived for nearly forty years and partly because I\u2019m a financial journalist<\/a>, not a philosopher, and I find the presence of actual facts, as opposed to pure theory<\/a>, kind of comforting. I will say, however, that the problems of America are the problems of the West.How many of you are Americans? Any Canadians? Europeans? Brits? (I distinguish between Britain and Europe!). [PB: <\/strong>Mostly Europeans, a few Americans and Brits, one Australian <\/a>on walkabout, no Canadians<\/em>.

I am going to start off by reviewing the facts of the US example. Then I\u2019m going to analyze those facts from what appears to me to be a libertarian perspective, looking at practical problems and then theoretical problems. I\u2019ll conclude by suggesting what this suggests about immigration\u2014and about libertarianism itself.Americans are taught to believe<\/a> that they are \u201ca nation of immigrants.\u201d <\/a>Of course, all nations are nations of immigrants. There is no known case where people grew out of the ground.<\/a> What\u2019s different about America is the speed with which it was put together. Unfortunately, it can be unput together just as quickly. And that, in essence, is what\u2019s happening.So these are the facts:For almost 50 years in the middle of the twentieth century, from the early 1920s to about 1970, there was pause during which there was almost no immigration into the US at all.There have been many such pauses in American immigration history, stretching right back into the colonial period,<\/a> and they have been essential to the process of assimilation.
During that period, no-one, not even the great Austrian economists like Mises or Hayek<\/a> (and certainly not the influential Objectivist novelist Ayn Rand, <\/a>remarkable though she was), really thought much <\/a>about immigration.

The 1965 Immigration Act, plus a simultaneous decision to stop enforcing the law against illegal immigration, unleashed a new influx. (The decision to stop enforcing the law is very obvious in the date, most glaringly in the 98 percent collapse in workplace prosecutions during the Bush Administration, <\/a>unmistakably a precursor to the planned integration of North American workforces<\/a> as in the European Union<\/a>). About 1 million legal immigrants and some 3-500,000 net illegal immigrants now enter the US every a year.For technical reasons\u2014basically the emphasis on so-called family reunification,<\/a> which is not family reunification at all but chain migration<\/a>\u2014immigration has been skewed away from Europe and toward the Third World.As a result, although Americans are stabilizing their population at around 300 million<\/a>, the government is in effect second-guessing the people on population size, which because of immigration could be 400 million by 2050. One third will be post-1970 immigrants and their descendants.

Because these are overwhelmingly non-white, the U.S., 90% white as recently as 1960, will be majority non-white sometime after 2050.This is a transformation without precedent in the history of the world. To adapt Brecht<\/a>, the government is dissolving the people and electing a new one<\/a>Amazingly, the consensus among labor economists<\/a>, confirmed by the 1997 National Research Council report The New Americans,<\/a> is that there is no significant net aggregate economic benefit to native-born Americans.

There is an increase in Gross Domestic Product, but virtually all of that is captured by the immigrants themselves in the form of wages. If transfer payments factored in, there is a small but significant nation-wide loss.In other words, Americans are not merely being transformed for nothing,<\/a> but they are actually paying to be transformed.<\/a>Of course, individual Americans benefit, notably employers of cheap labor, <\/a>and they lobby hard for the privilege <\/a>(not something libertarians of which would normally approve). But other Americans, notably workers, lose. And they lose a lot\u2014basically government policy is redistributing about 2 percent of GDP from labor to capital.

So here\u2019s something that is having enormous consequences, inflicting enormous expense, operating quite contrary to what was anticipated.Obviously, it\u2019s a government policy!And that\u2019s the bottom line to this review of the US situation, which I really want to stress. The point is that the status quo is statist.We don\u2019t have open immigration in the US or any Western country. We have an extremely complex and intrusive government policy. Government determines, by commission <\/a>and omission<\/a>, how many immigrants come in, what race they are, and what skill levels they have. <\/a>(In the U.S. the post-1965 influx has been significantly less skilled than before, basically of the emphasis on \u201cfamily reunification\u201d, which is not family reunification at all but chain migration). Doing nothing about immigration as it exists right now<\/a> is not a libertarian option. It\u2019s a statist option.

Conversely, arguing that the US should restrict immigration, should in fact have a simple moratorium<\/a>, with no net immigration, could paradoxically represent a diminution of the government\u2019s role, in its powers and its opportunity to exercise them. We\u2019ve all heard of the night watchman state<\/a>. What libertarians also should want, it seems to me, is a gatekeeper <\/a>state.So that\u2019s the situation in our case study, the US. Now I\u2019m going to analyze it from a libertarian perspective. It seems to me that it presents two types of problems\u2014practical and theoretical.Practical<\/strong><\/em>The Americans have had mass immigration before\u2014notably the so-called Great Wave <\/a>of immigration from about 1880 through the 1920s, when it was cut off by legislation<\/a>. And they\u2019ve had a welfare state before, roughly since the New Deal in the 1930s. But they\u2019ve never had both together. And they just don\u2019t work.

At one stage, when I worked at Forbes<\/em>, I used to interview Milton Friedman <\/a>every year, until we got a new editor and he stopped it on the curious grounds that Friedman was too old. In one of these interviews, Friedman said something that has been much quoted. He criticized the Wall Street Journal,<\/em> which has a major and negative role in this and other American debates and said <\/a>\u201cThey\u2019ve just got an <\/strong>id\u00e9e fixe<\/strong><\/em>\u201c<\/strong> about immigration: \u201cIt\u2019s just obvious you can\u2019t have free immigration<\/a> and a welfare state.<\/a><\/strong>\u201c<\/strong><\/em>But it\u2019s not obvious to many libertarians, who continue to think about immigration as if it was still 100 years ago and the government was taking just 5 percent of GDP, instead of 30-40%. Yet the welfare state has visibly altered the incentive structure for immigrants.<\/a> One of the ways it shows up is that, in the last Great Wave, somewhere up to 40% of all immigrants ended up going home. If they failed in the workforce, there was no safety net. Now there is. And net immigration is 90% of gross immigration.Now the Libertarian response to this is often to say, well, let\u2019s just abolish welfare. Obviously, despite the reforms of the 1990s, the US has failed to do that. But it\u2019s also important to note that we\u2019re not just talking about \u201c<\/strong><\/em>welfare<\/strong>\u201c<\/strong><\/em>, strictly defined. We\u2019re talking about transfer payments of all kinds. One of the most important is public education,<\/a> which currently represents a subsidy from the taxpayer to the student of some $8000 a year. And because of a Supreme Court ruling called Plyler vs. Doe,<\/a> American school districts have<\/em> to educate the children of illegal immigrants.<\/a> So what rational immigrant is going to go home when his child is getting an education worth, or at least costing,<\/a> two or three times the per capita GDP of his country of origin?<\/a>Of course some Libertarians say, let\u2019s abolish public schools too.<\/a> And I agree\u2014<\/em>I\u2019ve actually<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Immigration IS The Viagra Of The State, Dammit My struggle against boneheaded Libertarians, including (until recently?) Charles MurrayPeter BrimelowMay 15 \u00a0The indicted Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s favorite picture of Charles Murray. Maybe they were hoping he was about to give a Nazi salutePeterBrimelow.com is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3587,163,3586,1277],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5122,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions\/5122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadafirst.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}