PrintApril 20, 2006
Open Borders Threaten Free Trade
Free trade and liberal immigration policy are intimately linked in the minds of the more puritanical proponents of free trade. For them, 'labor' is simply one more variable in a theoretical economic model, equivalent in every way to capital or raw materials or manufactured goods. Just as the free and unfettered flow of objects provides net economic benefit, they reason, so would a free and unfettered flow of human beings.
They thus believe it is hypocrisy to espouse one belief and not the other, and label all those who balk at applying free trade theory to the world's population as 'restrictionists,' a meaningless garbage—can term that attempts to explain every opponent from Ralph Nader to Lou Dobbs to Tom Tancredo as a single phenomenon, in an attempt to burden each with the baggage of all.
But this is nonsense. People and things are not equivalent; and most of the critics of abandoning our borders and thus eliminating distinct nations (nations are what...(Read Full Article)
