Illegal Immigration: A Reasoned Approach

There are an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today, most of them working to better themselves and to support their families back home. The problem is many Americans believe these individuals are breaking the letter of the law and should be deported in the interest of national security or to protect American jobs.

They base their arguments on the assumption that open borders is a bad policy or our immigration process is workable, realistic, and efficient. The fact of the matter is, it isn't any of those. Like most other government programs, the immigration process is time consuming, complex, and highly inefficient. This is the primary reason many immigrants enter this country illegally in the first place.

In the real world, immigrants don't have the luxury to wade through a long and complicated bureaucratic process to apply for citizenship and then wait for approval before beginning to work here. Their economic status in a Third World nation prevents a leisurely approach to entering the United States.

The steps to achieving U.S. citizenship via the legal immigration process begins with meeting eligibility requirements which fall into one of these categories: family, employment, investment, a diversity lottery, adoption, refugee, or asylum. To further complicate the process, two of the most common paths to immigration are also divided into a preference system, which creates five tiers each for both family and employment.

Additionally, the U.S. offers a limited number of immigrant visa numbers per year, which means an individual could potentially wait for several years before receiving one. First, a visa petition must be filed and approved, followed by a labor certification request if applying for employment.

You could be in for a long wait between the time your visa petition is approved and when you receive your visa number, especially if your country has a high number of visa request,. As one could imagine, putting yourself into their shoes, it would be very hard to wait if you and your family is starving or feel threatened in your own country. When you do finally complete this process, you are issued your green card. Unfortunately, the immediate advantages of entering this country illegally have come to outweigh the risk of deportation.

From the Libertarian point of view, the only critical requirements for immigration are background and criminal checks, and a medical exam in order to safeguard the health and security of our country. Securing the borders should be done with the pragmatic approach of deterring crime, preventing trespassing and saving lives at regularly monitored checkpoints utilizing the latest technology. The system must be corrected and streamlined in this manner to avoid future mass amnesty actions by the government.

Benefits and social services must be withheld from illegal immigrants, while also removing punishment for employers hiring undocumented workers in conjunction with the elimination of immigration quotas. This combination has the affect of dismantling the welfare state while maintaining open borders because as the late economist Milton Friedman once said, "open borders are incompatible with a welfare state." Free market capitalism and economic freedom requires the free movement of humans and capital across political and national borders. This is a consequence of living in a world of increasing globalization.