Or you could just advocate the elimination of immigration laws, and permit free movement in or out of the country. Think of how much the taxpayers could save from dismantling border controls.

And then we can dismantle the minimum wage and tax laws, because that won't be obeyed either.  The bastards who do not want to hire American labor at American wages don't want to calculate employer contributions either.  And with the whole planet to hire from, they wouldn't have to.  Hell, there's bipartisan consensus we can't deport the few dozen million we have NOW.  What will happen when we have twice as many foriegners, here to work the gold stream, with no pretense of loyalty to the American government or obedience to its laws?

Acolyte,

No. I want a collusion agreement among citizens to limit rights of aliens to work, reside, engage in commerce, and own property in my country.

I am also for limiting access to citizenship. I propose limiting future citizenship to children born of American women, and only allowing naturalization for individuals of exceptional merit.

Flint,

Also, allowing non-citizens to join the military as a condition for citizenship amounts to degenerating the military in to a mercenary force. Mercenary armies are bad bad news. It will open the door for presidents to turn the military on the people. So I say citizen army only. No compromises.

Einstein: "I say no to this socialist ideal! I say no to your liberal attitude! No, no, and HELL NO!"

How is it socialist to permit the freedom of movement across the Earth, unmolested by government thugs charged with policing arbitrary boundaries?

V.Kemp: "I think you'd have to dismantle our socialist welfare state before even considering open borders. Unless, of course, you want to bankrupt the populace and crush their standard of living. "

I would say something here, but it would be far too easy to take out of context and color me a hypocrite.

I was going to say that the country might just need something as violent a readjustment as you said. It may prove beneficial in the long run, like a kind of "reset" button on the economy. Truthfully, we're already bankrupt; the entire American monetary system rides piggyback on the ignorance of public perception, but I digress.

My reason for opposing immigration laws are quite simple. In my view, all rights are property rights. Theft is an obvious violation of a person's property, as is trespassing. As John Locke states in my signature, "[E]very man has a property in his own person"; thus, every form of assault, battery, and murder also constitute violations of a person's property. Every (legitimate) crime you can conceive of will, invariably, lead us back to the issue of property rights. The right to own property is the right to own property /anywhere/, not within a specific geographical region. Thus, it is immoral for the state to license movement across arbitrary boundaries, and impose second hand restrictions on rights of ownership.

I don't believe that removing border controls would have as devastating an impact as you and others have suggested, however. I truly don't believe -- as far as the federal government is concerned -- that welfare spending would be horribly distorted by immigration. Has anyone ever actually run the numbers on how much illegal immigration costs the taxpayers -- in terms of welfare dollars offset by tax revenue -- now? I'm willing to put a significant wager that even the most comprehensive estimate would be hard pressed to find a number greater than 1% of the federal spendthrift for this fiscal year, or any previous one for that matter.

Of course, the entire tax/welfare-burden argument is moot if you were to simply abolish those, as well.

If you abolish all immigration law, you open the floodgates to the poor and the criminals of all nations. Being poor in a rich nation has to be better than being poor in a poor nation, right?

It's much easier to move and take handouts than build nations and industry. Hell, you have to fight for rights to do that! It's hard work.

Because illegals are undocumented, it's hard to quantify their direct and indirect costs nationally.

I think that we, as a 'national' regional organization of people, should agree that mostly only citizens and otherwise legal residents--which we may regulate--should have property privileges in the national zone which we collectively own! Immigration laws as property rights! BAM! How do you like that?

Open borders is an interesting notion. Even within a closed border system that has free movement of labour etc, migration is fairly limited (think migration within US or EU). We can deduce that migration is not solely driven by economics. Where the economic incentive is reduced (free house, social security) there's no way to know if immigration would cause a problem.  Plus since most migrants are driven by economics (non-migrants driven by non economic reasons), we can reasonably assume most migrants will desire to work to live above the minimum.

For a while Michigan was a boomtown when they enacted their social benefits. People moved in from everywhere.

Then as jobs moved out people moved out.

It would be the same with ANY State/Nation offering super benefits.

i think open borders will have a negative effect on our economy, these imigrants will have no personal wealth or education, they will take all the jobs from current americans!! we need those construction workers and truck drivers job what would einstien do then?