I recently wrote a guest post for the Open Borders blog on migration and political freedom. The connection between the two is often ignored in debates over immigration policy. Here’s an excerpt: There is widespread agreement that political freedom is a fundamental human right – that everyone is entitled to substantial freedom of choice in […]
Archive | Immigration
Why maximal enforcement of federal gun laws is not always a good idea
By David Kopel on April 26, 2013 4:27 am in Commerce Clause, Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Federalism, Guns, Immigration, Necessary and Proper, Supreme Court, War on Drugs
A common trope of many Second Amendment advocates is to urge more vigorous enforcement of existing federal gun control laws, as the alternative to enacting additional laws. Rhetorically, that’s very effective. But as a policy matter, it is not always a good idea. Consider legislation recently considered by the Senate: The Manchin-Toomey amendment was supported […]
Economics, Egalitarianism and Immigration
Economist Tyler Cowen has an interesting New York Times column on the egalitarianism underpinning economic analysis and its implications for immigration policy: Economic analysis is itself value-free, but in practice it encourages a cosmopolitan interest in natural equality…. The crucial implication is this: If you treat all individuals as fundamentally the same in your theoretical […]
Video of My Father’s Talk at an Immigration Panel at Cary Library in Lexington, MA
My father, Yefim Somin, recently participated in a panel on memoirs of immigration at Cary Memorial Libary in Lexington, MA. The video is available here. As my father mentioned in the talk, his account of his immigration experience is available in this recent book of Russian Jewish immigrant memoirs published by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid […]
Immigration and the Constitution
The Open Borders blog – one of the best websites covering immigration issues – asked me to do a guest post on the implications of the Constitution to debates over immigration. The post is available here. Here is the intro: The US Constitution does not in itself tell us what kind of immigration policy is […]
Immigration Stories Event in Lexington, MA
For readers who may be interested, my father, Yefim Somin, will be speaking on his experience of immigration from the Soviet Union to the United States at Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, MA on February 28 at 7 PM. His talk will be part of a panel on the experiences of immigrants who have settled […]
Immigrants as Our “Future Rulers”: Does the Danger of Political Externalities Justify Restrictions on Immigration?
In a recent post, co-blogger Eugene Volokh raises an important potential objection to unconstrained migration – the danger that immigrants with abhorrent values will become our “future rulers”: The bottom line is that for all the good that immigration can do… unregulated immigration can dramatically change the nature of the target society. It makes a […]
Immigration Policy: The Big Picture
Two questions I thought I’d ask readers: (1) How many people in the world do you think would like to move to the U.S. over the next, say, 30 years, if it were legal for them to move here and work here? Assume that in that time the U.S. will sometimes be booming and sometimes […]
The Pilgrims as Illegal Aliens
The Daily Caller posts about a U.S. Department of Agriculture “Cultural Sensitivity Training” that, among other things, says the Pilgrims were “illegal aliens.” (Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer.) It reminds me of a Conrad editorial cartoon from the L.A. Times that I blogged about ten years ago: An American Indian is carrying a sign […]
A Changing GOP Position on Immigration?
It was interesting to see that both Marco Rubio in his official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union and libertarian-leaning Senator Rand Paul in the Tea Party response argued for a less restrictive immigration policy. This is an important development for a party whose conservative wing has long been known for its […]
Are We More Likely to Get an Immigration Reform Bill if Obama Wins the Election?
In my post comparing Romney and Obama on libertarian grounds, I noted that libertarians might have good reason to support Obama if it is likely that a second term for him would result in substantial immigration reform, by which I mean letting more immigrants in the country and/or letting more of the ones already here […]
The Bitter Harvest of Immigration Restrictions
Time has an interesting article describing how state laws intended to crack down on illegal immigrants have led to a crisis in agriculture. Unable to use immigrant labor to harvest it, many farmers have had to let much of their crop go to waste: Ralph and Cheryl Broetje rely on roughly 1,000 seasonal workers every […]
Today’s Supreme Court Opinions
The health care cases were not issued today. They are expected on Thursday. But there are plenty of other significant opinions. Two that are of particular interest to me are America Tradition, Inc. v. Bullock, the Montana campaign finance case, and Arizona v. United States, the Arizona immigration case. The Montana decision is a per […]
President Obama’s Deferred Action on Immigration (and OLC)
Charles Krauthammer has a column today taking President Obama to task for his recent decision to “lift the shadow of deportation” from otherwise law-abiding undocumented aliens who came to the U.S. as children and allow them to “request temporary relief from deportations and apply for work authorization.” (For DHS’s page on the program, see here.) […]
In Praise of Obama’s New Immigration Policy
Last week, President Obama issued new guidelines allowing immigrants who illegally entered the United States as children to remain here so long as they are under the age of 30, have not been convicted of any crimes, and have either graduated from a US high school, are currently enrolled in school, or have served in […]