Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Open Border Imperialists

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Jan. 5, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

13:54

Open Border Imperialists

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	In Britain, and indeed the Western world in general, we see a pandemic of globalists dominating public life.
	These combined interests seek to erode the nation-state itself by sacrificing sovereignty and national borders.
	These people do not hail from any particular race, gender, or creed, but are united in a certain set of principles that work against the structure and existence of our countries for a certain set of moral beliefs that they themselves intend to reap.
	A certain case for open borders from progressives tends to hinge on a unitary view of humanity.
	As put forth by Vox.com in 2014 in a hypothetical scenario, Imagine that you've got a million people farming in Antarctica.
	They're eking out this bare subsistence and agriculture in the snow.
	Obviously, if you let those farmers leave Antarctica and go someplace else to farm, the farmers are better off.
	But isn't it also better for the world if you let people stop eking out this existence, contributing nothing to the world, and go someplace where they could actually use their skills and not just feed themselves, but produce something for the world economy?
	Better for the sum total of farming production in the world it may be if we bring these Antarctic farmers to Britain, but better for British farmers it would not be.
	As a study by the Bank of England found, and as Channel 4 fact-checked in 2016, there is certainly a depressive effect on wages by mass immigration.
	This was hand-waved away as being minor, but does not one wish to have rising wages, even if the drop is negligible?
	Why should one settle for declining wages?
	Although the Channel 4 fact-checkers claim that leaving the EU won't necessarily have a positive effect on low-skilled wages, time has vindicated those on the anti-immigration side of the argument.
	A year later, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, a group that represents recruitment firms, confirmed that the Brexit referendum and subsequent net reduction of migration from the continent has indeed forced firms to raise wages.
	A year after that, research showed that half of employers who had found it more difficult to recruit have themselves raised wages.
	Alex Fleming, the president of staffing at DECO, which co-authored the study, said, With Brexit looming, we're seeing a talent shortage and a more competitive marketplace.
	In this candidate short landscape, the pressure is on employers to not only offer an attractive salary, but also additional benefits.
	To anyone with an ounce of common sense, this might seem self-evident.
	The law of supply and demand will always determine value.
	An anti-immigration stance is one that naturally favours the worker as it turns the labour market into a seller's market, benefiting those doing the work, rather than a buyer's market, benefiting those doing the hiring.
	What I am constructing is, of course, an argument against the mass immigration of Antarctic farmers for the protection of the wages of British farmers.
	Why?
	Why should I care about the depressed wages of British farmers if Antarctic farmers' wages rise?
	The answer is because the magisterium, the moral and political authority of the British state, ends at the borders of the United Kingdom.
	I believe in the existence and sovereignty of democratic nation states as a practical means of organization and defence, which in turn constitutes a functional political order comprised of citizens and resident legal aliens within a prescribed geographic boundary.
	As a citizen of the United Kingdom, a taxpayer, a voter, and a person who is politically engaged, I recognise the limits of the British state and believe its primary responsibility should be to protect the rights of the citizens over which it governs.
	Where possible, it should advance their interests with an eye to increasing their prosperity, but not at the expense of certain segments of the population for the benefit of others.
	The British state has magisterium over its sovereign territory, and our hypothetical Antarctic farmers would lie outside of this territory.
	It is not the moral or legal responsibility of Britain to protect the rights of Antarctic farmers or look out for their interests.
	If Britain, or any other nation, takes responsibility for the citizens of another sovereign state, such as our hypothetical democratic republic of Antarctica, we create a political imperative that would be essentially indistinguishable from imperialism and reinforced by a moral imperative we used to call the white man's burden.
	As Professor Brian Kaplan, writing for libertarian publication The Foundation for Economic Education describes it in a debate in which he made the libertarian case for open borders.
	The government decrees that fellow human beings can't live or work here, the United States, without proper papers, papers that are almost impossible for most people on earth to ever obtain.
	It treats them as criminals for terrible offences like shining shoes on the streets of Miami or picking fruit in the fields of California.
	If libertarians won't stand up for the rights of these literally oppressed people, we stand for nothing and we are nothing.
	Again we see the imperial claim to be the protectors of the rights of those born outside our own nations.
	It is for their own good that we consider them this way, and this line of logic can be extended indefinitely into a form of globalist manifest destiny.
	How many other non-Western countries must we conquer in order to properly stand for the rights of the oppressed peoples who live within their borders?
	After all, if we don't stand for the rights of oppressed people, we stand for nothing.
	This will be the justification for us to consider the lot of the inferior foreigner and decide that our protection of his rights will be better for him than allowing his country self-determination.
	It will not only be beneficial for them to be ruled by us, it will become our moral duty to ensure it, and this moral duty creates a moral claim over these people and their rights that only we are capable of fulfilling, and once again we have returned to shouldering the white man's burden.
	These people say nothing of our moral duty not to leverage our position of wealth and power to steal by little and little the educated and energetic people from countries in a less advantageous position than our own.
	It might be convenient for us to staff the National Health Service with Indian doctors, but why do we never consider that the time and expense of training an Indian doctor is carried by the Indian people themselves?
	How much Indian time, labour, and money went into producing a doctor, only for that doctor to find a more tempting offer in a western country and leave.
	This is the modern form of colonialism, where the West extracts human capital from developing nations in order to enrich themselves and satisfy the moral cravings of our upper classes.
	While the progressive and libertarian intelligentsia are slapping one another's backs at how forward-thinking and diverse we have become, we are at the same time drawing up the ladder to the working poor of our countries and depriving the immigrant's country of valuable members of society.
	Is it not incumbent on Britain to train and staff its own institutions at its own expense instead of headhunting the best and brightest from other nations in a predatory manner?
	And what of the working poor of Britain?
	In previous eras, it might have been the job for employers to sufficiently train the unskilled at their own expense.
	This at once provides the company with properly trained employees and provides a ladder for the less fortunate to access the upper stratas of society.
	Focusing on recruiting from within Britain would be a way for the rich to give back to the poor that is both respectful and mutually beneficial.
	Class resentment would surely diminish as the poor come to see the rich as an opportunity instead of an oppressor, and the rich would come to see the poor as capable and hardworking instead of entitled and indolent.
	Both libertarians and progressives might make the final argument for open borders on the principle of freedom of association, as proposed by libertarianism.com.
	One of the fundamental rights all humans have is the right to associate or not with whomever they choose.
	Immigration controls infringe on that right.
	If you want to meet your friend for coffee, you have a right to do that, so long as you do not violate anyone else's rights in the process.
	Crossing an international border does not harm anyone's personal property, so it is a protected action.
	Preventing you from crossing the border to see your friend or preventing them from coming to visit you is no more justifiable than the government erecting roadblocks around a church or other private gathering place to prevent people from meeting there.
	The libertarian author grapples with the inconsistencies in his own argument as he attempts even to make his distinctions.
	Either freedom of association is absolute, in which case property must be abolished to fulfil this right, or freedom of association is a social right and subject to the same restrictions we would place on our own citizens.
	For example, if one wishes to meet for coffee in the author's house, he is met with the border controls of the author's own front door.
	We do not wish to abolish the libertarian's right to private property just because someone else wishes to enter his house, and we will not abolish the territorial integrity of our nation states for the same reason.
	We recognize property ownership.
	Freedom of association, in principle, cannot be extended to justify allowing immigrants entry to a country without the same logic forcing us to extend it to allowing them entry into our own homes.
	Instead of arguing for the abolition of private property, our libertarian must object that property rights are sacred.
	Unfortunately for him, he has unwittingly consented to national borders by arguing for the protection of the property rights of those who own the property at the border, whether publicly or privately owned.
	In the case of the liberal state, property can indeed be collectively owned.
	Public land and roads are for public use by the people who pay to create and maintain them, which gives the citizens of the state just cause to claim them as their own.
	Any citizen can claim a right to use public land by virtue of him being a part owner of that land through his status as a citizen in a democratic state.
	By extension, we can claim to be part owners of the entire country in which we live, which we do without thinking as we refer to it as our country.
	It is collectively owned by us, the people who make the country what it is.
	Just as freedom of association provides me with no right to enter another man's home against his wishes, it provides an immigrant no right to enter a foreign country against the wishes of the inhabitants.
	All of this is to say nothing of the manifest social problems that arise from mass immigration, which the progressive or libertarian moralist clearly does not see themselves grappling with in their wealthy gated communities.
	They are happy to leave this problem to the working class people of a nation who now find themselves inundated with the masses from other countries, countries to which they have never been, have no experience of, and do not understand.
	And as we have discovered in Britain, different cultures hold different values, and these values can conflict often in quite horrific ways.
	The working people of our nation did not ask to have this burden placed upon them and likely do not have the resources to escape.
	The real question is whether the poverty, pain, and pointlessness inflicted on the lower orders is worth the feeling of self-satisfaction earned by their betters through their suffering.

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