Freedom of association vs. Immigration

[TBUK]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to share a thought I had today and get some feedback on whether or not it makes sense.

 

Obviously in so far as immigration is contigent on welfare being available to immigrants it is a policy of the state but if the state is stopping people who would find work in a country from entering it in order to prevent wages dropping is this not an act of force to prevent voluntary association between workers and employers?

 

If a company finds a person willing to do work for a wage lower than those already in the country is the government "right" to prevent this? Surely we should be free to voluntarily associate with anyone even if it is to the detriment of those already in the georaphic area? Is there are moral justification for preventing lower wage workers from entering the work force to preserve the economic benefits that the current system allows for citizens?

 

I don't mean to suggest that this is an argument for entirely open borders but providing a job exists in the country one is immigrating to then what is the moral argument for stopping this as we currently do?

 

Look forward to your thoughts.

[dsayers]

if the state is stopping people... is this not an act of force

I think you answered your own question here. Two people voluntarily entering into a contract (even if that contract is for labor) is not the initiation of the use of force. So the use of force to obstruct that from happening would be the initiation of the use of force.

[Kevin Beal]

(1) If a company finds a person willing to do work for a wage lower than those already in the country is the government "right" to prevent this? (2) Surely we should be free to voluntarily associate with anyone even if it is to the detriment of those already in the georaphic area? (3) Is there are moral justification for preventing lower wage workers from entering the work force to preserve the economic benefits that the current system allows for citizens?

I think that part of the confusion, at least for me, in understanding your questions is with the use of phrases like "has the right" and "should be free to". How we determine truth from falsehood regarding "a right to" or "should be free to" is not something I have enough information yet to determine. Personally, I think the concept of a "right" is a manipulation of language more than anything else, but I'll assume for the sake of moving forward that you mean the basic rights to speech, assembly, due process, etc.

 

1. The government has no rights because it's not a moral agent. It's a conceptual boundary enclosing people and property. It's a legal fiction. It's not a entity that can be directly acted upon, stolen from, murdered, defrauded, etc. Anything you do to a government, you are doing to something else, and anything a government does is done by someone else.

 

If it's immoral for you to do, it's immoral for anyone representing a government to do.

 

2. If you mean that no one could morally justify using sanctions on you for voluntarily associating with people outside the geographical boundary, then they could only justify it if you were in violation of some contract, or "freely associating" was a morally unjustified act. (i.e. if you freely associate with slave traders, or something like that, or it violates your home owner's association agreement). Also, you can already associate with people outside a geographical boundary with the internet, so they need not be local.

 

3. If it's free association, then it's not a moral issue. If some large area of land is owned by people and industrious folk buy land for their businesses on that land with conditions in their contracts that prevent the employment of certain people, then there is no moral issue here. It's all just free association.

 

Nearly all land in a free society would be owned, and in order to preserve the value of their land, the land they sell will come with certain contractual obligations. Nobody would want to sell their adjacent land to someone who would let muslim no-go zones develop there. It would drive the value of their land down.

 

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Everything depends on the meaning of the words you use. "Prevent", "right", "free to", "detriment", "allows", etc. If you mean them in a way different sense than I do, then we could potentially talk past each other and not get anywhere.

 

In philosophy, it's best to start with definitions, establish what are our standards of success and socratically evaluate the logic we use to arrive at our conclusions.

[Nathan Metric]

The government does not have any rights. It's only its individual subjects that have rights. What you ought to asking is whether we have a right to influence the government to limit immigration. Not whether the government has a right to limit immigration.

 

I think Stefan has made a complete case as to why we can't have open borders in a society that a) Has a welfare state b) has a corruptible political system (no universal requirement to check voter ID) and c) has civil rights laws that limit freedom of association. Now, in the case where the only issue is natives losing their jobs to foreigners there still might be a reason to limit immigration because as long as a democratic government exists the threat of the welfare state and the threat of the statist political party rising to power if there is a growth in the underclass.

[Matthew Ed Moran]

Between these two circumstances:

 

1) Immigration with a state and welfare

 

2) Immigration with a state without welfare

 

it is true that 1) will necessarily include a greater initiation of force, if everything else holds equally. However, this does not mean that 2) does not imply the initiation of force also.

 

It is true that if someone were simply moving to a location where a job was, that this does not imply the initiation of force. However, state immigration does imply the initiation of force any way you slice it. Therefore, the only possible arguments are consequentialist arguments for or against open borders. Does that make sense? It would be interesting to me if you could imagine a counterexample where immigration did not imply the initiation of force against inhabitants of the country who were opposed to it. I can't think of one, hence the only arguments I could imagine for or against immigration with a state are consequentialist.