Immigrants against immigration: the case of Peter Brimelow
Peter Brimelow (here’s Wikipedia on him) is one of the most passionate anti-immigration advocates in the United States. He is the founder of VDARE (that has been described by many as a leading...
View ArticleThe “No One Is Illegal” YouTube video
A YouTube video by the No one is illegal group has been doing the rounds (if you have trouble playing the embedded video, access it on YouTube here). I’d like to thank John Roccia (here’s his blog) for...
View ArticleIncentives to be accurate about what forms of enforcement work
Does “self-deportation” (also known as attrition through enforcement) work, if the goal is to cut down on (unauthorized) immigration? For those who want to cut such immigration down, this is a key...
View ArticleIntroducing Adam Gurri
We’re happy to announce that Adam Gurri will be joining Open Borders as an occasional blogger. Adam Gurri works in digital advertising and has an MA in economics from George Mason University (where...
View ArticleAnti-immigration marketing, consistent with open borders
I’ve been following the story of the United Kingdom’s plan to run advertising that will deter Romanian immigrants by playing up Britain as a bad destination, but it didn’t really pique my interest that...
View ArticleThe Case of Detroit
Between 1900 and 1950, the population of Detroit increased more than six times over. But this understates how radical the growth really was at its peak—between 1900 and 1930, the population grew by 4.5...
View ArticleAuctions, tariffs, and taxes
A draft that Alex Nowrasteh sent me to read provoked me to think in a new way about various market alternatives for regulating immigration. All of the following policies use the price mechanism, in one...
View Article18 years of immigration torment
Atanas Entchev is an immigrant to the US who is currently penning a book about what he calls “[his] family’s 18-year US immigration ordeal.” He is currently blogging excerpts from the book. Atanas’s...
View ArticleMichael Clemens on the “path to citizenship”
Michael Clemens, who heads the migration-related initiatives at the Center for Global Development, recently wrote a blog post titled Care About Unauthorized Immigration? The ‘Path to Citizenship’ Is...
View ArticleOpen borders is a radical proposal
After poring through some of the data on the foreign-born proportions in the US during my spare time this past weekend, I came to the conclusion that other than radical open borders advocates and...
View ArticleBarry Goldwater’s vision of open borders
Goldwater is a name synonymous with the rebirth of American conservative, right-wing politics. But it is also a name that should be synonymous with open borders. In 1962, Barry Goldwater jotted down...
View ArticleEisenbrey argues against increasing US visas for high-skilled work
Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute has written an op-ed in the New York Times titled “America’s Genius Glut” with the argument that the United States should not increase non-immigrant...
View ArticleJohn Kennan’s “Open Borders”
This post is going to attempt to do something difficult, namely: bring a contribution to technical economic theory within reach of lay readers. The typical lay reader, or for that matter even an...
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America Does Not Have A ‘Genius Glut’
This post was originally published on the Cato-at-Liberty blog here and is republished with the permission of the author. On Friday, Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute wrote an op-ed in...
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How Does Immigration Impact Wages?
This post was originally published on the Cato-at-Liberty blog here and is republished with the permission of the author. Many Americans are curious about the impact of immigration on the wages of...
View ArticleWorld poverty
If there is a single worthiest cause, a goal most deserving of our best efforts, that goal may be the alleviation of world poverty. That is not the only reason I favor open borders, but it is the...
View ArticleMy marching orders
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, wrote: People say, “The Church ought to give us a lead.” That is true if they mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they...
View ArticleTyler Cowen’s not too convincing argument against open borders
Tyler Cowen’s capacious mind prioritizes input over synthesis. He is a compulsive moderate, happiest in the mainstream, always glad to have an excuse not to rock the boat. I respect him tremendously. I...
View ArticleArbitrariness
A bemused Facebook post from Jose Antonio Vargas: Numbers. I’ve been thinking numbers since I read about the White House’s immigration plan. So 8 years? Why not 10? Why not 7? Why not 5? I grew up with...
View ArticleCitizenism and open borders
This is a guest post by Michael Huemer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Huemer’s webpage is here. His paper Is There A Right To Immigrate? has been referenced at...
View ArticleIntroducing Grieve Chelwa
We’re happy to announce that Grieve Chelwa will be joining Open Borders as an occasional blogger. Grieve Chelwa is currently a PhD student in economics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa....
View ArticleMoral Intuition, Open Borders, and the Euvoluntary Principle
This is a guest post by Sam Wilson, who writes for the Euvoluntary Exchange blog. His immigration posts can be found here. Sam Wilson also wrote a guest post for EconLog containing an empirical...
View ArticleSouth Africa in the open borders debate
The experience of post-apartheid South Africa is often used by supporters and opponents of open borders as evidence for their respective positions. Those in favor of open borders argue that the...
View ArticleThe golden age of immigration and innovation
Tyler Cowen writes, in The Great Stagnation: The period from 1880 to 1940 brought numerous major technological advances into our lives. The long list of new developments includes electricity, electric...
View ArticleAn Apology, Not a Fine
During the last week in January, frameworks for American immigration policy changes were unveiled by both President Obama and a group of senators from both parties. Both frameworks propose legalizing...
View ArticleSecure the US-Mexico border: open it
The Associated Press has a great story out on what a “secure” US-Mexico border would look like. It covers perspectives from various stakeholders on border security, with opinions running the gamut from...
View ArticleOpen borders: what to do about it (part 3)
This is a guest post by Fabio Rojas, a professor of sociology at Indiana University. Rojas maintains his personal webpage here and is one of the bloggers at the orgtheory.net blog. This guest post is...
View ArticleThe conservative social welfare function
“Social welfare functions” are a good example of the payoff to thinking abstractly. They are answers to a very large question, which might be put: How should human beings live together in society, and...
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