by Jacob G. Hornberger

November 4, 2025

Last week, Jeffrey Tucker, a columnist for the Epoch Times and the president of the Brownstone Institute, authored a piece entitled “Why We Need Border Control” (paywall), in which he explained his reasons for abandoning the libertarian position favoring open borders and adopting the Republican-Democratic position favoring government-controlled borders.

In my new book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer (available for one dollar at Amazon in both Kindle and Audible formats), I addressed most of the arguments that Tucker raised to justify his abandonment of libertarian principle with respect to immigration, but what I stated in my book deserves repeating.

Going on welfare

Tucker begins by falling back on what has become the standard go-to argument among conservatives for justifying their support of immigration controls. He says that when it finally dawned on him that immigrants could go on welfare, he had no real effective choice but to join up with those who support immigration controls.

As he points out, however, there is another alternative: focus on dismantling the welfare state or, at the very least, denying welfare to foreigners, which, of course, would have enabled Tucker to continue adhering to libertarian principle when it comes to immigration.

What conservatives are essentially saying is that under a system of open borders, Americans might have to pay higher taxes owing to the possibility that countless foreigners might flood into the United States and go on welfare.

The question naturally arises: Even if that were true, should libertarians abandon their principles simply because they might have to pay a price in terms of higher taxes by adhering to their principles? I say: Perish the thought! Libertarians should never abandon their principles, at least not when their lives or their lives of their families are not at stake. Statists love it when they manipulate libertarians into joining them in support of their statist programs. It makes them feel good about their own wrongdoing.

Moreover, as I point out in my new book, it is not at all guaranteed that open borders will result in countless foreigners coming to America to get on welfare. For one thing, people who are welfare-oriented ordinarily lack the intestinal fortitude to pick up stakes and leave family, friends, culture, tradition, and language to move to another country, especially one where there are lots of people who are openly hostile to foreigners, and especially when the new nation might have a policy of not permitting foreigners to go on welfare for the first few years or even ever.

After all, consider the domestic United States. California and New York have much better welfare benefits than, say, Mississippi and Alabama. Yet, how many people in the latter two states pick up stakes to move to the former two states in order to receive more welfare? Not very many. The drastic change is just not worth it to them. Imagine an American welfare recipient moving to an entirely different country, one where most people don’t speak English, in the hope of getting more welfare. Not very likely.

People who are willing to make such a drastic change in their lives are usually work-oriented and entrepreneurial; they want to get rich, and everyone knows that one doesn’t get rich on welfare. Moreover, the economic prosperity that such immigrants bring to a society far outweighs the welfare payments that the small minority of welfare seekers might cost people.

Conservative support of the welfare state

There is another factor to consider, one that Tucker doesn’t mention: Conservatives and Republicans believe in the welfare state. They ardently favor such welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, the Federal Reserve, financial bailouts (as most recently with Argentina), and more.

Thus, conservatives and Republicans use their own support of socialist programs to justify their support of another socialist program — immigration controls. In other words, their commitment to socialism causes them to abandon their commitment to freedom and free markets.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way. After President Franklin Roosevelt succeeded in converting the federal government to a welfare state and a regulated/managed economy, for a time Republicans and conservatives retained their commitment to restoring America’s free-market, voluntary-charity, limited-government system. But not for long. They realized that if they were to succeed in getting political power, they would have to throw in the towel and become welfare-statists themselves.

This phenomenon of the abandonment of principle was later reflected in the conservative think tanks and educational foundations, which supported popular socialist programs, such as Social Security, Medicare, public (i.e., government) schooling, and, yes, immigration controls. They knew that if they didn’t, they would lose financial donors en masse. The abandonment of principle was to them a prudent thing to do, so long as they maintained their allegiance to their popular mantra “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.”

Socialist central planning

And make no mistake about it: As I detail in my new book, America’s system of immigration controls is a socialist program, given that it is based on the core socialist principle of central planning. As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, central planning leads to “planned chaos.” What better term to describe the decades-long situation along the U.S.-Mexico border?

But instead of abolishing the cause of the planned chaos, advocates of immigration controls end up claiming that the problem is with the central plan and the central planners. As I show in my book, every advocate of this socialist system has his own personal central plan. He is convinced that if only the government would adopt his central plan or appoint him to be the central planner, the socialist immigration-control system could finally be made to work.

And not surprisingly, Tucker himself has his own central plan, one based on a “guest worker program,” one where the federal central planners are charged with determining which foreigners to invite in as “guest workers,” what their credentials will be, how many will be needed, etcetera, etcetera.

What Tucker fails to realize is that his central plan, like all the others, would still result in planned chaos, which would include the deaths of innocent people and more destruction of liberty. The reason? America’s immigration-control system is not “broken,” as statists often claim. Socialism is an inherently defective paradigm. That means it simply cannot be fixed, even when the central planner is a conservative or a libertarian.

Tucker also says that immigrants are a burden on other government programs, like highways and public schools. Isn’t it ironic that, as Sheldon Richman pointed out long ago, it is only the public sector that complains about too many customers? Wouldn’t the better solution be to privatize those enterprises so that the owner would welcome new customers rather than lament them?

Tucker also says that more immigrants pose a burden on housing. Perhaps, again, he is referring to public (i.e., government) housing projects. After all, privately owned construction businesses and landlords usually welcome people who are willing and able to buy or rent houses. Moreover, advocates of free markets have faith in the laws of supply and demand when it comes to things like the housing market.

The immigration police state

Tucker laments the brutal police state that comes with America’s immigration-control system. He says he wants a gentler, kinder enforcement of the system. His position reminds me of the person who favors lightning but who also opposes thunder; he fails to understand that thunder comes with lightning, just as a harshly enforced immigration police state comes with a socialist immigration-control system.

In fact, the good part about President Trump is that he is demonstrating what needs to be done to “secure” our borders and rid our nation of illegal immigrants. For a long time, I’ve argued that the immigration police state that has existed along the U.S-Mexico border all of our lives would never remain there. In other words, the highway checkpoints, the warrantless searches of ranches and farms, the roving Border Patrol checkpoints, Trump’s Berlin Wall, the violent raids, the snitches, the mass surveillance, and all the other police-state measures would never be enough. The immigration police state would ultimately be expanded nationwide. Trump is proving me right.

Citizenship

In his Epoch Times piece, Tucker conflates the issue of citizenship with open borders. Actually, these are two separate and distinct issues. As I show in my book, simply because people are free to cross borders doesn’t mean that they have to change their citizenship. Today, there are more than a million Americans living in Mexico and retaining their U.S. citizenship. Who cares? I don’t.

Moreover, after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, when the U.S. government effectively stole jurisdiction over the entire northern half of Mexico, there was an open border between the two nations that enabled people to cross back and forth and retain their respective citizenships. In fact, as I point out in my new book, the Border Patrol wasn’t even established until 1924. During that more than 70-year period, the United States did not fall into the Gulf of Mexico or even into the Rio Grande. The United States remained standing, as did the remaining part of Mexico.

Republicans and liberty

I must confess that it did make me smile when I read Tucker’s lamentation that California had gone from Republican Party control to Democratic Party control, which he apparently blames on Latin American immigrants. Is he actually referring to those freedom-loving Republicans — you know, the ones who favor the welfare state, the warfare state, the regulated/managed economy, paper money, the Federal Reserve, public (i.e, government) schooling, school vouchers (another socialist program), the national-security state, the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, foreign wars, foreign interventionism, coups, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, drug laws, drug-war assassinations, attacks on due process of law, habeas corpus, freedom of speech, and other civil liberties, federal attacks on people who favor vaccines, many gun-control measures, and, yes, immigration controls and the police state that comes with them, not to mention their fierce opposition to the separation of healthcare and the state? With friends of “liberty” like Republicans, who needs enemies?

Oh, and what about all those Hispanic voters along the border who voted for Trump? Whoops! How does Tucker explain them? He doesn’t even mention them in his Epoch Times piece. They don’t fit it into his analysis.

Mandatory family planning?

Tucker laments birthright citizenship because, he suggests, children of illegal immigrants grow up to become Democrats. What? You mean, after living in the United States for 18 years, during which time they are forced to attend public (i.e., government) schools that Republicans favor, they become Democrats. Yikes! That’s shocking! For Tucker, that’s enough to justify abandoning the libertarian principle of open borders and joining up with the statists.

But wait a minute! Isn’t there as big a danger — if not bigger — with American Democrats having children? Isn’t there a good chance that Democratic parents are going to indoctrinate their children into becoming Democrats? Why, does that mean that we should abandon libertarian principles on family sovereignty and endorse mandatory government-imposed birth control, at least insofar as Democrats are concerned? Again, perish the thought!

Domestic open borders

In fact, I also can’t help but wonder if Tucker doesn’t also favor the dismantling of America’s domestic system of open borders. As I point out in my new book, under America’s domestic open-border system, each state is precluded from protecting its citizens from murderers, rapists, thieves, terrorists, drug dealers, welfare-seekers, communists, Muslims, and other scary creatures coming from other states. Under Tucker’s rationales, should the states be permitted to establish border controls and a border police state to protect their own citizens? He doesn’t say. The libertarian answer? Of course not. While freedom can be dangerous and scary, tyranny is much worse.

Libertarian leadership

Libertarians are the only ones whose philosophy can lead the world to freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony. But that can only happen by adhering to principle, not by abandoning it.

Purchase: The Case for Open Borders: A Primer by Jacob Hornberger at Amazon.