This maybe the most ignorant article I've read in a while. You come to grand conclusions. First off there are many illegals from Europe and Asia. Secondly, quoting Hoppe who completely supports open borders is just sad. And third, emotional judgements(discrimination) is separate from property; public property if it exists must not have a consenting body that will place emotional judgements,upon it.

First, I can't believe yaliberty.com would allow such an uneducated, ignoramus to write on their blog.

Besides the fact that your understanding of libertarianism is far from reality, you are alienating your base.

I found a link to this article on Facebook. Since this is the kind of dribble you are going to push at me, I will be unfollowing you. 

If the CFL doesn't distance themselves from you with kind of garbage being posted, they will lose my support also.

Correction, you are right about Hoppe.

I think this points out some warranted points about the libertarian-anarchist community. People who don't believe in the idea of public property often have very grandiose ideas about how public property should be used. I would say that it follows that public property is property that we ALL decide how to use, not that it's property with no owner that anyone can use for whatever purpose they want.

In an anarchist society, no public property would exist; it would all be private, or established by private party. Since no public property would exist, then all land would be governed, essentially, by the property owner. Were this the case, then open immigration wouldn't exist, unless every single property owner agreed, independently, to allow unbridled access to their property; something that would never happen.

Only in a world without government would unrestricted open borders even be a plausible idea, and then it would still never happen. This entire debate isn't about human rights, or economic viabilities of immigration, or anything else. It's about the government doing what government does, and people being upset about it.

I think our good buddy Lew Rockwell would remind us, as many others because it seems to be the great cultural war at the moment, is if given the chance to empower people or empower government - we should all empower people. 

That being said, many Americans support this bill. But this is now our opportunity to find out why. We're the people of reason who don't make hasty decisions. We ask the right questions. Why do they come here? Why don't we want them? What about our subsidies of corn (Mexican industry in the past)? Drug Wars? Income tax over a fair or flat tax? Protectionism from cheap labor? Minimum wage laws? Unions?  A corrupt Mexican Government and Military? Lack of education of people who have more children than they can afford or a culture that sees those people as a retirement plan? Currency exchange rates?, etc. 

Immigration is just the symptom of  deeper problems. This is just a band-aid solution and as we all know - anytime the Government does something - there are unintended consequences that are usually much farther reaching. 

Mr Cockerill makes a valid point.

That a person does not agree with Mr Cockerill's points means nothing of itself.  The disagreement of his responders only has meaning outside themselves if they can articulate their reasons.

Few of those responding to Mr Cockerill have done this.

For everyone's benefit I would say that perfect Libertarians are equally as rare as perfect people are rare.  I have also noted many Libertarians hold their particular positions on social issues strongly, but with religious rather than intellectual fervor.   By this, I mean they are so emotionally attached to their positions that they cannot or will not examine them, but simply assert their own conclusions as primary principles.

But conclusions on issues are not primary principles.  Self-ownership and free will are primary principles.

Applied it leads to the following conclusion:  Demanding that everyone reach the same conclusion as oneself, while simultaneously claiming Libertarianism is a contradiction. 

It is a violation of the self-ownership of one's thoughts and opinions.

However, by design or ommission, each of us has done this at least once. 

In truth, it appears to be a common habit amongst Libertarians to rail that everyone who disagrees with them is a tyrant and a statist, while providing thin, incoherent, or critically underformed reasons for our position.  And as much as the statists, who presume that conformity is required as an irreducible primary, may concur with these demands on occasion it serves to make statist sensibilities dominant in the world.

This habit of intellectual intollerance does not promote Libertarian principles.   It promotes infighting, division, and the desire to control others thoughts and actions - STATIST PRINCIPLES.

Mr. Cockerill raises a valid point.  Public land or "everyman's land" does not mean that each may do as only he wishes there, but that one can only do as ALL permit there. 

But note that 'ALL' here must be defined in collectivist terms - it is not absolute.   The term 'ALL' really means 'all of US',  all within the collective.  This is as opposed to all of THEM-meaning members of a different collective. 

But is the belief in collectives Libertarian?  Possibly.  I would say it depends on the nature of the understanding. 

If the understanding of the collective were a recognition of individual's similar choices or caracteristics, then I cannot see why not.  Then it would be simple cognition of the differing conditions of reality - ergo DISCRIMINATION, the act of recognizing that all things are not alike.

If the nature of the ideas held in relation to a collective concept were opposed to the observable realities of individual sovereignty, then it cannot be a Libertarian collective concept.

So how does that apply to immigration?

It applies because the understanding of the collective 'US' in the context of America is of mixed collectivist and libertarian origin.   And it was mixed right from the beginning. 

Observe, the founders wanted US America to be the 'Land of the Free' - a voluntary collective.  One must individually decide to be free (which of necessity implies a decision to allow others to be free also).

But, they also wanted US America to be a territorial nation with citizenship determined by the location of one's birth, and other factors that are not voluntary, such as the citizenship of one's parents.  The conditions of one's birth are not voluntary, and cannot be inferred to have any relation to a person's personal thinking with regard to Liberty for themselves or others.

I submit that this contradiction, which is inherent in the understanding of the collective to whom 'THE COMMONS' or 'PUBLIC LAND' belongs, are central to the dispute. 

Those who understand the USA to be a voluntary collective 'The Land of the Free' likely to see US public property as no-man's land in which anyone may do as he chooses.  Those who understand the USA to be a nation with real physical borders, intended to distinguish it from those nations without Libertarian, Natural Rights ideology, are likely to see US public property as everyman's land where one can only do those things acceptable to the citizen's composing the 'public'.

I would say that in as much as both are referring to real elements of the physical and philosophical founding of the USA they are both right, and both views can be called Libertarian.  For the same reason they can also be called both wrong.

Conditions of birth are not voluntary and cannot be properly used as means to join a voluntary collective.  By the same token, imigration is not naturalization, there are other reasons to immigrate than the desire for Freedom, or the willingness to let others live in Freedom. 

This would be so even if the founding documents were without internal contradiction.  This would be so even if the founding documents were followed with fidelity.

Neither of those assertions is true.  In fact  the founding documents DO self-contradict, both in the nature of the Republic as a Free and Voluntary association, vice as an involuntary association.  As well it is factually true that the Common Government (I don't want to call it a Federal Government because it is not behaving as one) AS A RULE VIOLATES its founding documents and principles.

As such I would say that it is also true that NEITHER SIDE is correct, and NEITHER SIDE can be correct until we get our house in order. 

It is no vice to side with Arizonan's (or anyone's) freedom of association, with their freedom to retain their property rather than have it redistributed to non-citizens by way of welfare, to their freedom to work work with whomever will have them notwithstanding the Common Government's demands of a minimum wage to which the illegals need not submit.

It is also no vice to side with all human's freedom of movement,  or their freedom to be employed by whomever will have them notwithstanding minimum wage demands created and enforced by a Government not of their creation, not subordinate to their will.

That these two very different perspectives are both Libertarian is beyond doubt.  That these two different perspectives are in conflict is undeniable.

That these two very different perspectives CANNOT BE RESOLVED until we get our house in order is a FACT.

Gordo

In the absence of collective property, should you be prepared to negotiate passage across each property as you drive down the road (...assuming we all voluntarily built it) to freely purchase your unhealthy Big Mac?

And regarding 'illegal' immigration, will everyone ultimately be under the thumb of individual property owners to satisfy unknown requirements for passage?

That's not how I spell 'efficient markets.'

Something else this issue keeps bringing to mind is how ineffective rule by consumption really is.

I often read on here how autonomous libertarians would assert their influence on corporations and their peers by choosing not to do business with them. So-and-so kills dolphins? No problem. We'll just boycott their products until they change their ways. Another oil spill from BP? No problem, we'll just vote with our feet and stop buying their oil. That'll teach them.

Aside from the obvious difficulties of asserting regional or minority values over a global corporation or individual free to do business elsewhere, we don't buy to assert values. We buy to fill needs. And that will always be the biggest reason for people to purchase goods. People are slow to choose inconvenience when it has little chance of reward. Effective boycotts must pose sufficient economic threat to change behavior. They aren't impossible, but they are difficult to achieve and slow to build.

A LOT of people are angry over Arizona's policies. Opponents have high visibility and quickly organized boycotts at many levels. Arizona's economy is being affected. And yet it is not significant enough to change even wishy-washy politicians who live and die by mere public perception of economic loss. Should we expect this to provide emergent order in a libertarian utopia?

Matt,

The very first sentence in your piece is factually incorrect and therefore makes your entire point invalid (and to the wrong audience)

YAL/C4L is not a libertarian organization. It is a libertarian-leaning organization... much different. The most highly regarded intellectual Libertarians, including those in the Cato Institute, the Mises Institute and Reason, have loudly opposed the Arizona Bill.

I suggest you check some of these out:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11842

http://reason.org/news/show/arizona-immigration-law