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As Christians, we can and should be concerned about human labor exploitation, especially when the situation involves predatory behavior.

Allowing immigrants from a relatively poor country into a relatively wealthy country does not inherently exploit the situation of the poor. To know whether such behavior is happening, we need to assess relevant information, and we don't always have what we need. If an immigrant travels across the border to perform work, he is doing so because he is choosing his best known available opportunity for work. If he were restricted to his own country, he would have fewer options. It is an unjust situation for this poor person to be restricted from voluntarily offering his labor to a willing employer.

Some object that this situation is suboptimal, and they would be right. It would be nice if everybody had the skills to perform high-value labor and the employers had the profit margins to pay top-dollar wages. But the world we live in is one of limited knowledge that increases through discovery, and it is up to us to discover how to best cooperate and exchange within the parameters of peaceful, voluntary work.

Lastly, we ought to be very careful to not assume that we know what is better for the lives of immigrants than they do for themselves.

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It is a mistake to claim that drug smuggling and addiction are causally related to immigration. Immigrants to the United States have significantly lower rates of drug abuse and addiction than the native-born population. Domestic demand for drugs, not foreign influence, is what makes the illicit drug trade profitable.

The real connection between immigration and drugs is that transnational criminal organizations profit from smuggling both human beings and illegal drugs. The way to sever this connection entirely, and to defund criminal enterprises, is to end the War on Drugs and to end policies that severely limit immigration. So long as gangs can enjoy an effective monopoly on making money from smuggling contraband, they will continue to operate and create the other social problems attendant to organized crime, including crimes of violence.

These criminal enterprises are not only a threat to destination countries, which are typically wealthy and enjoy relatively low crime rates. They are an even greater threat to residents of the regions where the smuggled contraband originates and is transported on its way to export markets in North America and Europe. For example, Ecuador saw its homicide rate increase by more than 500 percent between 2020 and 2023, with prison massacres and targeted assassinations on the rise, as narcotics traffickers sought out new territory with locations for storing, processing, and exporting drugs.

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There is a popular perception of constant danger at borders. Unfortunately, such dangers do exist, and they are largely a consequence of the immigration controls and the War on Drugs (see Chapter 12). The opportunity to conduct a lucrative arbitrage is a powerful motivator to break the law. Human traffickers and drug cartel hitmen are largely the creatures of government prohibition.

If border restrictions were to be lifted, dangers currently associated with international borders would largely evaporate as well. The current restrictions focus a great deal on smuggling of contraband. Without such distractions, the line between hostile invaders and peaceful travelers would be much easier to discern. Libertarians generally believe that there is a real need for security services both locally and regionally.

Many liberty-minded writers have discussed how markets might produce security services (some are mentioned in the "Additional Resources" list at the end of this chapter). As a practical question, there can be no doubt that private firms are capable of going to war. Global mercenary operations in the years following the war in Vietnam demonstrated that private firms are more efficient at ending short-term conflicts and stabilizing an area of operations than government forces. Many thousands of military contractors were used in American operations during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Private contractors made up as much as one-fifth of the total occupation force in Iraq.

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Libertarians should be skeptical of both state-restricted and state-engineered migration, since both distort natural market processes. In a libertarian society, movement is not an entitlement but emerges from the interplay of property rights and market forces. Thus, while open borders remove government aggression against migrants, they do not inherently produce a truly market-mediated pattern of movement.

Some also contend that open borders create forced association by compelling taxpayers to support and interact with people involuntarily. They question whether coercively funded systems should be made universally accessible. Another concern is that rapid influxes of immigrants (as seen in parts of Europe and during the Biden administration) can destabilize communities, strain infrastructure, and hinder integration. These libertarians suggest that importing large numbers from regions less friendly to liberty may have significant consequences, while still acknowledging that immigrants are never a monolith and that the desire for all immigrants is to integrate well and flourish in their new society.

To be clear, these libertarians support free trade. Many are anarchists who want to abolish the state and borders entirely, but they stress that the order of transitional steps taken to dismantle state powers shouldn't be ignored. Proposed alternatives include private sponsorship or invitee systems, "Ellis Island" style entry points, decentralizing authority to states, or limiting access to public services until those systems can be privatized or decentralized.

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The best libertarian position on immigration is non-aggression, which is the core principle of libertarian ethics. If a person emigrates to a new place, is respectful of his new neighbors and their property, works hard, buys goods and services from willing buyers and sellers, and lives peacefully, it is hard to find any libertarian basis for violent action against that person. If a person moves in and lives a life of thievery and violence, that is no more and no less blameworthy for a person who came from another country than it is for a person from another location within the same country. The same measures that would be properly employed against a domestic criminal would also be applicable to an aggressor from someplace else.

Libertarians who reject socialist central-planning of the economy should not abandon their skepticism when it comes to planning the optimal size and composition of a local population. If the local bureaucracy cannot rigorously determine the appropriate quantity and qualities of bread production, how much more likely is it to be successful in determining the composition of the local workforce?

Libertarians should be suspicious of all government programs that attempt to restrict natural, voluntary immigration. These interventions disrupt normal market processes and hamper economic growth.

Libertarians should also be suspicious of government programs that attempt to drive mass migrations for political reasons. Many of the greatest migrations in human history were instigated through government action, including the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, the Huguenot persecution in France in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Trail of Tears in the mid-19th century, the Jim Crow system in the post-war American South, and the Partition of India in 1947.

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This question is predicated on two false beliefs: First, that open immigration would immediately result in mass immigration, a possible but not likely outcome. Second, that "effectively integrated" should be the goal of permitting more immigrants.

If the federal government were to open its borders tomorrow morning, there would likely be an initial influx of new immigrants, which would fairly quickly increase the costs of moving for those who weren't quite as quick to immigrate. Markets would adjust, and immigration would stabilize.

Whether or not those immigrants would effectively integrate into their new host country depends on a lot of variables. While immigrants themselves sometimes struggle to adapt to their new society beyond survival, their children often thrive, and third-generation immigrants are quite well-integrated into society. While the "how" is an important question, it seems that American culture has proven for centuries that it can handle the adjustment many immigrants bring.

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Many who favor libertarian politics but oppose open immigration use the existence of a welfare system as a reason to not favor open immigration. Setting aside the reality that most non-natives are not eligible for most welfare benefits, the argument has emotional appeal. It seems unfair to give non-citizens benefits that citizens pay for through tax dollars and that may raise citizens' taxes. If you abolish the welfare state, these opponents say, they would favor open immigration. But even this acknowledges that open immigration is the default libertarian position, since their argument is to overcome the default with a justifiable restriction on human liberty.

Their position ignores that a restrictive border necessitates highway checkpoints, an immigration police state, warrantless searches of property, forcible separation of children and their parents, and a host of other egregious practices.

The reality is that most immigrants do not come to take advantage of the welfare state, nor is the federal government required to provide aid to foreigners. In fact, some economists have calculated that open immigration actually reduces the burden of the welfare state.

While this argument has some initial emotional appeal (and because Milton Friedman said it), this appears to be yet another ad hoc reason to oppose the free movement of people and deny them their right to flourish.

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No. It is true that libertarians firmly believe in property rights. A property boundary marks where one owner’s claim begins and another’s ends. That boundary should only be enforceable if the owner really owns the tract of land within. But that is where the analogy comparing government borders to private property breaks down. Government does not own all of the property within its borders. Though government-held lands are extensive in the United States, the majority of American ground is privately owned. Not all of these private owners agree about how to enforce the national borders, or even the idea that they should be enforced by government at all.

Libertarians would agree that a person should not trespass on another person’s property. But unlawful immigrants usually are not trespassers. The vast majority (approximately two-thirds) of such immigrants enter their destination country legally and simply overstay their entry visa. This means that they do not enter by trespassing. Instead, they enter the country by the same means as any other traveler. These immigrants then rent apartments from willing landlords, obtain employment from eager employers, and buy goods from eager retailers. The accusation that they are trespassers is simply false. A person who moves from Mexico to Texas is no more a trespasser than a person who moves from Georgia to Texas, whether they have government approval or not.

Aggressive border enforcement encroaches on private property and disrupts the normal movement of labor and capital. It also creates dangerous black markets in transportation, housing, and employment. Even worse, restrictive immigration policies interfere with the performance of our Christian duty to be charitable to immigrants and to reach all nations with the good news of the gospel.

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It’s important to recognize that free migration isn’t destined for conflict (see Question 116). People are adaptable, and markets reward peaceful cooperation. Yet open immigration under modern state conditions can create unintended challenges, since governments control land, welfare, and public property—distortions that lead to forced association and perverse incentives. In a free society, migration is regulated by the market. State interventions in borders, welfare, drug policy, and the economy disrupt the market dynamics that would otherwise harmonize migration with demand.

The more we decentralize government, the closer we get to a true polycentric order where society is shaped by markets and local decision-making, not central planners. Rather than federal bureaucracies managing welfare programs or vast tracts of public land, those functions should devolve to the local level—or better yet, to private ownership and market institutions. Local and private stewardship ties decisions to those who bear their costs and benefits, curbing waste, reducing moral hazard, and aligning incentives with genuine community needs. Decentralization and privatization directly reduce the friction and fear associated with open immigration by replacing coercive, one-size-fits-all systems with voluntary cooperation rooted in consent and property rights.

Inflationary policies, taxes, and regulations erode prosperity and drive up housing costs, trapping both natives and newcomers in artificial scarcity that breeds resentment. Likewise, ending the War on Drugs and U.S. military interventions abroad would remove major sources of violence, displacement, and black-market chaos that fuel mass migration. Freer markets and a peaceful foreign policy allow people to move, build, and work where demand exists, turning competition into cooperation. When paired with a fair justice system that neither discriminates against newcomers nor excuses crime, these reforms foster trust, opportunity, and liberty.

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From the economic point of view, laborers who migrate from a low wage area to a high wage area are performing an arbitrage and making the market function more efficiently in the satisfaction of human wants. But human beings are not merely laborers, and they bring with them more than labor hours.

Immigrants bring with them their own experiences and customs, and often their own languages. It is true that a culturally heterogeneous population can experience social friction because different cultures can dictate dramatically different expectations from one another. For example, in some cultures, direct eye contact may be considered presumptuous and aggressive. In others, avoiding eye contact may be viewed with suspicion. This is not only true of international immigration. Cultural differences may also be present within different populations in the same nation-state, such as those between New Englanders and southerners in the United States.

People as social creatures are also immensely adaptable. Customs can be consciously learned, and linguistic features are often acquired without conscious effort or awareness. Every person grows and changes over their lifetime, including in their customary behaviors and language, and they will adapt to their environment.

While some traditions and customs may indeed be ancient in origin, local culture is by its nature a transient and dynamic thing. Attempts to freeze a culture in time to preserve it are based on the mistaken idea that culture is static and stable. It is not. Even if some cultural clashes may greatly annoy adults, such displeasure need not persist in succeeding generations. Indeed, combinations of previously unacquainted peoples have sometimes resulted in explosions of cultural creativity, such as the innovative jazz and blues styles of music that developed in the culturally complex Mississippi Delta region.

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The nations described in the Bible were not nation-states in the modern sense, but rather extended family groups or tribes who shared a common language and culture. The original division of nations occurred early in post-deluge history. Nations are first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 10, in a passage naming the first generations born after the great flood subsided: the offspring of Japheth, Ham, and Shem. Genesis 11 then focuses on the particular events that led to the division of the nations by language and physical distance. The efforts of a united humanity to construct a tower to their own glory (“let us make a name for ourselves,” v. 4) displeased God. God responded by confounding their language, leading them to abandon their construction project and “scattered them abroad over the face of all the Earth” (Gen 11:8–9).

The children of Israel were selected as a nation set apart as God’s chosen people, and they were commanded to keep away from the corruption and idol worship of other nations. Even before that, the first great order of separation for Israel was an internal schism. Moses separated the wandering people of Israel into groups of faithful and reprobate before the Lord caused the earth to swallow up the followers of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num 16:23–35).

The good news is that national divisions that came about due to sin and corruption can be overcome by the grace of God. Foreigners who worshipped the one true God were to be welcomed by the nation of Israel (Isa 56:1–8). In the Great Commission, Christ commanded his followers to go to all nations teaching his commands (Matt 28:19–20). Peter preached that God had revealed to him that he “should not call any man common or unclean,” and told his listeners about a faith that offered hope to God-fearing people of all nations (Acts 10:28; 35). National divisions are a consequence of sin. Everyone who repents and believes in Christ can join the eternal, holy nation of God (1 Pet 2:9–10).

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The Bible tells immigrant story after immigrant story: Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, made refugees by their own sin. Joseph was the victim of fraternal violence and was sold into bondage in the strange land of Egypt. Israel made its exodus from Egypt to the then-unfamiliar Promised Land. Ruth was a foreigner who immigrated to Israel. Christ traveled in foreign lands as an infant fleeing for safety from Herod the Great’s Massacre of the Innocents. Our savior identified with the immigrant, and he included the “stranger” as one of the groups whom he called the “least of these” (Matt 25:34–46).

Scripture speaks clearly on the topic of how God’s faithful are to treat immigrants. The Bible tells us that foreigners who come to our country must be afforded equal legal rights to people who are native-born (Exod 12:49, Lev 24:22). More than that, we are to love them as we love ourselves (Lev 19:33–34). Immigrants are a segment of the community who are worthy objects of our charity (Deut 10:14–22). Indeed, it is an outward mark of a righteous man that his door is “always open to the traveler” (Job 31:32). Israel was reminded by God of its heritage as a people who were once strangers in a strange land, and instructed that it would be hypocritical for them to mistreat the alien (Deut 24:19–22). God warns of judgment for those who “deprive aliens of justice” (Mal 3:5, Deut 27:19). Widespread mistreatment of immigrants can lead to national judgment (Ezek 22:7, 29–31; Jer 22:3–5). Treating immigrants justly was one of the conditions for Israel’s continuing to enjoy the blessings of the Promised Land (Jer 7:6–7).