Deciding where one wants to live should not involve violence, so long as full respect for the lives, liberty, and property of others is dutifully respected. This is what makes government policies toward immigration and emigration so perverse and convoluted.

We must understand first of all that political borders are nothing but arbitrary lines drawn out on a map, within which political figures – often groups of them – arrogate jurisdiction over the lives and property of the people residing within those artificial boundaries. Currently in America, millions of people who were born outside those borders the government tells us they possess jurisdiction within, come here every year in search of greater economic opportunities and government-granted welfare (public schooling, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, etc.). Many of these people do not follow the government’s myriad of bureaucratic guidelines for coming to America – they simply cross the arbitrary borders of their own volition unannounced. If they are caught by armed government agents, they are often arrested, handcuffed, jailed, and deported back to the foreign government jurisdiction from whence they came. Many Americans applaud this as a defense of hegemony and a presently floundering economy wherein unemployment is steadily rising.

Let’s reanalyze what’s really taking place here. In defending its arbitrarily posited boundaries of alleged jurisdiction, the American government is willing – and even feels justified – in using force and violence to track down, arrest, and deport people who have arrived here without obeying the government’s rules through which to do so. In turn, in order to provide all the kinds of aforementioned “social services” these immigrants in part come here for, taxes are imposed upon the populace at large – forced extractions of money paid under threat of property seizure, jail – or if the person refuses to pay and resists – even death.

Does this make any ultimate sense? Violence is used to round up those who arrive to reap the increased economic benefits of a system in turn kept in place by violent means. Who benefits? How can a policy of ever-increasing violence and tyranny be justified?

In sharp contrast, if the use of violent force were de-escalated by eliminating the entirely ersatz political borders and the institution of government welfare, the only immigrants who would choose to come to America would be those willing to work and pave their own way – and often, at least initially, for wages and salaries far below current market values until experience within a specific form of labor has increased and work-ethic has been proven. Americans themselves would not be subject to taxation to subsidize lack of effort and personal responsibility. Prosperity would increase very rapidly. Investments would be made and new business ventures begun. Liberties would increase. Political and racial violence and enmity would moderate and disappear.

It makes little sense whatsoever then, to endorse and empower government to provide these “protections” at the barrel of a gun, any more than it does to rob, kidnap, or kill people – wherever they might be from or whatever language they might speak – simply because they would rather live and work somewhere else in the world because they can make more money and enjoy a more materially abundant life. Here in Vermont, dairy and fruit farms depend on immigrant labor in order to remain economically competetive. To their credit, many police officers and other government people, recognizing this, turn the other cheek and let these folks – so long as they are peaceful – work and earn money. Nothing less satisfies the conditions for a free society.

However, in order for there to be true liberty, we must recognize that governments everywhere stand as violent, invasive, and intrusive elements in every culture and in every social arrangement. By respecting each other as human beings instead of abstract representations of arrogant and wholly illegitimate political institutions, we rise and place ourselves and those around us above this kind of dehumanizing denial of logic, reason, and compassion. By looking for solutions outside of, and by indeed simply abolishing government from all human endeavor, we are moving towards higher ideals and greater happiness for mankind individually, and thereby, as a whole.

Alex R. Knight III is an author of horror, science fiction, and fantasy tales, living and writing in rural southern Vermont. He is the author of Victoria's Place and Other Tales of Terror (BareBones Publishing, 2008), and numerous other works, including non-fiction and poetry. He is also a regular contributor to the libertarian journal Strike The Root, and his archive may be accessed here: http://strike-the-root.com/archive/knight.html