Center for a Stateless Society » border

Free and open movement is the natural, unconditional right of every single individual, a prerogative that precedes governments and their arbitrary borders and policies. Confronted with this fact, even some self-styled libertarians will cavil and complain, puling that open borders actually amount to “forced integration,” that a free society is in fact one of exclusion and static populations disallowed from free movement simply by facts of “private property.”

And of course these facts and the relationships they implicate are never to be called into question. Never are we to ask what kinds of results and patterns legitimate property rights, properly based on some notion of homesteading, would create if actually developed and held to. Given the limits on the circumstances under which such forms of private property would be regarded as legitimate in a hypothetical freed market, it strains credulity to think that the fear-mongering of anti-immigration “libertarians” is well-founded.

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Borderlands: What’s Happening to America?

Sheldon Richman — Thu, 31 Jul 2014 18:00:10 +0000

A man, an American citizen, sits in his car as a U.S. Border Patrol agent insists that he roll down his window. He refuses. Agents use battering rams to smash the windows. Still, the driver refuses to leave his car, so he is hit with a Taser from two sides. He screams.

It would be bad enough if this scene, captured on video and shown recently on John Stossel’s Fox News special “Policing America,” had happened right at a U.S. border. But it happened far from the border. The U.S. government regards a large part of the country as close enough to a border or coast to justify treating individuals — citizens or not — as though they have no rights whatsoever. People have been beaten and had their personal belongings seized — without warrant or charge — just because they resented being treated like criminals. This should alarm anyone who thinks America is the “land of the free.”

“Imagine the once thin borderline of the American past as an ever-thickening band, now extending 100 miles inland around the United States — along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border, and both coasts — and you will be able to visualize how vast the CBP’s [Customs and Border Protection] jurisdiction has become,” writes Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security, at TomDispatch.com. “This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the U.S. population (197.4 million people) live.… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”

The ACLU calls the expanded borderlands, in which two out of three Americans live, a “Constitution-free zone.” Specifically, the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure appears to have been suspended.

This area is dotted with checkpoints at which anyone can be stopped, questioned, asked to exit his car, searched, and required to surrender personal belongings. Miller writes,

In these vast domains, Homeland Security authorities can institute roving patrols with broad, extra-constitutional powers backed by national security, immigration enforcement, and drug interdiction mandates. There, the Border Patrol can set up traffic checkpoints and fly surveillance drones overhead with high-powered cameras and radar that can track your movements. Within 25 miles of the international boundary, CBP agents can enter a person’s private property without a warrant. In these areas, the Homeland Security state is anything but abstract. On any given day, it can stand between you and the grocery store.

It doesn’t matter if you are an American citizen merely going about your business. If you live in a borderland, you can be stopped along an east-west route and have your daily routine interrupted. Yet, it should be pointed out, you are more likely to be harassed or arrested if you aren’t white.

The harassment has prompted people around Arivaca, Arizona, 25 miles from the Mexican border, to demand that a local checkpoint be removed. According to Miller, people

were fed up with the obligatory stop between their small town and the dentist or the nearest bookstore. They were tired of Homeland Security agents scrutinizing their children on their way to school. So they began to organize.

In late 2013, they demanded that the federal government remove the checkpoint. It was, they wrote in a petition, an ugly artifact of border militarization; it had, they added, a negative economic impact on residents and infringed on people’s constitutional rights. At the beginning of 2014, small groups from People Helping People in the Border Zone — the name of their organization — started monitoring the checkpoint several days a week.

Miller quotes James Lyall, an attorney with ACLU Arizona, as saying that “Border Patrol checkpoints and roving patrols are the physical world equivalent of the National Security Agency. They involve a massive dragnet and stopping and monitoring of innocent Americans without any suspicion of wrongdoing by increasingly abusive and unaccountable federal government agents.”

This intolerable condition should outrage every American. Have we been reduced to a society of scared children who would rather have government agents harassing us wherever we go than take our chances with freedom?

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This article was originally published at the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Open the Borders Now and Forever

David S. D'Amato — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 18:00:30 +0000

Market anarchism is grounded in the sovereignty of each individual and the simple idea that all relationships between adults ought to be voluntary and consensual, permitting everyone the freedom to do anything she wishes, as long as she respects the identical right of all others. The “market” in market anarchism refers to the fact that under such a system of equal freedom, individuals could cooperate and exchange in any and all ways nonviolent and non-fraudulent.

The “anarchism” comes from the insight that a society of strict nonaggression is ipso facto incompatible with the existence of the state. Since the state, both in theory and practice, is defined in terms of aggression against innocents, a truly free society cannot endure such an institution. Where, though, does immigration fit into all this theoretical ideation?

And of course these facts and the relationships they implicate are never to be called into question. Never are we to ask what kinds of results and patterns legitimate property rights, properly based on some notion of homesteading, would create if actually developed and held to. Given the limits on the circumstances under which such forms of private property would be regarded as legitimate in a hypothetical freed market, it strains credulity to think that the fear-mongering of anti-immigration “libertarians” is well-founded.

Furthermore, arguments that see open borders as “forced integration” are especially spurious and unconvincing within the context we’re presented today, where governments themselves own and administer most of the land and the rest has been doled out to political favorites under a process in which proper homesteading has never been a real or important consideration. In their essence, anti-immigration arguments come to the laughable contention that merely due to accidents of birth which place some lucky group in one favored locale and others somewhere else, the fortunate group ought to be able to control and impede the movement of others.

We must therefore ask how and on what basis? Stripped of intricate apologies for the status quo, the answers presented are simply, “using force, deadly if necessary” and “because sovereign states have the right to protect their borders.” But even if we grant the premise that the United States ought to be able to protect its borders — itself an enormously controversial one which, as anarchist, I challenge — we must then wonder: Protect them from what? As economist Bryan Caplan observes, leaving out the moral questions implicated by the immigration debate, “even a random illiterate peasant” represents an economic benefit to his new country.

“Immigration laws,” Caplan shows, “trap people in countries where workers produce far below their potential.” When allowed the opportunity to work and produce to their potential, immigrants fill important economic needs and increase the overall wealth in society.

In terms of both basic economic and humanitarian considerations, completely free immigration and open borders are the soundest way forward for the United States and the whole world. Arbitrary, aggressive restrictions on people’s movement trample individual rights, divide families, and hurt the economy. It’s time to end the global apartheid of invented national boundaries and embrace the market anarchist solution of free movement, free exchange and free people.

Canadian Immigration Authorities

Natasha Petrova — Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:00:38 +0000

I had my first experience with the Canadian state this week. The immigration authorities questioned me about my trip to Canada. One dicey moment was when the customs officer asked about whether I paid taxes or not. I replied that I only pay sales tax. I haven’t made enough money to pay income tax since 2006. Another obnoxious question was about whether I had ever been stopped by the police. Both of which were answered for the purpose of smoothly entering the country.

Few aspects of the modern state are more irritating than the control of borders. Our movements are circumscribed by the nationalistic regimentation of migration and travel. This makes it more difficult to vote with your feet. One polity may be particularly oppressive, but the entrance requirements of another can be rather repressive too. This renders it more difficult to escape unjust conditions and reside in a more just area.

I am only here on a visit, but I could very well be migrating to another country sometime in the future. It will be a nightmare to go through this again with different immigration authorities. One of my fears relates to how they will treat my computer and other valuable items. I could be stopped for my political activites too. It would be the restriction of my liberty based upon a political disagreement.

Nation-states have other major disadvantages, but the restriction of movement is definitely one of the worst. A basic human right includes the liberty to move about without arbitrary restrictions on said movement. What could be more arbitrary than imaginary lines drawn in the sand by military and police power? Not much! All such borders are political fictions that benefit ruling classes.

Border restrictions especially hurt lower class people who need to get to a better locality. Such individuals are out to create a better life for themselves and deserve our moral support. They are the ones with the least amount of resources to fight immigration laws. The laws are thus biased against lower income people. They are the most restricted and affected by them.

Strong border controls allow rulers to pick and choose who enters a given territory. It priliveges some people at the expense of others. The individuals who have political connections are at an advantage relative to those who don’t. A base of support can thus be created and cultivated amongst the immigrant populace. Let’s work to open the borders and end nation-states.

The Brutality of “Border Security”

Nathan Goodman — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 18:00:56 +0000

Last Thursday, the US Senate passed an expansive “immigration reform” bill. The bill’s Hoeven-Corker Amendment would increase the US government’s “border security” spending to $46.3 billion.

This money will be used to create what John McCain calls “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” staffed by at least 38,405 Border Patrol agents. That’s a larger force than George W. Bush had stationed in Afghanistan when he left office. No wonder it’s been called the “border surge.”

Those agents will be armed with billions of dollars worth of equipment from America’s leading war profiteers. According to the Washington Post, the bill demands “among other items, six Northrop Grumman airborne radar systems that cost $9.3 million each, 15 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters that average more than $17 million apiece, and eight light enforcement helicopters made by American Eurocopter that sell for about $3 million each.” As usual, militarization means obscene corporate profits at taxpayer expense.

Moreover, increasing “border security” funding means expanding an agency whose members routinely violate civil liberties and have even committed murder. John Carlos Frey has documented 10 instances where Border Patrol agents have shot innocent Mexicans on Mexican soil. In one case, 16-year old José Antonio Rodríguez was shot eight times when he went to buy a hot dog in the border town of Nogales. In another incident, Frey explains, “a husband and wife were celebrating the birthday of their two daughters. The husband got shot and killed, shot in the heart.” This is what Border Patrol agents do to peaceful people who haven’t even crossed the border.

When immigrants cross the border, they are subjected to further violence. In 2010, 42-year old migrant worker Anastasio Rojas was tased and beaten to death by a dozen officers. These sorts of murders are rarely prosecuted. And while such overt murders are relatively rare, the Border Patrol has caused still more deaths indirectly. Migrants travel across dangerous deserts, and often die of heat exhaustion and dehydration. Activists with No More Deaths regularly leave water on travel routes to try to save immigrants’ lives. Border Patrol agents have slashed open, kicked over, and dumped out these water bottles, effectively condemning immigrants to suffering and death.

The Senate bill would spend billions of dollars to support war profiteers and murderers, and for what? The stated goal is to “secure the border.” This is an utterly unjustifiable goal. The border between the US and Mexico was drawn through violent conquest and the theft of indigenous lands. Ultimately, border security is not a protection of property rights, but a violation of property rights. If you want to invite a friend from Mexico to work with you or visit you on your own personal property, the state’s border agents use force to prevent that.

Moreover, “securing the border” particularly means hurting indigenous people. The Tohono O’oodham Nation has members on both sides of the border. As Eileen Luna-Firebaugh explains, “Those who continue to use traditional border crossing areas are in danger of being shot by U.S. Border Patrol personnel, U.S. military, or vigilante citizen groups. For a young Texas shepherd named Ezequiel, U.S. military personnel who opened fire while he tended his goatherd along the Texas-Mexico border cut life short.” Should indigenous communities be split apart by militarized violence so that an imaginary line in the sand can be “secure?”

Ultimately, “border security” means violence and brutality. It means financing murderers and war profiteers. It means impeding freedom of movement, violating individual rights, and dividing indigenous communities. Let’s stop this violence. Instead of securing the border, let’s abolish it.

Support C4SS with Charles Johnson’s “International Apartheid”

James Tuttle — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 19:00:56 +0000

C4SS has teamed up with the Distro of the Libertarian Left. The Distro produces and distribute zines and booklets on anarchism, market anarchist theory, counter-economics, and other movements for liberation. For every copy of Charles Johnson’s “International Apartheid” that you purchase through the Distro, C4SS will receive a percentage. Support C4SS with Charles Johnson’s “International Apartheid“.

$1.00 for the first copy. $0.75 for every additional copy.

Two essays by the individualist anarchist writer Charles Johnson on the brutal consequences of government border laws and the need for uncompromising urgency in the struggle to abolish them.

According to the ruling elite of the United States, as well as the rank-and-file of the Know-Nothing bellowing blowhard busybody brigade, all the people of the world must be segregated according to their nationality. If they won’t stay in ‘their’ place voluntarily, then the government had better make them stay there through paramilitary lockdowns at national borders and rigid enforcement of a state-imposed passbook (‘visa,’ ‘passport’) system to control where people can live and work, which is to say a system of government permission slips for existing.

And all for what? To avoid the voluntary co-mingling of people from different countries? To ensure that the people of the world hear only one language, live and work with people of only one nationality, remain segregated, either by penning them up in their government-appointed place or else by making sure you can monitor all their movements according to a government-created system of passbooks and minders? The idea would be laughable if not for all the ghosts—the ghosts of millions upon millions of real, living, irreplaceable and unique individual people, who were turned back, ruined, persecuted, mutilated, tortured, starved, and murdered for the sake of that idea. There is another way….

A Fast and Furious String of Government Failures

Darian Worden — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 19:30:39 +0000

US Attorney General Eric Holder is in hot water again over Operation Fast and Furious, in which federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives lost track of hundreds of guns they had encouraged firearms dealers to sell to suspected traffickers. It’s the big sequel to BATFE’s Operation Wide Receiver in which multiple guns were sold to suspected cartel buyers under BATFE surveillance in 2006 and 2007.

But the plot thickens, and goes in a direction that probably shouldn’t be surprising: Documents obtained by CBS News strongly suggest that BATFE agents had intended to use Fast and Furious guns to support their demands for tighter administrative regulations on gun sales, particularly requiring dealers to report the sale of multiple rifles to the same person within a certain time period (Documents: ATF used “Fast and Furious” to make the case for gun regulations, CBS News, December 7, 2011).

Where to even begin unraveling this one?

The Drug War is as good a place as any to start. It’s sometimes called a war on drugs, but that’s not really accurate. It is a war, with real casualties and war profiteering. But the government isn’t fighting against drugs. It’s fighting against people over control of drugs.

When commercial activity is criminalized, sellers have little legal recourse and competition becomes violent. When success in a business is based largely on the ability to withstand violence from other gangs and from government paramilitaries, those most capable of doing violence will succeed in that business. And this is true of the Drug War’s Mexican theater.

The Drug War is just one element in a state of broad economic exploitation. Political power shapes the economy to direct wealth generated by physical and mental labor to benefit those with access to political power — those who have the ability to give politicians something they want. Poverty in Mexico makes crime a more attractive option and leaves communities fewer resources to keep out the influence of violent gangs.

The dysfunction of the current political economy motivates many Mexican people to seek out better economic opportunity in the United States. That same political economy makes life harder for US natives than it would be in a free economy, and these economic issues fuel support for greater restriction on immigration and harsher enforcement against those who break the restrictions. This in turn makes the border more dangerous.

When people who want to move across an imaginary line without permission are made into an official criminal element they are forced to the margins of society where they have more contact with actual criminals, less ability to report crime without repercussion, and less leverage to increase their wages in otherwise legal work.

So to keep guns away from violent cartels, a problem government has inflamed, the BATFE wants to create arbitrary regulations that will apply to all firearms purchasers. To support this it cites activities that its own agents encourage and monitor.

Whether the secrecy surrounding Fast and Furious is just typical bureaucracy or something more sinister is hard to say. BATFE’s Mexico liaison claims he wasn’t told about the operation. It certainly wouldn’t be beyond imagining for government agents to let a few guns “walk” so they could later present the public with “guns sold in American stores found in the hands of drug cartels” to win themselves more power and funding, but bungling things. After all, if BATFE agents were involved in a conspiracy, one would expect it to be poorly managed.

When government regulations create problems, more government control is often presented as the solution. People wised up to this during alcohol prohibition, and that mistake was repealed. Yet any discussion of breaking up cartels by allowing open competition with the same protections as any civil society actor, or questioning whether government has any right to regulate what people put in their own bodies, is drowned out by the lobbying and propaganda machines of drug war profiteers. Violence can be reduced significantly by taking the profit out of it.