For strictly logistical reasons, I think it might be wise to limit the number of immigrants we admit in any given year, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to the limit. A million immigrants a year amounts to one third of one percent of the population. If we were to triple that migration rate, those immigrants would still only amount to about 1 percent of the population.

I also don’t think there’s any great evidence that Hispanics are overwhelmingly statist. About a third of them voted for George W. Bush in the last election, which at least suggests they aren’t hard-core socialists.

Finally, I think you overestimate the influence that a poor, uneducated voting block can have on policy. Low-income and minority voters tend to vote at lower rates, and they’re more likely to be taken for granted by elected officials. The people who have the biggest influence are wealthy, well-educated, and well-organized. Those will continue to be mostly white people for the foreseeable future.

No, I don’t. I think you make the classic mistake of assuming that desiring work opportunities is the same thing as desiring freedom. Many, many of our past immigrants came here for the former, but not necessarily the latter.

Also, I have no problem with letting in a lot of skilled immigrants. What America DOES NOT need are more unskilled ones. These are the ones who tend to bring crime and social welfare dependency with them. They are also the least likely to be favorable to economic and personal freedom.

The biggest problem with the population issue is that we are not stopping the flow of illegal immigrants. If we keep getting 500,000-1,000,000 a year and they keep having kids, the demographics will change. I for one don’t want to see millions of people from failed countries pouring into America as an alternative to getting their act together at home. It’s one thing to allow the exceptions to flee here, but we don’t need every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Also, I have asked a simple question in the past and received no good answer. When is there too much immigration? Wouldn’t it be good to have 300,000,000 new immigrants added to our population over the course of a decade or two? I have yet to hear from libertarians who believe that immigration is an effectively unqualified good for the economy and country, when there are too many people coming here. I’m not necessarily implying you think that it’s good for America to have a flood of low or unskilled workers (for obvious statist reasons) but I am curious, when is there “too much immigration?”

No, I don’t. I think you make the classic mistake of assuming that desiring work opportunities is the same thing as desiring freedom. Many, many of our past immigrants came here for the former, but not necessarily the latter.

Also, I have no problem with letting in a lot of skilled immigrants. What America DOES NOT need are more unskilled ones. These are the ones who tend to bring crime and social welfare dependency with them. They are also the least likely to be favorable to economic and personal freedom.

The biggest problem with the population issue is that we are not stopping the flow of illegal immigrants. If we keep getting 500,000-1,000,000 a year and they keep having kids, the demographics will change. I for one don’t want to see millions of people from failed countries pouring into America as an alternative to getting their act together at home. It’s one thing to allow the exceptions to flee here, but we don’t need every Tom, Dick and Harry.

Also, I have asked a simple question in the past and received no good answer. When is there too much immigration? Wouldn’t it be good to have 300,000,000 new immigrants added to our population over the course of a decade or two? I have yet to hear from libertarians who believe that immigration is an effectively unqualified good for the economy and country, when there are too many people coming here. I’m not necessarily implying you think that it’s good for America to have a flood of low or unskilled workers (for obvious statist reasons) but I am curious, when is there “too much immigration?”

And in any event, we’re far, far short the point where native-born Americans are in danger of becoming a minority of the electorate. Only about 15 percent of the population is Hispanic, and that dramatically overstates the impact of Hispanic immigrants on the electorate, because not every Hispanic is an immigrant, not every Hispanic is a citizen (and therefore a voter) and Hispanics tend to vote at lower rates than whites.

Moreover, the vast majority of immigrants we let in today are unskilled. The number of skilled immigrants we let in every year is far smaller. It’s just not plausible that (say) doubling the skilled foreign workers we admit into the country would have any significant impact on the electorate.

There may very well be distributional implications that are undesirable from certain peoples’ point of view (for example, blue-collar American workers might not appreciate the competition). But I don’t see how you can deny that more open borders will, all else being equal, increase the world’s wealth.