The main arguments for closed borders are:

Immigrants will cause crime Immigrants will lower domestic wages Immigrants are less cultured or educated; or will sully our culture. Immigrants are poor and will exhaust our welfare services. Our rights of association allow us to exclude immigrants.

For the sake of argument, suppose 1-5 are correct. (They’re not.) If these are reasons to close borders between nations, why aren’t they also reasons to close borders between provinces and states inside nations, or between towns and cities, or between neighborhoods?

Consider the existential threat my neighbors and I face. Over 60% of the people 25 or older in Fairfax County, VA, have a bachelors’ degree or higher, and another 20% have either some college or an associates degree. The overwhelming majority of them have professional white collar jobs. The median household income is around $105,000. In my CDP inside Fairfax County, the median household income is $135,000. The unemployment rate is about 3.8%. We have something like .88 violent crimes per thousand residents per year. Our best public schools are the best in country, and our worst public schools are still far better than the average. Our park system–which includes water parks–is excellent. Most births are to married couples, and, compared to the rest of the USA, hardly any teens get pregnant.

Our way of life is continuously threatened by our open borders. Consider: right now, the uneducated, unemployed, barely English-speaking, poor-as-dirt residents of Buffalo County, South Dakota, or Harlan County, Kentucky, are free to move here at will. The average household in Mantua, VA, is six times richer than the average household in Harlan, Kentucky. I won’t recite all the stats here, but we’re talking about uneducated people, who commit far more crime, who have less culture, who don’t fit in with us, and who, if they moved here, would exhaust our welfare services, and destroy our schools. I want my kids going to school with doctors’ and lawyers’ kids, not with meth-addicted bumpkins or alcoholic Native-Americans.

So, if 1-5 are reasons why the USA can and should close its borders to Haiti, why are they not also reasons why Fairfax County, VA, can and should close its borders to everyone else, except maybe Loudon County, VA?

UPDATE: Of course, we’ll want to allow immigrants from Harlan, provided they can prove they’re high-skilled, have jobs, etc.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9p534Q5hhw&w=560&h=315]