The Fine Line Between Social Darwinism and Suicidal Compassion By Bryan Caplan

Are you a libertarian? Are you tired of being called “hard-hearted”? Then I’ve got a solution for you! You’ll still be insulted. But instead of being condemned as “hard-hearted,” you’ll be mocked as “soft-headed.” All you have to do:

1. Take your hard-core libertarian writings on the domestic poor.

2. Replace all references to the “domestic poor” with “low-skilled immigrants.”

3. Publish your “new” position.

My latest essay for Hoover, “Treating Immigrants Like Strangers,” is a case in point. I begin:

Immigrants are strangers, and we should treat them accordingly. On the one hand, this means that we should consider all of the

ways-good and bad-that immigrants affect us. We shouldn’t merely

consider the fiscal effects of immigration. We should consider the

broader economic effects, including those on innovation and

entrepreneurship. And we should consider the political effects-how

immigrants will sway our future policies and priorities. None of this means, however, that we may ignore the welfare of

immigrants. They’re strangers but still human beings. No one is

obligated to hire strangers, house strangers, or support strangers in

the lifestyle to which they’d like to become accustomed. When someone else offers to hire, house, or support a stranger, however, we are normally obliged not to interfere.

If you disapprove of your employer’s latest recruit or your landlord’s

new tenants, you have every right to quit or move. But to overrule other people’s agreements requires a very good excuse. These moral observations may seem obvious, but they have a shocking

implication. Our current immigration policies treat immigrants worse than

strangers, far worse. Existing laws do not simply make immigrants

ineligible for (most) government benefits, or protect your right to

refuse to hire or house immigrants. Instead, existing laws prevent

anyone in the United States from hiring or housing immigrants unless the

immigrant has government permission. This permission is very difficult to obtain, especially for low-skilled immigrants. The upshot: to treat immigrants like strangers, we would probably

have to drastically liberalize our immigration laws – not just for

high-skilled immigrants but for low-skilled immigrants as well. Denying

government benefits to immigrants is fine; they’re strangers, so we

have no obligation to support them. Denying immigrants the right to

accept a job from a willing employer or rent an apartment from a willing

landlord, by contrast, requires a very good excuse.

If I talked the same way about poor Americans, people would attack my view as a cold-blooded Social Darwinism. But since it’s about immigrants – especially low-skilled immigrants – the same position somehow becomes suicidally compassionate. Sigh. It’s almost like people don’t understand their moral obligations to strangers.