Talk:Libertarian perspectives on immigration

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 14 October 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): APG2000. Peer reviewers: 17lpratt.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Article Misleads to Imply that Immigration isn't disputed.

This article, and especially the lede, falsely implies that in the libertarian arena, the question of immigration is already decided, or even it was never contested in the first place. Nothing can be further from the truth. As recently as 2009, for example, Robert P. Murphy stated in http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/12/thoughts-on-libertarians-and-immigration.html "Immigration is one of the most hotly contested areas in libertarian theory and politics. In a short article like this I couldn’t hope to address all of the different arguments." This WP article suggests that only a very few people challenge the concept of 'open borders'. This might be traced to a tendency of libertarian late-comers, many from liberal and Democrat origins. As late as the 1996 Democrat party platform, it said: "Today's Democratic Party also believes we must remain a nation of laws. We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years before Bill Clinton became President, Washington talked tough but failed to act. In 1992, our borders might as well not have existed. The border was under-patrolled, and what patrols there were, were under-equipped. Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again. President Clinton is making our border a place where the law is respected and drugs and illegal immigrants are turned away. We have increased the Border Patrol by over 40 percent; in El Paso, our Border Patrol agents are so close together they can see each other. Last year alone, the Clinton Administration removed thousands of illegal workers from jobs across the country. Just since January of 1995, we have arrested more than 1,700 criminal aliens and prosecuted them on federal felony charges because they returned to America after having been deported." 67.5.192.40 (talk) 21:27, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you on the "never contested" part, but you're completely wrong about who came first, and if you had read the article, you would've known that. In any case, if you're going to try and make the article more "neutral," cite your sources first. We don't do original research. Myconix (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

Article has been manipulated over the last 1-2 years to remove anti-illegal-immigration positions.

I looked at the current article, and then the state of the article about 18 months ago, September 2016. I was surprised and dismayed that it had been edited to remove much well-sourced material which showed that some portion of the libertarian community has been opposed to the open borders concept. It's hard to imagine this was anything but deliberate. Perhaps some libertarian thinks the "correct" position ought to be open borders, but that is not the purpose of this article: The purpose is supposed to be, to exhibit various positions libertarians do take about open borders and immigration. Perhaps the cure is to replace various well-sourced materials that have been removed in the past. 2601:1C2:4E02:3020:4146:2231:C4F1:8E76 (talk) 17:09, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, it is the correct position - the one that most closely approximates the libertarian ideal of individual freedom, which entails the freedom of movement, free of restrictions by overpowering authorities. Nevertheless, I agree with your point, and think that the page has been gutted out, way too much. In fact, I came here, seeking out this topic, to look for the arguments raised by the dissenting points of view and feel a little bit cheated. Therefore. since you raised the issue, and have the most vocal disapproval of the changes, I think that you (and any others interested in rectifiying the matter) to do a research project to (a) sort through the history logs of the article to compile and consolidate the different views that had been expressed therein, (b) search the web (e.g. "Libertarian views on immigration") to hunt down the different points of views and their published statements, to (c) put together a construction and expansion of the article. There is at least one international umbrella for libertarians worldwide (which, itself, is a Wikipedia topic) that may serve as a springboard, maybe others. The few things I can tell you for sure are (i) Georgists/geolibertarians (the quintessential libertarian) will oppose restrictions, (ii) libertarians in the US will have a tendency to have come out of the Republican or conservative base, often tending to be more right-leaning and putting emphasis on property and land ownership and will limit their advocacy of freedom of movement, (iii) the Libertarian Party of the US historically advocated freedom of movement, but qualified it after 9/11. Their current view may be found here: https://www.lp.org/issues/immigration/.

Fwiw, user JzG (who humorlessly badges themselves as "one of the 532 left-wing thought police who aggressively force their biased perspective on the rest of the world") simply removed the entirety of the "Critics of free immigration" and "Moderate proponents of free immigration" sections on the basis of WP:PRIMARY on 5/6 March 2017, leaving only the "Libertarian proponents of free immigration" section, rather than bothering to contribute to a well-balanced, well-sourced article. Harami2000 (talk) 08:56, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Whatever your politics, it is a fundamental precept of Wikipedia that original research is removed mercilessly (as an IP has just done); and that material that relies on the opinion of a single primary source is challenged and, if not rectified within a reasonable period (a month, say), then it is deleted. It is not for the editor who challenges these breaches of policy to find reliably sourced alternatives. So in this case, it is not obvious that JzG did anything exceptionally contrary to policy on primary sources. Yes, they should have tagged, waited, and then deleted. But the fact that the deletion wasn't reverted and even more so that material that is independently verified has not been contributed in the two years since then - perhaps it doesn't exist? Consequently, if you consider the article unbalanced, the onus is on you to contribute properly sourced balancing material. (see the intro to template:unbalanced). PS, JzG's 'tongue-in-cheek' self-description seems quite humorous to me. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 09:51, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Addressing the "Worldwide Perspective" issue

To properly address this matter requires nothing more than renaming the article "Libertarian perspectives on immigration in the US" or "US Libertarian perspectives on immigration", etc. I'll let others figure out the best way to bring this about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1401:8806:222:69FF:FE4C:408B (talk) 16:58, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Addressing other side of the debate

This article originally only reflected the unrestricted immigration side of the debate, and gave only a one-line mention of there being libertarians who oppose open borders. This felt extremely unbalanced as there are several prominent libertarians who oppose unrestricted immigration. I have added a section covering some of their views. Hopefully my additions are better sourced than whatever came before.

Also, is there really anything in this article that reflects a limited geographic bias? From what I can tell, the arguments made here for both sides apply just as much to the US as most other countries. For that reason, I am not sure that it would be necessary to alter the title of this article so that it only refers to the US.

APG2000 (talk) 02:33, 7 October 2020 (UTC)