. . . muttered the ogre

Mark Steyn puts the INS on the carpet. (Link from Iain Murray.)

The lesson, boys and girls, is this: When you grant the power to do something, you grant the power to do it wrong; and the more complicated the mission that goes with that power, the less likely the agency is to make everyone happy.

Now I say the People have no more right to tell you whom you may or may not have as an employee or tenant or mate on the grounds of place of birth than on grounds of religion or color. For those who need it spelled out: As a libertarian I demand open borders. (Explanations that labor-protectionism is merely defending property against trespassers will be ignored.)

The Constitution authorizes Congress to “establish an uniform rule of naturalization”, i.e. consistent criteria for the status of citizen, which is a far cry from creating a maze of rules about who may do what in the US in peacetime. Some folks tell me that every government has laws restricting immigration; implying that, where the Constitution is silent, the new government ought to behave just like other governments. I don’t think the people who ratified the Constitution (and thereby gave the new regime conditional permission to exist) would agree with such a theory.

But I’ll put on my moderate hat for a moment. Let’s do away with the alphabet of visa-classes, with their contradictory qualifications, and give the INS a rulebook something like this: “Foreign nationals are classified as follows.

• “Class A: [qualifications] Aliens of class A may enter or leave the US whenever they please, for any lawful purpose, until they disqualify themselves.
• “Class B: . . . Aliens of class B may be in the US, for any lawful purpose, for a total of one year every two years.
• “Class C: . . . Aliens of class C may enter the US under the following circumstances . . .
• “Class D: . . . Aliens of class D are not welcome.”

Throw out the distinctions between tourists, students, employees, investors and so on (this is what bit Mrs Gilbey). Throw out the weird procedures under which the applicant must be in the US at this stage and out at that stage. The only exclusions or deportations ought to be for criminality, hostile nationality, and perhaps a couple of other things that don’t come to mind right now.