Repeal Socialism in Immigration, Employment, and Drugs

by Scott Lazarowitz

Recently by Scott Lazarowitz: Let Go of the Centralized State

Recent events regarding the issue of immigration have given more reasons to undo all the immoral socialist policies that have put America into turmoil.

Lew Rockwell writes this week on the Obama Administration's crackdown on businesses who hire "illegal" immigrants. According to the New York Times, federal immigration officials raided 14 Chuy’s Restaurants in Arizona and California, arresting not immigrant workers but the owners of the businesses.

Of course, those familiar with Barack Obama’s past sympathies with "illegal" immigration might find bizarre his wanting to actually crack down on businesses hiring "illegals," given how beneficial such a voting bloc would be for Obama’s party, the Democrats. On the other hand, Obama seems to want more socialist government control over businesses and their relationships with employees. And, as Rockwell notes,

Socialist ideology plays a role here, and another authoritarian anti-market ideology, protectionism. But…The unions hate any employee who works for the going market wage…

You can see, then, that this crack down has nothing to do with nationalism or racialism or securing the borders or anything else. It is all about bolstering the power of the state and its unions over the American economy, and making the rest of us poorer.

The supposedly "pro-business" conservatives support laws punishing businessmen for employing "undocumented workers," and those laws were recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The problem with today’s immigration and border control hysteria is that Americans are going after the wrong people. The problems are not caused by the immigrant workers or those Americans who are hiring them. It is the other socialist controls – the Drug War, mainly – that is the problem, and is causing many people in Arizona and other border states to be victimized and terrorized.

Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger has written on the destructive nature of socialist central planning in immigration and labor:

As Mises, Hayek, and the Austrians showed long ago, central planning can never succeed because the planner can never possess the requisite knowledge to centrally plan a complex market, especially one as complex as an international labor market. All the planner inevitably does is produce chaos, distortions, and perversions into the market process…

(The free market) doesn’t rely on central planners. Instead, it simply uses the price system to enable people to coordinate their activities with others. Farm workers needed in Wyoming? The price of labor goes up. Mexican workers learn of the wage increase and immediately travel to Wyoming to earn the money. No central planner, but instead people planning and coordinating their own lives.

Apparently, the conservatives support central planning socialist government intrusions in employment matters that should be the right of businesses to control. We have seen that recently in New Hampshire’s proposed "right to work" law, in which the conservatives do not really support the right of businesses to control their employment matters.

Unfortunately, some people just seem to think that the State owns both the people who currently live and work in the U.S., as well as those who wish to come here to live and work.

Some questions to ask are: Who owns a business? And who owns the contract between employers and employees? And who owns the life of an individual who wants to work at a job that is available?

Here are my answers: The business is owned by the one who purchased it or built it up from one’s own assets or capital. It is not owned or even partially co-owned by the State, by the community, the neighborhood or by others who did not contribute capital to the business and participate in a voluntarily-agreed-upon contract of ownership with the actual owner. Therefore, economically and morally, the control over the business and every aspect of it is solely that of the owner(s). Any law or ordinance, regulation or mandate, regarding how the owner deals with one’s business or employment contracts, is a property intrusion – a trespass by the State – and is in violation of the businessman’s right of sovereignty over one’s business.

And the contract between employer and employee and the terms of the contract are morally and economically the property of and under the sole control of the employer and employee by voluntary agreement, and no one else. Those matters are no one else’s business. Any intrusions by laws, regulations, or mandates by the government are trespasses, and should be forbidden.

And that brings me to the American Declaration of Independence. In the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Each individual has an inalienable, inherent right of ownership of one’s own life, person, labor and justly-owned property, and pursuit of happiness, and the right to be free from the aggression against one’s life by others, including agents of the State. With the right to life and the right to sustain one’s life, each individual has a right to trade his labor with others for a compensation or good in return for such labor, within a voluntary and mutually-agreed-upon contract, as long as one is peaceful and does not interfere with any other individual’s equal right.

Here is where we lose the conservatives. The Declaration of Independence does not state that such rights apply to "only Americans." No, such rights are inherent in all of us, regardless of where we are on Earth. Unfortunately, some people do not believe that non-"American citizens" possess such rights.

Here is an example of a Mexican who is in need of work, and can’t find a job or get hired in Mexico but does find a job and gets hired at a business in Arizona. Now, as we saw in the Obama regime’s raids at the Chuy’s Restaurants in Arizona and California, some people apparently do not believe that the Mexican here should be permitted by the U.S. government to work at the American restaurant, even though the owners of the business voluntarily hired him and are satisfied with his work, and the happily-paying customers enjoy their food there.

So, who is it exactly that owns the Chuy’s Restaurant in Arizona? Is it the government? In that case, then I suppose it is the government’s right to control the employment status of that business. But if the ownership of the restaurant is of the businessman himself, and not in partnership with the community or with the government, then shouldn’t the businessman have the sole authority over the business, including who works there and who does not? Should his right to decide what’s best for his business and his customers be trespassed by others, including the State?

And does not the individual in Mexico have a God-given right to sell his labor to a voluntarily-contracting employer for a mutually-agreed-upon wage, so the individual can sustain his life and provide for his family? If one believes in the truly moral right of self-ownership, then one must answer yes, because all individuals have a right to work, including Mexicans, and including businessmen who must provide for themselves and their families.

Now, just where do the other members of the Arizona community or the federal government get such authority over the contract between the Mexican worker and the American businessman? The U.S. Constitution? But, as referred to in the Declaration of Independence, all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But if one is saying that the community or the State shares in the ownership of the business with the business owner, then one must say that, really, the State is the true ultimate owner, because the State out-powers the businessman, and the community or the collective also are the ultimate owners because they outnumber the individual.

Unfortunately, in the socialist conservatives and statists’ belief that the government should prevent non-"American citizens" from entering the U.S., they are really advocating that the government should control labor and employment, and that individuals do not really have sole sovereignty ownership of their lives and that someone’s business is really co-owned by the community and the State.

I know that conservatives and others are concerned about increased crime rates because of "illegal" immigration, especially from the Mexican border. But in their control-freakish hysteria they are neglecting the real problems that need to be addressed: No, the problem isn’t the jobs that are available for immigrants in the U.S. The problems are the tax-funded welfare and social services that attract many people into the country. An even worse problem is the War on Drugs – which many conservatives also support, because they believe in a Nanny Police State, in which we need government officials to decide for us what chemicals we may or may not ingest into our own bodies. Like the 1920s Prohibition against alcohol, the current War on Drugs causes black markets, incentivizing the pushing and trafficking of drugs for huge profits, the corrupting of the police, and the terrorizing of innocent Mexicans and Americans by drug cartel criminals as well as corrupt government criminals.

Instead of repealing drug control socialism and welfare socialism, and thus removing all the problems those policies cause, too many misguided Americans like the conservatives call for more socialism in immigration, and in turn more restrictions on individuals’ and businessmen’s right to work and do business, more restrictions on everyone’s freedom of movement and right to travel (and the right to not be searched and asked, "Your papers, please").

As we have seen years ago in the U.S. government’s using immigration central planning to turn away Jews attempting to escape from Nazi Germany, and more recently in the U.S. government’s prevention of Americans from leaving the U.S., the more control we allow governments to have over the people, including their right to travel and right to work and do business, and the more power of intrusion we give to the government-monopolized police, the less freedom, security and prosperity we will have.

We must repeal each and every socialist control over our lives and businesses, and that includes not only the drug war, but central planning in immigration and labor.

June 2, 2011

Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a commentator and cartoonist at Reasonandjest.com.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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