Classical liberals have stood uneasily aside as the immigration debate in the West proceeds without us. Conservatives want remigration and closed borders, while progressives are eager to embrace ideologies and values hostile and destructive to Western civilisation. Liberalism has always been the sensible voice in all political debates, and this should be no exception.
I have avoided the question of immigration myself given how contentious it is within groupings that would otherwise agree on the big questions of our time.
Problem statement
In the seemingly natural political split between conservatives, radicals, and liberals seen in virtually every period since the Enlightenment, conservatives and liberals have tended to be allied against the radicals, though other configurations are not unheard of. This is not much different in 2026, with more or less moderate Western liberals or “libertarians” and conservatives tending to be associated on many of the most pressing issues.
Immigration is a standout exception that makes many interactions between these natural allies awkward at best.
At some point in these interactions, either the conservative says something positive about “remigration” or “closed borders”, or the liberal says something positive about “free movement” or “open borders”.
From that moment onwards, the liberal perceives the conservative as a dyed-in-the-wool classical Marxist from 1920s Russia, and the conservative perceives the liberal as an unhinged woke neo-Marxist from 2010s America.
What both liberals and conservatives agree about is that there is something wrong with modern immigration, particularly to the West from largely unwesternised societies. What precisely the problem is, however, differs radically depending on who you ask.
Liberal extremes
Among liberals, there have been two unacceptable extremes in the question of how to deal with the problem.
On the one end, though it is by no means truly liberal, there is Barack Obama-style progressivism. This comes down to, effectively, deporting the same or even higher numbers of foreigners as conservatives want to, but with “liberal-ish vibes” that do not involve immigration authorities killing people in broad daylight.
Vibes are important, but they do come down to a matter of form, not substance. The Obama model is as problematic as the conservative model from an authentically liberal perspective.
At the other end, there is essentially a call for borders to be completely abolished. The state, if it is to exist at all, has no role to play as an entry-referee. Unlike true liberal open borders (the door is open but may be closed by the state when enforcing its mandate to protect life, liberty, and property), in this case the door is removed from its hinges.
This position is muscular in its radicalism, and liberal at its theoretical heart. But it goes too far and represents only one tiny (though valuable) portion of the liberal community: anarchists.
What liberalism requires is a muscular solution to the immigration problem. This response must be able to solve the problem – not simply retain the status quo – and therefore requires the exercise of coercive (or bad-vibes) power.
But it must also leave liberal imperatives intact. There can be no rightful “liberal policy” on immigration if it treats individuals as representatives of a nationality that they were merely born into.
As classical liberal Chandran Kukathas convincingly argues:
“Immigration control is not merely about preventing outsiders from moving across borders. It is about controlling what outsiders do once in a society: whether they work, reside, study, set up businesses, or share their lives with others.
But controlling outsiders – immigrants or would-be immigrants – requires regulating, monitoring, and sanctioning insiders, those citizens and residents who might otherwise hire, trade with, house, teach, or generally associate with outsiders.
The more vigorously immigration control is pursued, the more seriously freedom is diminished. The search for control threatens freedom directly and weakens the values upon which it relies, notably equality and the rule of law.”
Public policy must always treat individuals as individuals. Many have sought to argue that this is impossible or impractical, but as every country’s tax authority proves beyond any doubt, it is not.
Communism and immigration
The first thing to get out of the way is that no deluge of appeals to “sovereignty” is going to make liberals into communists. Under no circumstances may the state’s supposed “coordinating” role in the economy be whitewashed, legitimised, or justified.
This was the deadly poison that has and always will exist at the heart of the socialist experiment.
Trying to sell liberals (not progressives or social democrats, who do not care) on the question of “the country belongs to the natives” is a tough ask in principle, because of how close it gets to communist “public property”.
It is precisely the unique Western insight that led to the “things” and “objects” existing around us becoming “property” belonging to specified owners that made the West the powerhouse it is today. Property can be individualised or communal, but it is always private. No abstract collective of supposed “owners” may dictate from the heavens to actual owners what they may do on or with their property – except harm the property of others – and chiefly: who they may or may not invite onto it.
But communism is not only the abolition of private property, though that might be its defining characteristic.
Alongside it is another important fallacy: the notion that economic life can (and should) be rationally and scientifically planned by “experts” sitting in air-conditioned rooms. These are the august sages who ultimately determine the practicalities of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
This is the French Enlightenment’s bequest to communism.
The capitalist opposite of this, of course, is the insight that economic coordination and decision-making occur on the ground, at the level of the owner (who has skin in the game) or their delegate. Market forces, usually manifested in signals like prices – rather than committees of people arrogant enough to believe they have the relevant knowledge – are responsible for the organic life of the economy.
The capitalist method has been repeatedly vindicated, and the communist method repeatedly discredited. Capitalism, arising around the Industrial Revolution, marked the first moment in many thousands of years of human history that absolute poverty could be overcome within a single person’s lifetime. Communism, when compared to what came before, exists only on the level of the Black Death and similarly scaled natural disasters in the destruction it inherently brings.
No government official or committee knows (or can ever know) enough, or has the rightful authority, to determine whether the economy or a specific industry “needs” new labour from immigrants, whether an immigrant has “enough” money in their bank account, or any other similar matter. Employers and property owners alone make these decisions.
Secondly – applying specifically in South Africa and other post-colonial Western states – “native” as a term does a lot of heavy lifting.
The second generation of Italian-Americans or Arab-British are in the same qualitative and normative boat as the second generation of Dutchmen and French Huguenots in South Africa several hundred years ago. A foreign culture in a new land.
Ultimately, depending on how far back you wish to arbitrarily look, everyone everywhere is an immigrant from somewhere. Only the direct descendants of Adam and Eve living precisely where the Garden of Eden used to be, are true “natives”.
This does not mean non-citizens should have the same political authority as citizens. But it does mean when we turn to matters of basic individual liberty, we need to be careful about creating in- and out-groups.
Liberalism rejected communism two hundred years ago – for which Marxists have never forgiven it – and it will continue to do so. The state has no role to play in the economy nor in voluntary society. The state is meant to be the guarantor of public order – that’s it.
Some might say that I have purposefully and dishonestly maligned nationalism as “communism”. But I would reject this characterisation.
Nationalism is perfectly tenable within a non-coercive framework. Under those circumstances, national consciousness is commendable and should be encouraged as the software loaded onto liberal hardware.
But many so-called “nationalisms” around the world today have taken too generously from socialism to the degree that their value-propositions are virtually indistinguishable (other than the vibes). This fake national-socialism – that ultimately comes down to the nation ceding its responsibilities to the state – should be rejected with contempt, while national-communitarianism, as practiced by the likes of the Solidarity and Orania movements in South Africa, is to be embraced.
With that out of the way, here follows specific interventions that a muscular liberalism would invoke to address the immigration problem. These are focused around four main, though interrelated, risks posed by immigrants to their new societies: (1) criminality, (2) value incompatibility, (3) economic burden to taxpayers, and (4) political capture.
Unless the context dictates otherwise, these reforms would apply to refugees as well. Readers will also note that I draw no distinction between so-called “legal” or “illegal” immigration, for reasons I set out before.
(1) Imprison criminals domestically, but have their country pay for it
The first and most important part of a liberal immigration policy is to do the opposite of what Europe has done in respect of criminality.
Europe decided to be “sensitive” to their new fellows and allow their “misunderstanding” of local norms to function at least partly as an excuse for criminality. This has resulted in lenient (if any, sometimes) punishments for sex offenders. Had Europe simply enforced basic rules of public order against immigrants, where arrests and convictions and imprisonment meant something, much of the modern immigration scare would be muted.
The applicable rule should be total equality before the law. A foreign-born murderer, rapist, or robber must be treated just like a local murderer, rapist, or robber would be treated. (Hopefully, if any country is being lenient to their locals on this matter, this rule would encourage them to do otherwise.)
But in addition to punishment, deportation must wait at the end of the immigrant’s imprisonment.
“At the end”, because deporting criminal immigrants in lieu of imprisonment is a profoundly unjust thing to do. I could never understand why so many apparently hardcore “law and order” conservatives seem to support it.
In many cases, these deported criminals will be released immediately upon their return home, having served no time as punishment for their depraved conduct. Presumably, some of them will then simply make their way back and commit more violent crimes when they should have still been in prison for the first crime.
No. If an immigrant commits a crime in a Western country, they should be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned in that country for the full term, and only after serving that term be deported and banned from returning.
In fact, family members convicted for engaging in Islamic honour killings should be made to publicly disavow the practice and condemn any portion of the Quran or Sharia countenancing it, in full view of God. Their failure to do so should result in their indefinite imprisonment until the disavowal. No deportation to a heroes’ welcome back home.
Additionally, a part or the full amount of the upkeep of the prisoner should be charged to the account of their homeland government. They are, after all, still citizens of that state, now causing trouble in a new society.
This money should not be acquired through tariffs (which would instead be paid by local consumers) but should be directly charged.
The charges could be added to the rent bill of local embassies and consulates or even the tax on diplomats or politicians buying or renting cars locally.
If not paid, the receiving country should refuse to provide any foreign aid or issue any visas to members of the sending government. The assets of politicians of the latter country in the former should be frozen and seized to make up for the amount. If that country has a state airline, its planes should be seized upon landing in this jurisdiction.
There would be many ways to get the money. Failing that, the prisoners should be put to work until the debt is repaid.
(2) Strictly vet immigrants for specific values
Immigration authorities are not sociologists, nor should they try to be. But authorities may – they must – ensure that those who enter a country do not have violent intentions and do not endorse violent ideologies.
This will mean that immigrants who buy into political Islamism (not all Muslims) would need to be rejected as a matter of course.
This extends further.
It means that political parties that endorse an essentially violent foreign ideology should be banned from forming domestically. Islamist parties, or parties that seek active friendship with Islamic dictatorships, should not be allowed to register in local elections.
Showing solidarity with Palestine and victims of war should never be regulated, but local groups that actively endorse Sharia in public law or seek the replacement of liberal democracy with theocracy (whether in the Levant or South Africa) should have the immigration status of their leaders questioned.
Islam is the topical example, but the principle extends just as much to authoritarian white supremacist ideologies.
Immigration policy must ensure (as far as possible) that immigrants do not hold values that could compel them to either take direct action that undermines the liberty of “natives”, and that they would not raise a further generation of authoritarians in their newly adopted homelands.
The (peaceful) cultural practices and language of immigrants does and should not form part of such an inquiry.
(3) Exclude all immigrants from access to social welfare benefits
This is the basic argument from economic freedom.
Ideally nobody, even “natives”, should have access to social welfare benefits – it is a rentseeking perversion. Every individual should be responsible for themselves, their family, and their communities (and vice versa).
However, given the domestic attachment to the welfare state, this reform will take some time. Applied to immigrants, however, the voting public everywhere is already on board.
It should be a strict condition of immigration that the first generation will not be eligible to access any social welfare whatsoever. Only those born in their new country, and perhaps even only if born after a long cooling-off period – to avoid opportunistic pre-birth immigrations to circumvent the rule – would in time become eligible for the dole or social services.
Refugees should probably have some initial emergency access to welfare, though this must be strictly time-limited and, naturally, should not apply to any new births in-country. A refugee, as opposed to an immigrant, is not someone looking to settle and establish roots.
This is not akin to an “economic status” threshold enforced by immigration authorities. Remember, liberals are not communists.
Immigration authorities should not ask whether an immigrant has money in the bank, a job waiting, or ready accommodation. Those are the immigrant’s intimate, private affairs, that has absolutely nothing to do with any political functionary.
At most, immigrants can be required to pay a reasonable repatriation deposit. They must be made to understand that if they are unable to take care of themselves, they will simply die on the street – local taxpayers will not shoulder the burden – and the deposit will be used to repatriate their corpse to their homeland.
Progressive groups wishing to provide a social safety-net to newly arrived immigrants should naturally be at liberty to do so. In fact, it should be encouraged.
Private hospitals funded by donations from progressively-minded people that provide free emergency medical and other care to immigrants would be a wonderfully commendable phenomenon. Not only would it help struggling migrants, but also engender a sense of community and individual responsibility among “natives” locally.
This reform alone would likely eliminate many of the most troublesome immigrants and avoid the worst excesses of “jurisdiction-shopping” among refugees.
(4) Exclude immigrants from the franchise, though not citizenship, for a time
In general, the first generation of immigrants should not vote in the elections of their newly adoptive home. They must be afforded, and embrace, the opportunity to assimilate into the new political dispensation that they have chosen, for at least a generation.
This rule also respects the accepting population of the country. It signals to them that those they have welcomed in will not bring the very politics that they have moved away from with them into their new society.
There could be certain periods associated with this rule. For instance: no franchise for 40 years. This would have the effect of excluding many 30 year old immigrants for life, but allow their children to eventually acquire the vote well into their lives.
Citizenship – entitling them to military service, stability, and the full protection of the state – is a different matter, and should not be unduly denied to immigrants.
Liberal imperatives retained
I expect many liberals would baulk at these suggestions when viewed in isolation, characterising them as menacing and even morbid.
But this muscular liberal immigration policy would still default to an open-door posture. People are welcome to live and work and flourish in the country of their choice, enjoying every individual freedom and property right that “natives” enjoy. They would, however, be denied the opportunity to leech off the wealth of natives, and be denied the so-called “political rights” that determine the state’s political direction.
Many conservatives would, in this respect, be quite underwhelmed.
This brings us back to the initial problem statement: liberals and conservatives disagree about “what” the “immigration problem” is. A muscular liberal policy would address the symptoms that conservatives should agree are problematic – getting tough on immigrant criminals, relieving the taxpayer, and so on – but conservatives who believe the mere presence in their vicinity of people with a distinct character is an assault on their interests would be left dissatisfied. This cannot be helped.
The rentseeking nature of democracy alone, it is submitted, is responsible for the high temperature in the immigration debate. Many are motivated by more base bigotries, but even then, when they start to “see immigration” in their wallets, criminal justice systems, and the outcomes of their elections, they are incentivised to swing the pendulum (too) far back.
Liberals should advocate reforms to ensure democratic excesses are limited, so as to ultimately preserve the fundamental liberty that is freedom of movement.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
if you like what you have just read, support the Daily Friend