Libertarian Presidential Candidates Champion ‘Open Borders’ – By Matt Welch (Reason) / Feb 26 2020
In between Trump’s restrictionism and Democrats’ Medicare-for-all-undocumented enthusiasm lies a party basically unified behind mass immigration without welfare.
Donald Trump, the most anti-immigrant president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is running against a Democratic presidential field that almost unanimously favors providing government-run health insurance to illegal immigrants. Surely there is some middle ground between Stephen Miller-style family separation and a massive expansion of the welfare state to millions living outside the law?
The Libertarian Party, still the country’s number-three political grouping (however distantly), has a platform very copacetic toward immigrants, if not quite via state largesse.
“Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful,” the party’s immigration plank reads. “A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas….Of course, if someone has a record of violence, credible plans for violence, or acts violently, then Libertarians support blocking their entry, deporting, and/or prosecuting and imprisoning them, depending on the offense.”
Bottom line: “Libertarians do not support classifying undocumented immigrants as criminals. Our current immigration system is an embarrassment. People who would like to follow the legal procedures are unable to because these procedures are so complex and expensive and lengthy. If Americans want immigrants to enter through legal channels, we need to make those channels fair, reasonable, and accessible.”
To a notable degree, the L.P.’s top 2020 presidential candidates are hewing to the party’s radical-for-American-politics immigration platform.
Continue to article: https://reason.com/2020/02/26/libertarian-presidential-candidates-champion-open-borders/
