For the past several weeks, the town of Herndon, Virginia has been in the news over a proposal before the City Council to build a shelter for illegal immigrant day laborers to gather daily as they look for work. As you can expect, the debate has been heated on both sides.
Those against the shelter make the valid point that the people to whom it would cater are in this country illegally and that the people who hire them to work are breaking the law. Homeowners who live near the area where the shelter would be built and laborers presently gather in the open worry about declining property values and, understandably, about large numbers of men loitering in their neighborhood. Those in favor of the plan, mostly people on the left side of the political spectrum, talk about immigrants rights, “fairness” and other such things. Not surprisingly, a political firestorm has developed —- thanks in no small part to certain talk radio hosts.
Since I don’t live in or near Herndon, I don’t necessarily have a dog in this fight. My gut reaction, non-libertarian as it might be, is that the opponents of the plan have a valid point. The idea of a local government actively facilitating illegal activity, in this case the hiring of illegal immigrants by construction contractors, is troublesome. Also, it is open secret that none of the police departments in any of the local jurisdictions around Washington, D.C. will do anything (such as call INS) if they happen to encounter an illegal immigrant who hasn’t otherwise broken the law.
At the same time, though, these people wouldn’t be coming here if there wasn’t a demand for them. The housing market in Northern Virginia has been going like gang busters for years, and the construction industry has been booming right along with it. This means that there is a high demand for skilled and unskilled construction labor. The likelihood that there are at least some illegal immigrants working on a construction project around here is pretty high. I remember visiting the job site when my house was being built in 2002; the drywall contractor was installing insulation and every one of the men I encountered spoke no English — this is not necessarily an indication that they were here illegally but that is certainly likely. Heck, when one of the local counties was building a jail annex a few years back, the INS conducted a raid that resulted in dozens of illegal immigrants being taken into custody —- at the county jail no less.
Obviously, there is a demand for cheap construction labor right now. Given this, I don’t blame these people for coming here to work. The question is what, if anything, we should do as a nation to prevent them from coming here in the first place.
As a libertarian, I believe, in principle, in open borders. However, we live in a world where such an idea is impractical. 9/11 proved, at least to me, that lax immigration laws can have devastating consequences. I don’t care if people come here to install drywall. I do care if they come here to kill people. Border security right now is a joke, especially along the Mexican border. If national security means anything in the present age, it means controlling the borders. If this means that fewer people will come here to work, then it may be the price we’ll have to pay until the war on terror is won.
