Written by Noah Carl.
Illegal immigration is a blatant violation of the rule of law (the clue being in the word “illegal”). Hence anyone who believes in the rule of law ought to oppose illegal immigration and ought to be in favour of removing illegal immigrants.
Reasonable people can disagree about legal immigration. But I don’t really understand how you can support illegal immigration unless you reject the idea of borders entirely. Even Bryan Caplan opposes open borders in certain cases, such as for the state of Israel, so he doesn’t believe in them as a matter of principle.1 Practically no one does outside of fringe anarchist circles.
And, yes, there are categories of illegal immigrants that should be exempt from removal, such as individuals who were brought into the country as very young children (and were therefore not responsible for the crime of entering and then remaining in the country illegally). But the majority should presumably be removed. No one who accepts the idea of borders (i.e., no one except fringe anarchists) can seriously defend the policy: “illegal immigration should be a crime, unless you’ve already committed it”.
Having established that most illegal immigrants should be removed from the country, the question arises of how to achieve this with the least possible disruption and infringement of civil liberties. Which brings us to the present situation.
