Every now and then, I get reminded — sometimes forcefully — that I'm a bit out of step with many Libertarians on a couple of issues.  I'm a stubborn jerk, and I tend to stick to my opinions, often longer than I ought to.  But this one has nagged at me and nagged at me.

Immigration.

At the Georgia LP convention last weekend we had, among many other excellent speakers, an excellent speaker named Ed Hudgins, Executive Director of The Atlas Society (http://www.atlassociety.org).  Dr. Hudgins spoke on the importance of moral principles, and one of the topics he covered was immigration.  He raised a key point, that people faced with the horrors in some other countries could hardly do anything more moral than try to get their families into THIS country.  That's a good point, but it didn't quite tip me over the line.  But I wasn't quite sure.  I've been worrying at it like a bad tooth.

Then today I remembered The Free State Project.  If you haven't heard of it, the FSP (http://www.freestateproject.org) is a plot to overthro...  I mean a plan to create a Libertarian state by migrating enough Libertarians into a single American state to effectively take over its political machinery.  They are trying to gather 20,000 dedicated volunteers to migrate to New Hampshire and make it the first state dedicated to Liberty since FDR took office.   

That's a great idea, but it also reveals an important truth.  If 20 thousand immigrants can effectively change the politics of a state, what can 20 MILLION — or 40 or 60 — do to the politics of a nation?

The Libertarian principle of free access across borders is based on the assumption that the people crossing those borders primarily want an open, free society, and have the cultural and philosophical background to maintain one.   Experience renders that assumption very dubious.

The principle is right, but the math isn't.  So, I'm still not convinced.  But I'm listening.