Why No Walls Between US States?

[This is a post in my series on free migration. I will keep an overview with short summaries updated that you can find here: Synopsis: Arguments for Free Migration.]

Richard Cobden, one of the leaders of the free trade movement, made this point against protectionism long ago: If it is good to have trade barriers around a country, why not also within? As he explained before the House of Commons in 1841 (according to John Morley’s “The Life of Richard Cobden”):

Suppose now that it were but the Thames instead of the Atlantic which separated the two countries — suppose that the people on one side were mechanics and artisans, capable by their industry of producing a vast supply of manufactures; and that the people on the other side were agriculturists, producing infinitely more than they could themselves consume of corn, pork, and beef — fancy these two separate peoples anxious and willing to exchange with each other the produce of their common industries, and fancy a demon rising from the middle of the river — for I cannot imagine anything human in such a position and performing such an office — fancy a demon rising from the river, and holding in his hand an Act of Parliament, and saying, ‘You shall not supply each other’s wants;’ and then in addition to that, let it be supposed that this demon said to his victim with an affected smile, ‘This is for your benefit; I do it entirely for your protection!’ Where was the difference between the Thames and the Atlantic?

Basically, this is a reductio ad absurdum. Any general argument that claims to prove the advantage of protectionism is by its generality also an argument for protectionism within a country. And you don’t have to stop at splitting England in two. You can never have too much of a good thing: By the same logic, you should divide the country into even smaller entities that practice protectionism, and in the final analysis into individuals who no longer trade with each other. That must be optimal. Or maybe something is wrong with the general arguments for protectionism.

Others have already adapted the argument to migration. But the general assumption is that migration restrictions, for example between US states, are absurd and unworkable. As I will show now: It can be done. Surely, you would have to change the “Commerce Clause” of the Constitution. But then that is perhaps a small price for reaping the great advantages of migration restrictions.

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Just look at homicide rates for US states in 2016: Louisiana had 11.8 per 100,000, Missouri 8.8, Alabama 8.4, Illinois 8.2, Maryland and Mississippi each 8.0. They maybe don’t send their best to other states like New Hampshire with only 1.3, Maine with 1.5, Minnesota with 1.8, Massachusetts and North Dakota with 2.0 each. Those are still hellholes by European standards of 1.0 or below, but comparably peaceful. (Econometricians, please look into the strong correlation between states with an initial “M” and extreme results here.)

There is also a case for keeping cheap labor out. Look at GDP per capita in 2016: Missisippi, Idaho, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Carolina, and Alabama fell in a range from 31,881 to 37,261 dollars, while North Dakota, Delaware, Alaska, Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts had almost double that from 62,837 to 65,545 dollars (DC is an oulier with a whopping 160,472 dollars).

It is totally plausible that the poor folks from the former states would trek to the rich ones to take advantage of their welfare states. Immigration restrictionists can never get enough of Milton Friedman’s unfounded dictum: “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” So, if he said it, immigration restrictionists must not turn a deaf ear to that and have to draw the obvious conclusion from all this:

There is a strong case for building a wall across the United States to keep poor and criminal people from Alabama and Mississippi out of Massachusetts and North Dakota!

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Now, one could object: But that is absurd, no country would ever restrict internal migration!

Never mind that that is so, for example, in China, and also the countries of the former Warsaw pact all had such policies. Nationalists can learn a lot more from Socialism as it seems. But there are also two historical examples that show how eminently practical restrictions on internal migration are and also how far you can go with the principles: Switzerland and Germany. As a bonus, there is also a great argument in it how splitting countries into autonomous units will lead to more liberty. Secessionists, pay close attention.

Switzerland

In 1798, French troops overran the Old Swiss Confederacy, which collapsed in no time. The Helvetic Republic was founded in the same year on the French model, with a central state “one and indivisible,” freedom of trade, freedom of worship, and also uniform Swiss citizenship, which now meant free internal migration, something that had not been possible before. There was a compromise that those who moved to a municipality could not take advantage of communal property, though.

In 1803, Napoléon had to backtrack and re-established part of the old order as the Swiss Confederation, which lasted until 1814. After the Congress of Vienna, the old order came back completely with the Restoration. There was practically no central state any longer, almost only for defense, and all powers reverted to the cantons.

For immigration restrictionists, this must be a great example. It was now hardly possible to move between cantons, but even better, it was also hard to move between municipalities within them. If you expect lots of walls here, I have to disappoint you. All it takes is to make it illegal to take residence, and before all, to exclude people from working in the municipality. E-Verify seems like a workable solution for the US here.

Only with the Revolution of 1848 did this change again. The Constitution of 1848 brought back free internal migration in Article 41 between (not necessarily within) the cantons although with the restriction: only for Christians, ie. not for Jews. It took until 1866 before this was abolished where the canton of Aargau was a holdout that disallowed immigration of Swiss (!) Jews until 1879.

If you are interested in the background: I have republished an essay by the German Liberal Karl Braun from 1864 on this: “Die Freizügigkeits-Gesetzgebung der Schweiz” (The Legislation on Free Migration in Switzerland). He notes (p.26/27):

Article 41 restricts free movement to members of “Christian denominations,” an incomprehensible narrow-mindedness of liberal Switzerland, which every summer lets thousands of tourists roam around without asking about their religion and which has accepted the capital they import with the saw “non olet” [it does not stink] no matter from whose hands it came. As it is called, it was “to take into account” a traditional hatred against Jews and the peculiar institutions of some canton with this prescription. The moment when this specifically Swiss weakness vis-à-vis the general European cultural consciousness must be reprimanded has already arrived.

What happened was that France proposed a trade agreement at the time and insisted on free movement for its citizens regardless of religion. As Karl Braun notes this would create the absurd situation that French Jews and Muslims (Algeria was a part of France!) could freely move to and within Switzerland while Swiss Jews could not.

Karl Braun also mocks restrictions on immigration from abroad via “waiting periods,” which were mostly directed against Germans, and writes that Switzerland had “all cause to be grateful to the German governments that they provided an opportunity for Swiss universities to acquire such excellent teaching staff for relatively very low expenses because of the difficulties that some of them had created for science and its exponents.” (Cf. p.29 of my edition.)

Germany

The situation was rather parallel in Germany. The German states under the old regime had very restrictive regulations for internal migration that went down to the municipal level. Prussia introduced free internal migration with few restrictions with the Stein-Hardenberg reforms in the early 19th centuries. But in other states, it was hardly possible to move to the next municipality. The French occupied the West of Germany and introduced freedom of trades and free migration as the great achievements of the French Revolution. But after Napoléon’s defeat there was a similar rollback as in Switzerland.

In 1815, the German Confederation was established, which lasted until 1866, with a short hiatus from 1848 to 1850 because of the Revolution of 1848. It was a loose federation of dozens of autonomous states with hardly any central authority apart from defense. Its rather rudimentary Constitution granted the right of emigration to all citizens (apart from those of military age), but there was no corresponding right to immigrate. Hence, Germans from another state were treated as “deutsche Ausländer” (German foreigners) and often found themselves in a precarious situation.

While Prussian free internal migration was kept mostly intact, it was curtailed. In other states, even internal migration remained hard, sometimes almost impossible. The worst states in this regard were also the poorest: the two Mecklenburgs and Bavaria. Those who wanted to improve their condition hence emigrated from Germany to countries with free migration: France, Belgium, the UK, and before all, the US. If you are interested in the background, I have republished Friedrich Bitzer’s “Das Recht auf Armenunterstützung und die Freizügigkeit” (The Right to Poor Relief and Free Migration) from 1863 that has the details on the appalling conditions in many German states.

The German Liberal Robert Zelle, later mayor of Berlin, published the heartrending story of a poor tailor from Mecklenburg in 1862 as “Ein deutsches Lebensbild” (A German biography) that I have republished. This Johann Leidemit had immigrated illegally to Prussia in the 1850s. At one point, he was falsely accused of a crime, and that put him on the radar of the Prussian authorities.

Since he was not allowed to marry in Mecklenburg (!), he had brought his fiancée along, and tried to become a Prussian citizen, also because Prussia had freedom of marriage. Although Leidemit was in good standing, the authorities refused this and deported him over and over to Mecklenburg where he could not find work to support his family. Finally, he died from exhaustion on one of his deportations — they had to walk back — in a little village, Hammelstall.

Robert Zelle remarks sarcastically (p.42 of my edition):

Perhaps Leidemit’s son will one day come on his travels [as a journeyman] to Hammelstall and visit his father’s grave, perhaps he will then plant a cross on it. And he will then write the words as a motto on it that a few years ago the Bavarian deputy Lasaulx uttered from the tribune [of the Bavarian parliament]: “Should I be born once more, I don’t want to it to be in Germany again.”

Zelle’s book, originally a speech, ends with these morals (p.42/43 of my edition):

1. It is a shame for the German nation how the affairs of the little states [Kleinstaaterei] remain in operation; and

2. We do not want to ask our deputies for new laws, but to strike out three scores [ein Schock] of the old ones.

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The backdrop to these books was the call since the later 1850s from the “Kongreß deutscher Volkswirte” (Congress of German Economists), an organization of Liberal scientists and politicians, to do away with restrictions on migration, not only within, but also to Germany. The central demand in a resolution from 1863 was that:

Everybody, no matter to which municipality, country, or nation they may belong shall be allowed: to stay and take residence in any location, and also to pursue any admissible profession, to marry and found a family, and to acquire real estate.

That’s why it makes me laugh when people claim that Classical Liberals can be against free migration because all Classical Liberals were for it.

The “Kongreß deutscher Volkswirte” was quite successful. With the North German Confederation, many of its members became members of the Reichstag [national parliament] for the Liberal parties, Progress Party and National Liberals, and pushed for free migration. As a first step, all passports were abolished in 1867, ie. noone — neither Germans nor foreigners — needed a visa to travel to and from Germany and around the country.

A little later free migration for Germans and also the right to marry was established where it was not already the case as in Prussia. This was expanded to all of Germany in 1871, with — Germans will not be surprised — some special exceptions for Bavaria. There was no general right to immigrate from abroad, but that was effectively so because of trade agreements with other countries for about two decades before Bismarck started to roll this back in the mid-1880s for Russian citizens, mostly directed against the immigration of Poles.

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So, dear immigration restrictionists: It can be done!

Why hence stop at building a wall only along the border with Mexico? There are many more borders that could go up also within the US. If the general arguments are good, then why such half-measures? You could restrict also migration between the states and even within them. That must must be optimal. And it is totally great as you can see from my examples.