“We’re a small country. We can’t let them all in. There aren’t enough houses for them, schools are over-subscribed, and the hospitals are too crowded. So they should all go back to where they came from, and if they don’t want to go back then we should make them; if the authorities won’t make them go back then we should do whatever it takes, including force if necessary. They are not English. They shouldn’t be here. I have a right to protect my family. This is my country and I’m proud of it. Patriotism isn’t a crime.”
This is how this easy argument usually goes for those who oppose immigration; I used to roll my eyes in annoyance at this argument but now I’m quite nervous of it.
The only counter arguments I can put forward to this “We are full” claim is that it’s not ‘literally’ true that the country is ‘so full’ that you cannot move or that we have no more empty green fields, because we actually can move about and we actually do have empty green fields… plenty of them. Another counter argument to this claim, from a libertarian perspective (the NAP), is even if the country is full, why should the property rights of one or many (immigrants) be violated in order to make room for everybody else… who just happen to be English? After all, there are only two ways in which space can be made: the first is peacefully, an individual leaves voluntarily (without violence or the threat of violence being used against him/her); the second is forcefully, an individual leaves on the basis that violence or the threat of violence has been used against him/her either by an individual or a group of individuals.
This argument from individuals who oppose immigration who say that there aren’t enough houses for immigrants, that schools are over-subscribed and that hospitals are too crowded seems to me to be claim not about immigration but an argument about the inability of the state to respond to the demand for housing, schools, and hospitals—all three sectors which are distorted by economic ‘policy’ (state interference in economic life).
As for the “they are not English”, well my simple response is basically “so what”. And the “they shouldn’t be here”, well my simple response is “who are you to decide who should and shouldn’t be here?”
And as for the consensus patriotism rubbish (or the “I love my country” rubbish), well my simple response is to ask him/her to remind me when was patriotism about hating foreigners or supporting everything the government wants? In fact I believe most people who say they love their country and want it back seem to love a country that they don’t live in anymore or it doesn’t exist anymore or it didn’t ever exist. To me patriotism is about defending liberty, or that quality that permits us in a free society to criticise/defy government when it’s wrong, or loving some sort of history of tolerance and openness and liberalism (in the classical European sense).
Are there better arguments to the ones I have given?
