In practice this has some similarities with merit-based immigration proposals, but without the government deciding which professions, educational credentials, etc., are desirable. Nor would this immigration policy have the federal government assigning quotas to countries, deciding what ratio of software developers from India, petroleum engineers from Nigeria, or wealthy investors from China should be given Green Cards. Instead one would simply not be given a Green Card or a path to citizenship unless one’s wealth and/or income insured that you would be paying at least as much in taxes as any social service expenditures you and your children trigger. And people given any temporary guest worker Visas would not be allowed to bring their children with them; only childless immigrants or those who have family who can keep their children in their home countries would be given temporary Visas.

Libertarians will of course object that in denying a Honduran family the freedom to cross the U.S.-Mexican border you are limiting their freedom. But in allowing them in you are forcing an American citizen to work to produce tens of thousands of dollars to pay for the schooling of their children and other social services for their family. What morality—and what electoral strategy—prioritizes the right of of a Honduran (who has already escaped violence in her homeland by fleeing to Mexico) to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, over the right of an American not to be subjected to forced labor to feed, house, and cloth that Honduran and her family? This is a question libertarian open-borders advocates in any political party cannot answer.

Bruce Majors has written for the Hill, The Federalist, the Daily Caller and other publications. He was a 2016–2017 fellow of the American Media Institute.

Image: Mexicans (white shirts), who live in Mexico, hug relatives (blue shirts), who live in the U.S., during the Hugs Not Walls event on the border between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, U.S., May 12, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez