How State-to-State Open Borders Have Been Used to Expand Government Power

“Open borders” is a phrase usually heard in the context of international borders only.

We hear far less about the issue of open borders between member states within a confederation or union of states.

After all,  no one thinks twice of crossing the borders between member states within the United States of America. Increasingly, one is similarly unimpressed when crossing from one EU member state to another in Europe. 

Also unnoticed is the way that disappearing borders between states have helped pave the way for advocates of ever-greater consolidation of power into the hands of the central government.

It’s a process that has taken decades—or even centuries in some cases—but it is real.

The process of centralization often proceeds in four steps:

One: So long as there are internal border controls, each member state can control the flow of migrants, goods, and services. Thus, if one state has legalized a dangerous substance or device, neighboring states can still stop those substances and devices at the member state’s border. Similarly, if one state is believed to be fostering the inflow of “undesirable” migrants or fugitives, neighboring member states can respond by regulating the flow of persons into their own territories. There is no need for a universal policy, because each member state is able to shield itself from the effects of policies in neighboring member states.

Two: But some activists and lawmakers recognize there are benefits to open borders. So, seeking greater ease for the movement of goods, capital, and workers—and in some cases to transfer the cost of border enforcement to others—member states seek to minimize or abolish member-state borders as functioning and patrolled borders.

Three: But this does not come without risks and externalities. Without union-wide and uniform laws, it is feared “bad actors” and prohibited goods can easily cross from less regulated areas to more regulated ones. 

Four: So a solution is proposed: the central government will assume the cost of border control, transferring border-control activities to the new union-wide border encompassing all member states. Within this border, lawmakers seek union-wide uniform policies. “Bad actors” are declared to be criminals in all jurisdictions and the “dangerous” substances and devices can now only legally enter across international boundaries. The central government is now expected to provide enforcement maintaining this new status quo. What had once been the responsibility of the member states has been transferred to a newly empowered central government.

This process is now underway in Europe where the EU government is moving closer toward demanding “harmonization” of tax rates and that all states within the open-border zone adopt more stringent gun-control laws. But for now, we’ll stick to examples in the United States:

Cross-Border Travel as an Excuse for National Gun Control

In the gun control debate, it has long been argued the lack of state borders means a greater need for uniform nationwide gun control. In an analysis from National Public Radio, for example, the author concludes the high homicide rates in Washington, DC and Chicago are partly to blame on gun laws in neighboring states. According to political scientist Philip Cook, the stringent gun laws in places like Chicago are “only at best partially effective, because the borders are permeable.”

Were there not free movement from state to state, of course, it would be more difficult to argue that Wisconsin is to blame for Chicago’s homicide rate.

The argument by gun-control advocates in this case follows a now-familiar pattern: the presence of a relatively low amount of regulation in one member state (i.e, Indiana) is viewed as a threat to surrounding member states like Indiana who then insist open borders between states mean low-regulation states must change their policies to match the high-regulation states.

The Federalization of Immigration

Up until the late nineteenth century, immigration control had been regarded as a state matter. States heavily impacted by immigration—especially New York and Massachusetts—had imposed a variety of laws restricting the movement of immigrant paupers and requiring bonds paid on new immigrants to ensure they did not become a burden on public funds. As late as the 1870s, bills aimed at federalizing immigration policy were killed by majorities in Congress.

Part of the reason there was a lack of a national consensus was because views of immigrants nationwide were hardly uniform. Some frontier states actively sought immigrants in order to increase the development of farmland and increase state populations. Moreover, in 1897, President Cleveland vetoed legislation attempting to further restrict immigration on the grounds that many states and territories of the US—especially those bordering Canada which provided migrant labor to American farmers—benefited from the free movement of migrants. Cleveland noted these parts of the country “have separate and especial interests which in many cases make an interchange of labor between their people and their alien neighbors most important.”

Nevertheless, agitation from anti-immigrant forces had increasingly lobbied for greater federal controls in part to counter the assumed threat of free movement of migrants from some states to others.1 Thus in 1876, the US Supreme Court ruled it was necessary to provide “a system of laws in this matter applicable to all ports and all vessels” in order to settle a longstanding “matter of contest and complaint.”  By the early twentieth century, the state and local origins of immigration policy were all but forgotten.

Prohibition and the Drug War

Regulating guns and migrants haven’t been the only excuses given for expanding federal power in the name of national uniformity. Centralized control was also deemed to be necessary in order to control the transport and manufacture of alcoholic beverages. In the years leading up to the adoption of nationwide prohibition, all but sixteen states had adopted their own versions of prohibition. For the moralists, however, this wasn’t enough. Those states where alcohol remained legal—mostly states with large numbers of Catholics and ethnic Germans—offered a haven to residents of “dry” states who could easily cross over into the “wet” states.  Even worse, people could illegally import alcohol into dry states from wet states with relative ease. By imposing nationwide prohibition on everyone, however, access to alcohol could be more easily attacked through federal action.

We see similar issues today as some states have begun to legalize recreational marijuana, much to the dismay of officials in neighboring states. Once again, the answer is alleged to be the federalization of policy and the abolition of local prerogatives. In 2014, two marijuana prohibitionist states, Oklahoma and Nebraska, unsuccessfully sued Colorado in response to Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana. The two states were concerned that the lack of a patrolled border between Colorado and its neighbors was an unacceptable threat to the public in prohibitionist states. Thus, the two states petitioned the court to declare state law null and void and to rule federal law reigns supreme in matters of drug prohibition. Fortunately on this particular issue, the federal courts have not yet decided to declare federal law supreme, as has happened many times before.

How Open Borders Are Used and Abused

Often, the ideological motivation behind open borders among member states of a political union is admirable. Among the creators of both the United States and European Union, for instance, it appears at least some of them were motivated by a desire to increase the free flow of people and goods for the economic and cultural betterment of all. Moreover, there is no danger in individual states lowering trade barriers or border controls unilaterally.The problem comes in when there is a general government—such as the US federal government or EU Commission—to impose uniformity of law.

Unfortunately, economic integration between member states in the US did not come organically. It was imposed by above, so low-regulation states not be an inconvenience to high-regulation states. We have seen this with alcohol, with migrants, and with guns.

In all cases, the removal of internal barriers between member states has provided the impetus for some members to demand more regulation on other members. The means for doing this is then present so long as there is a strong enough central government in place. Since at least the late nineteenth century in the US, this has clearly been the case. 

Experience now suggests these sorts of open borders really only work if done under certain conditions: 1) border controls are decreased unilaterally by each member state in an ad hoc and decentralized system. 2) The central government is too weak to impose uniform nationwide laws without widespread consensus. weak. 3) Member states bring to the table a significant amount of tolerance for their neighbors, and for the fact people might do things differently in other places. In decades past, for instance, it was simply accepted by most that some places have stringent gun laws and other places don’t. In the minds of many policymakers, this created certain risks and externalities, but these were tolerated in light of the ideological notion that not every aspect of daily life ought to be regulated from the center.

It is not longer clear, however, that we live in a political environment where this sort of tolerate or decentralization is still valued. It now appears that a lack of functioning borders between member states—instead of promoting unity and cooperation—may actually be promoting conflict. For example, were there a patrolled border between California and the rest of the United States it is unlikely the rest of the nation would regard immigration into the United States to be nearly the high stakes political issue it now is. Similarly, If it were not so easy to travel unobstructed from gun-friendly Indiana to gun-prohibitionist Chicago, we wouldn’t be hearing about how we need federal action on the topic of gun control.

As results from political centralization in general, the lack of physical separation between states in the US has increased the stakes of who controls the central government and influences its policymakers. In the long term, the attempt at building unity through the abolition of borders may ironically lead to greater regional conflict.

• 1. There is an additional problem of immigrants become political actors —i.e., voting — even without moving from state to state. This way, they can affect national politics as voters in the same state as their port of entry. It is likely many would then oppose immigration of this sort even if state-to-state borders are closed, and if all states are part of a single national political jurisdiction. This issue, however, can be addressed through naturalization laws, rather than immigration controls. See: https://mises.org/wire/dont-confuse-immigration-naturalization