no one owes the truth to those who hold a gun to your head. (Note: there is a difference between property right violation and Men transacting freely with other Men)

Kind of like Nazi Germany.

A famous Objectivist who worked in the film industry was capable of great acting in order to get here.

I really have no objections to legal immigrants coming to this country. I say legal. These legal persons should be required to get a job or start a business within 3 months or face deportation. They will NOT be allowed any social benefits, except emergency medical. They will have to register in whatever town they decide to settle in and will be monorted for at least 3 months and maby the first year to make sure they comply. No criminal activity permitted or immediate deportation. Visitors should also me required to checkin every few months to make sure they do not over stay their visa. If here to attend school, they passing grades are required to deportation. These are just a few ideas.

The greatest actors are not in Hollywood; anyone can mimic any oath.

I understand some of your frustration. However, we've had looters in office draining the life from our freedom and rights much longer than any immigrant issues or demands. That's our clue.

In a company I worked for 15 years ago, I unsuccessfully argued against the cost of HR policies that duplicated everything in Spanish - documentation, signage, meetings, etc. I think it will take rational business leaders to help crack the 'politically correct' coddling that discourages the 'melting pot' we once had.

Your statement regarding conservatives' aiming at the immigrants rather than the socialist progressive Democrats is a reasonable one. But I ask you to consider, if removing socialist progressive Democrats is a feasible and reasonable goal (It may not be feasible.), how does one (and I do mean one, as opposed to many of us working together) go about doing that? If one were to take a chess (or warfare) strategy, one might have to take out a few pawns before exposing those in real power. The illegal immigration issue is one that should be amongst the easiest starting points for elimination of the socialist progressive Democrats. However, Objectivists' insistence on freedom to travel has made it difficult to starve the socialist progressive Democrats of the votes necessary to entrench their power. Yes, I am saying that Objectivists' insistence on open borders is enabling the socialist progressive Democrats that Objectivists would like to see go away. This is precisely my point. Via insistence on an open borders policy, Objectivists are not self-generating a sufficient number of self-sustaining actions to continue their own lives. In fact, they are being self-destructive.

You are quite right in that it is time to turn away and walk on. The cancer is beyond treatment.

Your suggestion is that entitlement reform is the solution to the problem. As I have said many times in this forum, it is only a partial solution. Without an active screening process to rid a society of looters and moochers, they will arise again and again.

As to the greater threat being moocher immigrants or looters in office, the two are highly intertwined and are symbiotic to each other while both being parasitic to us. The looter problem is fundamentally easier to eliminate through the voting process, but only if moochers do not have an opportunity to elect their looter benefactors.

The solution to the bear trap is ... to shrug and leave. This is why I spent time considering a physical Atlantis. However, given the predilection toward open borders amongst Gulchers, a physical Atlantis would soon devolve into yet another moocher/looter paradise.

The reason why a largely open borders policy worked in America up through WW2 is that it cost so much to come to America that the travel cost and distance formed a sufficient barrier to entry to moochers. With the advent of inexpensive transportation, this barrier is greatly lowered, only making the entitlement pie that much more enticing.

Even if the entitlement pie were eliminated entirely, an open borders policy will result in immigration without assimilation into a culture of value for value exchange. Galt's oath was the key assimilation requirement.

My point is that moocher immigration is a symptom of U.S. citizen looters in office giving things away they have no right to. Do you really think moocher immigrants would hear anything but derisive laughter if we had significant entitlement reform? Which is the greater threat to our pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness—moocher immigrants or looters in office?

A moocher immigrant "problem" is a head fake followed by "fixes" that punch our liberty. More looters are hired to manage and implement an "immigration solution" that does not address the cause...and we still have our leg in the looter's bear trap, dying of infection.

None of your criticisms are the result of Objectivist-based policy.

Well....yes, you are correct. But we don't need to be encouraging them..

Zen, I do agree with you that there is the point of individual responsibility and rights. I do think the issue is complicated in that you cannot apply those concepts when you are held within the framework of the worlds social structure which is built with borders and govt controls. While it would be nice to have totally free access to go where you would, how then do you stop the hordes of those who allowed the govt monster to overwhelm them, and now are running to another place to inflict their own screwed up notions of rights and responsibilities on others. In order to have the freedom and personal responsibility your desire, we would need to remove about 90% of the current population who are infected with stupidity and the belief that either govt can fix and give everything for free, or just believe that you need to give them what you have, because it's "fair". That is exactly what I see this situation as, people who have allowed their state to fail, so they now are in my home saying I have to give them everything because that's "fair". I didn't invite them in my house, so they have no moral right to be in it. As far as the real enemy, I agree it is any political creature, Democrap or Republicrat, who thinks my property is theirs by some inalienable right (taxes, fees or just "law"), however, they have allowed this mess to come to pass because they want to manipulate it for their own ends. None of this has any benefit or moral or ethical right to happen, IMHO.

That's what these moronic, worthless authors will call you if you oppose them. Even a dog under a table knows to respect the hand that feeds. These "humanist" looters do so in the name of their people, their religion, their utter lack of worth. Because they are not worthy, they demand we give them worth - which they have not earned. The more you give them to go away, the more they come crawling back for still more. There is but one way to end this. To finish off every last policy that allows them to continue to make these demands. Until that happens, I personally don't want to be bothered.

Ignorant fools

"There is no greater victory than to fall from this world a free Man" Spartacus

kh; There are just too many in this country and many others that simply can not think rationally or objectively about the freedom and rights of the individual, nor accept their own individual responsibility for allowing progressive socialist to take over the world we all occupy. The very concept of having to obtain permission from any government bureaucrat or multiples of that most evil of all human occupations, just to travel from point A to point B is one of the most repulsive that I can imagine, or to expand one's opportunities to use their minds more productively and to improve their lives.

To follow the conservative's marching band to the border, aimed at the immigrant rather than the real culprit behind their concerns, socialist progressive Democrats, is to follow the magician's stock in trade of 'watch my right hand while my left hand does the manipulation', or the pickpockets 'bump on your shoulder while their hands in your pocket'. This is why Rand said that Conservatives would destroy this country, and why the country has gone too far away from individual rights to ever get them back, without a major reset of some type.

We've reached the point of no use, in attempting to educate or illustrate the values of individual rights and liberty. It's time to just turn away and walk on.

I had a much better opinion of the human spirit when I had a Christian viewpoint of humanity and before I read Atlas Shrugged. AS made me realize just how few people are truly worthy of my respect. That being said, I do respect all contributors to this forum. Anyone with the courage of his/her conviction to participate in this forum is worthy of respect.

Yes, we are back on this again. When the open borders Objectivists realize their flawed premises, then the argument will be over.

The issue isn't "immigrants" its illegal immigrants, people who violate national sovereignty and milk the system (be that welfare, taking an American job, placing their kids in our schools, using our hospitals because people in need can't be turned away). Illegal aliens entirely violate property rights. And yes, the fed gov of any government is given the right by their people to enforce property rights (borders) for the nation as a whole.

This is something, after all this discussion, everyone would honestly acknowledge.

Oh boy! We are back on this again? Hasn't everyone already expressed their opinion on this before. Are we really going to rehash all of this. It appears no one is changing anyone else's mind so why keep arguing?

I have a much better opinion of the human spirit than you do. Who do you think originally built our country? Immigrants. I do not think road improvements are the job of the federal or state gov't. I believe the only job of the gov't is outlined in the original constitution: courts, congress and the presidency with a check and balance system. Their job is to protect the citizens personal property rights and to protect us against force. I do not believe they should be in charge of infrastructure, schools, etc. So did AR.

I mean no offense, khalling, but if a country has an open borders policy, then there is no point in having citizenship because there is no home to defend.

A policy of asylum or of a country granting rights to refugees is, by definition, altruism at the expense of its citizenry.

The presumption that you are making is that people are coming here to better their lives by their own minds and hands. At least a significant minority are coming because of the public assistance, public education, public healthcare, ad nauseam that they can get at producers' expense, as the aforementioned article clearly documents.

I enjoy customs from everywhere, but immigrants bring their non-Objectivist values with them. This includes immigration from the Northeast to Florida, for example. A relatively recent transplant from the Northeast got elected to county commissioner here in Florida ostensibly as a Republican (in name only) and immediately proposed a 6 cent per gallon gas tax to pay for road improvements. While that is a legitimate function of county government, it exemplifies how an open borders policy will only serve to ensure that there will be nowhere that is free from looters and moochers.

I totally disagree. Everyone's ancestors in our country came from another country. I believe in open borders. I just do not believe in public assistance, public education, public healthcare, ad nauseam. This only attracts the looters and moochers. But people coming here to better their lives and even to share some of their colorful and interesting customs are very welcome to me. Our country has stagnated into complacency and we need the constant new blood of people who really appreciate our freedoms. Like Ayn Rand.

An open borders policy is ultimately self-destructive to the host country. When immigrants are allowed to violate the laws of the host country without sanction, then that is a form of condoning their code of values as being at least the equal of the host country's encoded values (encoded in their laws).

Regarding the "noble character" argument, the general Objectivist presumption is that no one is allowed to restrict an immigrant from pursuing his/her self-interest. What if the immigrant's objectives are to destroy the host country's (and its citizens) rights? In the American Southwest, many illegal immigrants have openly stated their aims to make that part of Mexico. A number of Muslims have openly stated their desires to take over certain enclaves (Dearborn, MI; an area near Minneapolis, Toronto, London, much of France, etc.) in an effort to eventually convert those areas (and eventually more) into Sharia-compliant areas. If people with such objectives are not restricted from entry, then their values have indeed been condoned. Any country, by accepting entry of people who openly state goals that are contradictory to those of Objectivism, is participating in its own self-destruction and will not live for long. Nations, like individuals, must execute enough self-generated actions to sustain their own lives; however, unlike individuals, nations do not have nearly so many rights. They should only have the rights that individuals delegate to them.

If anything, the article that started this discussion should forever end the argument that illegal immigrants are "in the shadows". Those who are "in the shadows" do not make demands.

They are not guilty because of where they were born (displaced in your words). However, by not expecting assimilation into the culture of the country to which they are immigrating, the immigrants and their progeny will gradually corrode away the host country's values enshrined its Constitution.

Be my guest. Remove what you consider to be the bear traps (the welfare system and the looters and the moochers), if you can. What I am saying is that the open borders policy is just as big a bear trap as the welfare system. The open borders system is what has empowered the looters to create such a multi-tiered bear trap. The immigration policy from 1924 didn't cause a problem prior to 1965, but Ted Kennedy's immigration policy starting in 1965 most certainly has.