Thursday, November 26, 2015

A Modest Proposal to Allow Syrian Refugees Into the Country


As a libertarian and a free marketer, I strongly believe in open borders. If you believe that the United States government should not stop Mexico fro m bombarding the American market with tomatoes, you should also have no problem with being bombarded with Mexican workers crossing the border to pick tomatoes. The practical economic results are identical. As such, I am particularly angry with Rand Paul for selling out his libertarian principles to appeal to the bigotry and paranoia of the Republican base in stopping Syrian refugees from entering the country. I do recognize that there are real security concerns, but this is no different than any other liberty issue. Yes government must inevitably act to place restrictions on liberty, but let us allow discussions regarding government action to start with a presumption of liberty. When the government wishes to restrict liberty, the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate that they are doing only what is strictly necessary to defend people's physical safety and that safety is their sole concern.

In thinking about how to let more Syrian refugees in while addressing legitimate security concerns, an idea just occurred to me. We already have a system in place to handle people whom we are not ready to lock up, but are a plausible threat to public safety. It is called bail. People accused of committing crimes are allowed to hand over money to the court as a guarantee of their good behavior while they await trial. If they attempt to flee or commit crimes while on bail, they will go back to jail and lose that money.

My idea owes some inspiration to Kalman's pediatrician. This pediatrician happens to be from Syria and has family trapped there that he would like to bring over. Why not allow him to post "bail" for them? For the sake of throwing in numbers, let us say $100,000 for a man between the ages of 18-50, $50,000 for a woman and $20,000 for children and old people. I assume this doctor trusts his family enough to put up the money for them. So for a year, his family would not be able to commit any felonies, leave the State of California and they would have meet monthly with a case officer. After a year, assuming these conditions have been met, the family members would all get green cards and the doctor would get a refund on his bail money. Everyone wins; the doctor saves his family without losing any money and the American people receives a reasonable guarantee that the family members are not terrorists. If the doctor himself suspects, that his family would violate the agreement and does not want to front the money then that is pretty good evidence for me that these people should not be allowed to enter in the first place.

What I like about this idea is that it puts the market to work solving the problem of figuring out which refugees are genuinely fleeing violence and which ones mean us harm. Let private individuals or organizations put hard money on their evaluations. Whether these evaluations are based on personal knowledge or some complex algorithm is as irrelevant to me as the details of business decisions of any company whose products I consume. Might ISIS decide to spend the bail money as the price for getting a man in? It is possible, but you have to think that there are ways of smuggling terrorists into this country that are cheaper than $100,000.            

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