How quaint is not that free labour can be cheaper (though not always) than slave labour such that slave labour loses its relative economic value? How quaint that the condition of free labour weren't really that different from slavery except for the right to 'leave'. However slavery was all-in-all ultimately outlawed not merely 'phased out'. What do Libertarians think of slave-owners who tried to hold out to the end and how they hated government telling them what to do about slavery? Let alone the Confederates who thought that should Negros be protected from slavery with the Declaration of Independence then that document is fundamentally wrong?

By the same token, how quaint the immigration debate keeps coming back to Mexico? Why is that? Why not Europe or China or South America or Africa? Cheap labour south of the border? Native-born Americans would be working for $5 a day if it weren't dang guvmint hence the need to look abroad?

On the other, Australians are kicking themselves that they lost Dr Zhengrong Shi. He wanted $7 million to start a solar panel company, he was knocked back, he went to China where they are trying to 'brain-drain' other countries, he get the money, founds SunTech and the rest is, as they say, is history. B'oh!

If you think this is because the proximity of Latin America makes for an easy escape from the FBI, tell me why not even one Canadian is on that list?

From a purely economic perspective, it has been proven that slave labor couldn't compete with free labor and that fact was the primary reason slavery eventually ended in societies that had both free and slave labor. What this means is that slave holder costs of taking care of slaves was higher than what he would have paid them had they been free.

A better question would be if the decendants of slaves could sue those who originally sold them into slavery.

Taxation without representation should be the entry fee to get in.

Personally, if we were more libertarian, I couldn't care less who comes to this country, and either should anyone. If we weren't a welfare state, they'd add to the GNP, contrary to what those suffering from Dobbs syndrome believe. However, because we are a welfare state and immigrants tend to subsist on the lower rungs of the social order, they might have to be subsidized like the other losers in this country.

I think legal immigration should be expanded so the only people denied entry are provable and specific threats to the public: e.g., foreign agents, terrorists, violent felons, and carriers of contagion.

Under those circumstances, illegal immigration is not merely less attractive: it is virtually unheard of.