It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (16 page)

The government, however, infringes upon the right to travel when it monopolizes airport security and performs a mediocre job, thus preventing individuals from providing adequate security themselves. To demonstrate the government's inadequacy in airport security: Almost one year after September 11th, with all the security implementations that came with a post-9/11 world, a July 2002 TSA survey of thirty-two major airports “found that fake guns, bombs, and other weapons got past security screeners almost one-fourth of the time.”
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In 2006, the government's own investigators conducted covert security tests at twenty-one U.S. airports. Undercover agents carried the materials needed to create a bomb, including components of improvised explosive devices and common household chemicals, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.
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The result of the test? The forbidden materials got past screeners and scanning machines in every one of the twenty-one airports tested. Since September 11th, “hidden weapons and simulated bombs have made it through checkpoints in hundreds of tests.”
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If our own government can get past TSA, surely a bunch of determined terrorists can do the same.

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The litany of governmental security failures is long, and the taxpayer bill is high—seven billion dollars annually go to the TSA.
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The Christmas 2009 underwear bomber is just one example of how security is breached under the “watchful” eye of TSA. Even more, shortly after the underwear bomb attempt, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano proclaimed, “The system worked.” There was “no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened.” Allowing a man—with the intent to take down a plane and the materials to do it—to pass security and board an aircraft from Amsterdam to Detroit is the
opposite
of the system working. The underwear bomber was foiled in his efforts only because of the actions of his fellow passengers, no thanks to any government screening system. Thus, not only does Homeland Security fail to protect us; the politicians who run it cannot even acknowledge their failure.

As the examples of Barcia at the George Washington Bridge and the TSA show, the government is still imposing physical restrictions on our ability to travel freely. Although they may not be as conspicuous as internment camps or outright slavery, when a mother in labor is deprived of the freedom to travel to a hospital where she can safely give birth, all for some subjective showing of necessity to prevent drunk drivers, liberty is in exile.

Financial Restrictions on Travel

Although physical restrictions on the freedom to travel might be the most infuriating, the impediments to move freely that we experience on a daily basis typically take place in a more surreptitious form: Financial restrictions. Like freedom of speech, if the right is to attain its true meaning, it must be free from the “chilling” effects of government burdens. Stated simply, financial restrictions deter us from utilizing the right, and therefore cannot be reconciled with the Natural Law, which enunciates not only certain rights, but the free exercise thereof.

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Financial restrictions typically come in the form of government monopolization of the means of travel, and the subsequent inefficiencies which inevitably occur when a business entity is shielded from competition. Take, for example, New York City's public transportation system. Interestingly, it was initially a private enterprise that was first to provide subterranean travel to the public. On October 27th 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) opened the first official subway system. It consisted of a 9.1-mile-long subway line that connected twenty-eight stations from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway. Unfortunately for all of us, in 1932, New York's Board of Transportation purchased the IRT in the wave of New Deal politics and became the owner and operator of all New York City subway lines.
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Fast-forwarding ahead, owing to an absence of competition and crumbling infrastructure, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the successor to the Board of Transportation, approved a 10 percent increase in subway and bus fares from $2.00 to $2.25 in May 2009.
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Although this may appear to be a paltry sum, the percentage increase in our transportation costs is certainly more than many of us can expect in our paychecks. Are the subway cars and bus seats any cleaner or better maintained? No; in fact, “the trains will be cleaned less often,” says an MTA board member. Will the subway be any safer? No; in fact, the cuts in security personnel made the subway even less safe to travel on. In other words, the twenty-five cents out of each subway fare are the product of sheer government waste.

One may wonder, if subterranean travel was not available to us in the first place, then should not the government be free, if not obligated, to provide us this new service in order to further the public welfare? The difficulty with this line of thought is that individuals, in the form of private businesses, should be free to finance and construct their own means of travel. Could the government declare tomorrow that henceforth, individuals will be prohibited from utilizing boats, unless operated by the government? Shouldn't individuals be free to construct their own boat so as to facilitate travel to wherever they desire? The government's grant of monopoly privileges over a means of travel to itself is always in contravention of the right to travel.

Consider in this regard the government-subsidized railroad system. This behemoth transportation matrix has survived solely on subsidies, grants, and loans totaling more than $25 billion throughout its existence (with that amount growing with the immense bailout payments bequeathed in the wake of the recession beginning in 2008). Despite these handouts, train ticket prices have continued to grow over the years. The
cheapest
ticket from New York Penn Station to Washington, D.C., Union Station is $144 for a round-trip ticket. A quick online search for an airline ticket from New York to D.C. during the research for this book came to a grand total of $139 round trip on JetBlue, meaning it is cheaper (and thus more cost-efficient) to travel on a privately owned airline than on a land-based railroad owned and operated by the government. Until the government has legitimate competition, or abdicates control over transportation altogether, these escalating ticket prices will continue to inflict and restrict your natural right to move and travel.

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“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free.”

In 2009, Roxroy Salmon, a married father of five children and human rights activist, was ordered to be deported from America. A Jamaican national who had resided in America for more than thirty years, Salmon had been found guilty of drug possession and sale of narcotics nearly twenty years ago. Unfortunately for Salmon, drug offenses were made a grounds for deportation pursuant to a law passed
after
the commission of his crimes, and the preservation of families could not be considered in making the decision whether to deport or not. According to the government, the interest in keeping families together could not override the “public necessity” of immigration policy. Sadly, this is no isolated incident. A study conducted by the Homeland Security Department showed that from 1998 to 2007, 108,434 parents of American-born children were deported.
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How can a country which prides itself on a respect for liberty adopt a policy which tears families apart, leaves children without parents, and treats the right to travel as subject to the government's whim?

As the above story suggests, the most egregious violation of the right to travel experienced in recent years is controlled immigration policy. Immigration limitations fundamentally inhibit a person's free will to come and go as he or she pleases. Because the right to move is a natural right, it is not limited to just American citizens. Rather, the right to move is so fundamental, it is possessed by
all
human beings—whether they are immigrants or not. While private landowners have the right to prevent or allow “immigrants” (or anyone) from coming on their land, based upon fundamental principles of property, the government does not enjoy a similar right: To suggest otherwise is to say that the government itself somehow “owns” our country, and possesses property rights to it. Upon what legal basis does government property ownership rest? It can have no basis whatsoever; the government can only vest property rights in itself by providing just compensation. Any argument that the government has the property right to exclude rests in turn upon the socialistic claim of collective ownership.

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Moreover, if I am desirous of citizens of another country traveling through my property, say to pursue employment, I should be free to grant them permission. The government cannot limit this property right by circumscribing the right of others to travel freely. If the state wants a solution to the unlawful stream of immigrants in and out of the country, then it can simply abide by the Natural Law and let them enter legally.

More fundamentally, there can be no such thing as American exceptionalism. We, as Americans, are not worthy of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness merely by virtue of being born in the United States of America; these rights do not depend upon American citizenship for their existence. They are self-evident. In fact, our nation was built on the promise of freedom, not just to those who were born here, but to all those struggling under the yoke of oppression. America is not a geographical border, but rather an ideal: The ideal “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Jefferson did not qualify this statement by saying that all men born in America deserve access to these rights; such a statement would have been even more ludicrous then than it is now.

Moreover, from a practical perspective, an absolute, uninhibited freedom to travel would not have the “devastating” impact on American jobs that is so often conjectured, so long as it was accompanied by the abolition of the minimum wage. When the minimum wage rises, “some jobs that were worth hiring someone to do are no longer worth filling.”
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As a result, there are less low-skilled jobs available for people who live here legally. Thus, when the minimum wage rises, employers, to cut costs, hire illegal immigrants at a lower price instead of hiring people who live here legally (and paying them the minimum wage). Alternatively, if the minimum wage were eliminated, the opposite effect would occur; employers would pay people who live here legally fair market value—not the government-mandated amount—for the work they do. And as a result, immigrants would be less inclined to move here for fear of not finding work. Congressman Ron Paul explains it this way:

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Our current welfare system . . . encourages illegal immigration by discouraging American citizens from taking low-wage jobs [and minimum wage laws discourage their creation]. This creates greater demand for illegal foreign labor. Welfare programs and minimum wage laws create an artificial market for labor to do the jobs Americans supposedly won't do.
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Opponents argue that legalizing immigration will only serve to make our nation less safe. Studies say otherwise. Since 1986, the year amnesty was granted to illegal immigrants in the United States, the U.S. murder rate has dropped by 37 percent. Forcible rape is down 23 percent. Drunk driving deaths are down by more than 50 percent.
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If these illegal immigrants are so dangerous, violent, and predatory, why are these numbers not going the other direction? Furthermore, “much is made of the alleged fact that 30% of federal prison inmates are illegal immigrants.” According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the correct figure is actually 14 percent, and most of these immigrants are in prison solely for the violation of immigration laws.
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Opponents of open borders also argue that illegal immigrants steal jobs and Social Security numbers, drive down wages by working under the table, and do not pay taxes to the detriment of the nation's budget. These same opponents also assume that tougher enforcement at the border would actually eradicate these problems. This, despite the fact that “strict” border control has been our nation's policy for decades, and has not seemed to work well at all. Locking down the border has not halted the flow of immigrants from the south or the north. Rather, the only effect of strict border control has been the perpetuation of the one-way flow of illegal immigrants, making it more dangerous and expensive for all parties involved. Consequently, immigrants in America are less likely to leave for fear of the inability to return. Consider that thirty years ago, nearly half of undocumented arrivals departed within a year. Today, only one in fourteen does.
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Moreover, if these men and women were made legal, then they would not have to “steal” jobs and Social Security numbers, but rather they would have their own. They would not drive down wages by working under the table, but rather would work on the books. They would not avoid taxes, but rather would pay them. The net effect of the legalization of immigration would be positive. Immigrants “would gain more of a stake in participating in and preserving our way of life.”
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I leave you with an egregious story of travel restriction inflicted by government on the oldest and most aboriginal of Americans: The Iroquois tribe. The Iroquois, who helped to invent the game of lacrosse, fielded a team that was the fourth-ranked team in the world. The team was set to travel to Manchester, England, for an international competition in July 2010. The problem arose from the fact that the Iroquois govern themselves, independent of the U.S. government, and thus issue their own passports. More importantly, these passports symbolize that independence; in the words of one of the players, “it's a huge deal because these visas mean so much to our sovereignty.” Before the Iroquois team's flight abroad, the British consulate declined to recognize their tribal passports and informed the Iroquois that “it would only issue visas to the team upon receiving written assurance from the United States government that the Iroquois had been granted clearance to travel on their own documents and would be allowed back into the United States.”
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