Nation by Consent

Oh Rio, Rio
Hear them shout across the land
From mountains in the north
Down to the Rio Grande
--Duran Duran

Excerpted from this larger essay, Murray Rothbard considers the birthright citizenship problem as construed from the Fourteenth Amendment. The most visible problem is this: birthright citizenship, which, when automatically confers citizenship to every baby born in the US, invites 'welfare immigration' by expectant parents. Those babies-turned-citizens (and their parents) become entitled to permanent welfare payments and free health care. As such, birthright citizenship forcibly transfers resources from incumbent citizens to the incoming group.

Plainly, a policy of birthright citizenship is likely to erode the wealth as well as the common culture of the incumbents.

The less visible problem is that birthright citizenship increases the coercive power of the nation-state and decreases the voluntary union of a nation by consent. In a nation by consent, national boundaries are drawn by those who freely agree to become part of a particular nation--and by those in the extant nation who agree to take on newcomers. People are also free to leave that nation and change affiliations (i.e., secede) if they so choose.

The implication of a nation by consent is that immigrants would have to be invited. Only then could newcomers enter and be permitted to rent or purchase property. A nation by consent would therefore be as 'closed' as the current inhabitants desire.

Clearly, Rothbard concludes in the larger essay, the 'open borders' regime that exists de facto in the US "really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely reflect the wishes of the proprietors."

A nation by consent requires complete privatization of land so that true 'border control' can be established. Moreover, voting rights would not be automatically conferred to new entrants. In a nation where property is completely privatized--meaning that government could no longer confiscate it by order of democratic majority--voting becomes less important.

Instead, the scope of private contract and of voluntary consent is enhanced as the repressive state is dissolved into a harmonious and increasingly prosperous social order.