The slogan of “open borders” sounds like a call for freedom of movement.  It isn’t.  It’s the state declaring the right to invite anyone, from anywhere, into spaces it does not truly own.  In a system of genuine private property, borders are not “open” or “closed” in the abstract.  There is only the owner’s decision to invite or exclude.  You decide who enters your home.  The same principle applies to all property.

Immigrants don’t move to untouched wilderness.  They move to places already built, owned, and maintained—neighborhoods, cities, and towns where every street, building, and utility belongs to someone.  In today’s arrangement, the state claims control over roads, parks, ports, and other so-called public property.  When it throws the borders open, it is granting access to those areas without the consent of the people who actually fund them.

This is ’t a voluntary exchange between property owners and newcomers.  It’s the political class treating taxpayers as if they have no say in who uses what they paid for.  It’s as if the government, holding the deed to your street, invited strangers to camp on your front lawn and told you to bear the cost of their presence.

In a free market, migration would still occur—but only through voluntary arrangements.  Someone moving in would have to rent, buy, or otherwise gain permission to use private land and resources.  Movement would be the sum of countless individual agreements, not the result of a single political decree.  There would be no “border” in the national sense—only the boundaries of privately held property.

The state’s version of open borders ignores this entirely.  It acts as an illegitimate landlord, distributing access to what it has seized under the label of “public” property.  The moral question isn’t whether people should be allowed to move.  It’s whether they have the right to enter and use property without the owner’s permission.  Under true private property norms, the answer is obvious.

The rhetoric of “open borders” hides the coercive reality.  What it really means is compulsory integration—forced by those who control the state, paid for by those who don’t.  It’s not a policy of freedom.  It’s another example of property rights being trampled under the banner of humanitarianism.

Reference

Hans Hoppe; The Case for Free Trade and Restricted Immigration