Rudy's out, but Ron's still in.

Now that “America's Mayor” (a.k.a. Mr. 9/11) Rudy Giuliani has thrown in the towel, the race for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential contest is down to just four candidates: Arizona Senator John McCain (broke, but leading in delegates), the self-financing former Massachussets governor Mitt Romney, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (an evangelical whose 15 minutes are almost up), and Texas Rep. Ron Paul an economic libertarian who emerged as a front-runner upon raising $20 million during the last quarter of 2007—including $6.3 million in a single day, a new record.

It's easy to like Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). During most of his ten terms, the affable 72 year-old moonlighted as a obstretician-gynecologist in Lake Jackson, Texas, but now he's vying for yet another career, as President of the United States no less, on a platform of immediate withrawl of all U.S. military abroad, eliminating personal income tax (and most federal departments, including the Federal Reserve), opening the market for competing legal tenders such as notes backed by precious metals, and defending a U.S. Constitution besieged since 9/11—an event he says requires reinvestigation. Rep. Paul is also the author of many papers and several books on politics and economics, including, Freedom Under Siege: The U.S. Constitution after 200+ years.

Rep. Paul loves free markets so much he thinks NAFTA and GATT are inadequate, “managed trade.” But as he calls for the goods and capital to flow freely across borders, he seeks to restrict the inflow of labor—which, in terms of free-market economics, makes about as much sense as using exit visas to restrict its outflow.

In effect, that's what the current setup is doing. Present immigration policy works to populate the country with Mexicans who, if they are the least bit desert-savvy, can get in, but will not be keen to leave having taken so much trouble to arrive. Before night-vision CCTV, airplane drones, and Minutemen lined the border, Mexicans sort of came and went as they pleased. Some would come up for the fruit-picking season and go home to enjoy the spoils of their labor. Others worked for years in the U.S., saving money to return to Mexico to launch a business. Some stuck around, integrated, had American children. But once it began getting hard to get in, fewer became willing to leave, for fear of being unable to return. With a heightned risk of not being able to return to the U.S., there is more incentive to remain, a phenomenon which not just increases in-migration but stifles net out-migration.

Puerto Rico shows us that when inflow of labor is unrestricted the less prosperous country doesn't empty itself into the other. Puerto Rico's per capita Gross Domestic Product is $19,300; California's is $41,000. Yet Puerto Ricans, who live in a U.S. territory, are free to migrate to the U.S. mainland. The fact that so many don't demonstrates the power of tribalism over sheer economics.

Tribalism is something about which Rep. Paul knows a thing or two. In a recent interview with Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press, Rep. Paul was asked to clarify his current position on illegal immigration (he wants to militarize the U.S.-Mexican border and deport illegal immigrants) vis-à-vis the decidedly different stance he held two decades ago as a candidate for the Libertarian Party in the 1988 presidential election. In the July/August, 1987 issue of the Libertarian Party News, Ron Paul wrote, “As in our country's first 150 years, there shouldn't be any immigration policy at all. We should welcome everyone who wants to come here and work.” Indeed, federal records for immigration weren't even kept until 1820. But, Rep. Paul explained to Mr. Russert, he was actually at odds with the Libertarian Party's official line, because Rep. Paul wished to append that particular statement with the notion that “there may well be a time when immigration is like an invasion and we have to treat it differently.”

What exactly does Rep. Paul mean by “invasion”? America is besieged by shortages of unskilled labor, and a growing population of employed workers is indicative of a robust economy. Let's for a moment speculate that Rep. Paul has lamented the rapid racial transformation of his Gulf Coast Texas district from white to brown—or would it not be safe to say that a rapid influx of German, or Irish, or Norwegian immigrants would qualify as “healthy growth” rather than an “invasion”?

Rep. Paul has been accused of racism and ties to white nationalist groups, but I don't believe he is consciously racist. Human beings are innately tribal; Rep. Paul is no exception. We tend to congregate with those who share not only our cultural values, but physical characterstics as well. This is not a rule but a tendency; nonetheless it is absurd to suggest that economies ought to be free to move goods and capital across borders, but not labor. Why not let the market decide where people live? The Soviet Union notoriously required an exit visa for its citizens to leave the country—is it not equally inhumane to restrict the inflow of workers? American citizens deserve the “freedom” that Rep. Paul claims to champion, but would-be Americans of Mexican descent—or even American-born children of migrants—are to be rounded up, detained, and ultimately deported for the so-called crime of seeking a better life through honest work?

While I can appreciate the rest of Rep. Paul's platform, and I certainly prefer him to the other candidates, it's ironic that he's so prone to telling his opponents to “open up the Constitution and read it” when it appears he himself could stand to look at what's inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beisde the golden door.