This Issue: The ridiculous need to defend borders from 'scholarly' attacks.

Who supports open borders? According to many vocal advocates of amnesty and immigration expansion, no one does, or at least only a very few who are outliers in the immigration debate. And, yet, most of those who push for increased immigration won't support a numerical limit on how many immigrants should be admitted into the U.S.; nor will they support any measure that would effectively prevent illegal immigration. Any reasonable person would call this an open borders position.

"Not so fast," open border advocates say. "We want to keep out known terrorists and violent criminals." But is that true? Sanctuary policies shelter violent criminals as much as they do "otherwise law-abiding" illegal aliens, and terrorists don't make themselves known as soon as they reach U.S. soil. The 9/11 attackers, who included four visa overstayers, didn't announce their presence until they crashed planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon (though a compelling argument could be made that federal authorities failed to act on intelligence that would have prevented the attacks.)

Another dodge is to say it's not open borders if there is an orderly process. As if letting everyone in after they stand in line negates the fact that everyone gets in eventually. Often there is a reference to Ellis Island, based on the false narrative that everyone who showed up there was waved into the country. It's true that most who came across the Atlantic were admitted into the U.S., but many were turned away. And excluding most non-Europeans from immigrating to the United States during the Great Wave's Ellis Island era was not open borders.

The 1965 Hart-Celler Act was intended to open immigration to non-Europeans, and it did. The proponents of Hart-Celler promised that it would not increase overall numbers, and they were very wrong about that. Still, there were limits, and limits remain.

Attempts to form an intellectual basis for open borders usually end up with academics tying themselves in knots trying to rewrite U.S. immigration, rewriting the Constitution, or making nonsensical arguments.

One such "knot-maker" is Ilya Somin, law professor at George Mason University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He believes:

"The text and the original meaning of the Constitution undercut the notion that the federal government has general authority to restrict immigration, in the sense of having the power to forbid movement to the United States simply on the basis that a would-be immigrant was born abroad and is not a U.S. citizen."

But the Constitution does, actually, give Congress the right to regulate immigration, including imposing restrictions, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that Congress' ability to control immigration is a plenary power inherent in a sovereign nation.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, points this out in a recent debate he had over immigration policy posted earlier this week.

"The Constitution explicitly gave Congress the power to limit immigration: 'The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight' -- that was aimed at the slave trade, but you'll notice that the Founders wrote 'migration' and 'persons' not 'slave' and 'trade.'"

Congress also has the power under the Constitution to establish a "uniform Rule of Naturalization." Open border "scholars" argue the naturalization clause prohibits Congress from regulating the natural first step in the naturalization process -- immigration to the U.S. This is wishful thinking, not serious scholarship.

Here's a recent example and a good illustration of the type of argument put forth by open borders academics.

Kocher is an associate professor at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research institute housed at Syracuse University. Maybe it takes a Ph.D. in geography to convince yourself that "borders just do not stop the movement of people," though I would wager this view has more to do with a preexisting ideological zealotry rather than anything Kocher learned at The Ohio State University.

Donald Trump is no constitutional scholar, nor does he have a Ph.D., but he did articulate a truism that the vast majority of Americans, and indeed citizens cross the world, understand. "If you don't have borders, then you don't have a country." Likewise, if your government won't prevent its borders from being violated, you won't have a country, either.

Those making claims that everyone in the world has the right to immigrate to the United States, or that the United State government has no right to keep anyone out, do not recognize that this claim is based on preexisting norms. They appeal to the authority of governments, laws, institutions, societies, and cultural norms that exist precisely because of borders. This isn't to justify how those borders were drawn, or to defend everything that occurred within those borders in the past. It is to recognize the realities of history and the ridiculousness of the arguments that the default American policy is one of open borders, or that logic can only guide us to erase imaginary boundaries drawn on a map.

It is easy (very easy) to poke fun at those who argue for open borders, especially those who stick Ph.D. in their Twitter bio or who base their argument on an esoteric reading of the Constitution. There is nothing funny when those who control our federal government have a commitment to open borders, as is now the case. And it is not going to be easy to correct the damage done so far under President Biden.

It was well-known that Alejandro Mayorkas pressured subordinates to Get to yes when processing citizenship application when he headed USCIS under Pres. Obama. Now, as DHS Secretary, Mayorkas is applying that diktat to our border. When it comes to enforcing any immigration law, however, his mantra is ABSOLUTELY NOT!

The Biden Admin. has not declared U.S. borders open to all. That would be political suicide. This is why it is doing its best to obscure what is really going on, like hiding late night flights of illegal aliens into the U.S. interior. As the saying goes, the Biden Admin. is concerned about optics, and its spokespeople would vigorously deny that it supports open borders. Yet, let us return to the opening question. How is one to describe the actions of the Biden Admin.? It is systematically seeking to eliminate any impediment to illegal immigration, has turned the U.S. into a sanctuary jurisdiction, and is seeking to admit as many immigrants as possible without acknowledging that there should be a limit, let alone recognizing existing limits imposed by law.

Would not any reasonable person call this an open borders position?

Eric Ruark, director of research