The illegal immigration problem is perhaps the single greatest problem facing libertarians today. It is the one issue that threatens to distance the public in a fundamental way from our cause, to a degree that the terrorism issue never could except in the most dire of situations. It is time for libertarians to accept reality and admit the truth. The majority of us have been very, very wrong about the practical, moral and intellectual problems facing an open borders policy.

There is an inherent hypocrisy in claiming to be the true supporters of "individual sovereingty" while self-righteously denouncing a collective exercise of this right. There is no moral difference between a man guarding the entrance to his house and a nation guarding its borders, which is why any rational person would call many libertarians' alleged support for the right of self-defense and freedom of association into question. It would be very justified because any argument that can be used to suggest that a nation has no right to restrict foreigners' access to its borders, can be easily carried down to the level of suggesting that no one has a right to limit access to the borders of their property.

There is a very real need to police the immigration into the United States, and to restrict it to those who would come here with the right intentions. This is not a violation of anyone's rights. One of the most basic assumptions in government is that the government is empowered to secure the territory that it was created to protect from those that are unknown to it. It is up to the immigrant to prove his or her worthiness to be here, not up to the government to justify to the immigrant why it is protecting the borders it is responsible for.

Libertarians have asked society to abdicate all control over the flow of immigrants, while accepting the risks that come with usually having no idea who an immigrant is or where they come from. That is a loophole in the government's ability to execute the responsibilities it was created for, that is so big a foreign terrorist group could drive a carbomb through. Threats to public safety from terrorism, though real and over-hyped, are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the very real crime problems that have come from having a de facto open border policy for over a decade. As the system of law enforcement along the border has collapsed, and has thus been unable to prevent the undesirable elements from entering our country, a wave of illegal immigrant crime has begun to hit our country.

With as many as one third of all criminals in some jurisidictions being illegal immigrants, it is safe to say that there is in fact a clear and present state interest in preventing illegal immigrants from entering the country. Ayn Rand once posited that a state needs to make criminals in order to justify its existance, and that is true to an extent, but the illegal immigrant population from south of the border seems to be providing no shortage of violent crime to keep law enforcement in business. Illegal immigration, and the waves of criminals it brings, is every bit as big of an obstacle to the return to small government and the demilitarization of law enforcement as the War on Drugs.

As transnational gangs of illegal immigrants such as MS-13 continue to grow in scope, brutality and willingness to unleash violence in America's cities, the government will be increasingly pressured to act. This is the moment where libertarians can modestly acquiesce to reality's demands, learn from history and prevent it from repeating itself or immolate principle in the burning bodies of cars, buildings and freedom. A general increase in crime, unlike terrorism, has a corrosive impact on society's ability to live safely enough to desire freedom.

It is one thing to stand defiant in the face of an Al Qaeda attack, but it is quite another to deal with the hum drum of daily life in an increasingly crime-ridden country where nothing is certain, and victimization is increasingly probable. That is something that wears at the soul and is a powerful motivation for a society to empower its government to do whatever is necessary to fix the problems it faces. It should go without saying that if a government loses control over its immigrants, and consequently loses control over their criminal conduct, that the results for society would be terrible. What we face today as a nation, thanks to our de fact open borders policy, is a situation in which our government has lost civil control and may end up resorting to activating its war powers to contain those problems.

The problem with an open borders policy should not be confused with immigration in general. Immigration is good for this country, and the H1-B visa program, as loathe as many of us in IT are to admit it, is not the problem it is made out to be. If anything, it has empowered our country at the expense of other countries, which is clearly in our national interests. The irredeemable flaw with an open borders policy is that it is ultimately unenforceable and thus undermines the ability of the government to carry out its primary duty to its citizens and legal immigrants without resorting to authoritarian means. One need only look to the immigration rallies, with their calls for Americans of all races, especially white Americans, to leave the continent to realize that if something is not done now, there will be dark days ahead for those who want a peaceful, liberal government.