This is the Libertarian Podcast from the Hoover Institution.

I'm your host Tom Church and the Libertarian is Professor Richard Epstein.

Richard's the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution.

He's the Lawrence A Tish Professor of Law at

NYU and he's a senior lecture at the University of Chicago. And Richard, I would

like to ask you about your column this week which is titled immigration

without open borders. I think the issue of

immigration always gets muddied by the distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

So maybe it'd be helpful for you to lay out the immigration system right now we have in the United

States as you see it the one you'd like to see and then we can dive into some details from there.

Yeah, well I mean the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is best understood by thinking about

somebody who owns a house or some kind of a condominium association which has borders.

Legal administration is somebody who comes in with permission from the

organization. That permission is rarely granted just as a matter of right

except for certain relatively inconsequential things, but they usually it has to be some procedure that you go through.

You have to present an ID card, if it's a more extensive kind of an arrangement, you may

have to present a financial statement of some kind or another in order to join these sorts of organizations.

And the power to exclude essentially becomes absolutely critical because it determines the

way in which people are included.

The power to exclude is not a duty to exclude. People always

want others to come in, but they only want them to come in when they're gains

from trade that can happen.

...