Welcome to On Liberty.

This show was previously called The Libertarian, and it still features a libertarian who is going to talk to us today.

About Liberty, that is of course Richard Epstein. I am the new host,

Charles C.W. Cook. This is a production of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas,

Austin. And today's topic is going to be immigration, the legal aspects, the social aspects, the history of immigration in the United States.

Richard, welcome to your own show.

Yes, it's very nice to be back to my own show.

We've been off the air now, unfortunately, for over six months.

And, Shara, you're going to energize this thing so we could reclaim our former,

but still interested listeners. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's get right into it.

The modern presumption is that the federal government has power over immigration, plenary power

even. But if you go back to the time of the founding, it's not quite

clear where in the constitution that comes from. So how is this seen then? What's in the document?

Where did this sit on the first day George Washington was president back in the 18th century.

I think the way this thing actually began was the central presumption was that the federal government only derived delegated powers from the state,

and that everything that was not sent to the center was left at the periphery.

And so this was known as a doctrine of enumerated powers.

And what happens is if you're going to run an enumeration,

it has to be large enough to be significant,

but it has to be small enough to say that there's something which remains within the residual police power of the state.

So you start looking at the various heads, and the most famous ones are taxation, patent, commerce,

and then there's the power to exercise a uniform law of naturalization.

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