George Mason U. economics professor Don Boudreaux has recently been making the case against Arizona’s controversial new immigration law in the blogosphere and other online contexts.

The fact that Boudreaux is doing so does not make him unique. His approach and proposed solution, however, put him in the company of a small minority.

Boudreaux introduces his position as follows: “It’s true that the traipsing of Hispanic immigrants across Arizonans’ backyards at 3 a.m. is an intolerable problem. But this and other problems are artifacts of the severe restrictions that Uncle Sam currently places on immigration.”

What the professor is driving at is this: Laws such as Arizona’s are instituted by people facing situations created by the federal government’s totally wrongheaded (and immoral) stance regarding immigration to this country.

That stance is one that does not recognize people’s right to freedom of movement, which is implied by the rights to liberty and pursuit of happiness championed in the Declaration of Independence.

It is also one that inhibits both foreigners’ and Americans’ right to freely associate and do business with each other.

Our country’s current immigration policies do these things by placing a limit on the number of immigrants who may legally come to this country from certain nations of origin and by preventing employers and prospective employees from engaging in mutually beneficial trade.

Arizona’s new law is particularly egregious in this respect. Boudreaux notes that it is primarily focused on preventing undocumented immigrants from finding work in the state, which, he emphasizes, casts doubt on arguments that the law is intended simply to protect the people of Arizona from violence.

Boudreaux proposes that, in order to stem the flow of immigrants through America’s proverbial back doors, this country should revert to the prevailing immigration policy of the pre-1920s era, when immigration was almost completely open and only people who were carrying communicable diseases were kept out.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger shares Boudreaux’s desire for a return to open borders and argues for the same on the basis of natural rights.

Binswanger writes, “A foreigner has rights just as much as an American. To be a foreigner is not to be a criminal. Yet our government treats as criminals those foreigners not lucky enough to win the green-card lottery.”

He argues that all people who wish to enter the United States should be allowed to do so but is careful to distinguish between “freedom of entry and residency” on the one hand and “the automatic granting of U.S. citizenship” on the other.

Binswanger argues rightly that any regime in which people are not free to employ, rent to, or sell to willing foreigners is one that denies not only the rights of foreigners but also the rights of citizens because it prevents the two from engaging freely in trade to mutual benefit.

He also challenges the argument that restricting foreigners’ access to this country is defensible because it is “ours” by making the vital distinction between jurisdiction and ownership.

His point: the fact that the U.S. government has jurisdiction throughout its territory does not mean it owns every square inch of said territory. Rather, much of this territory is owned privately by people who should be left free to choose how they use it and with whom they associate on it.

Both Binswanger and Boudreaux are right to advocate open borders without shame or equivocation, as they are defending the principle that all people, regardless of their national origin, should be allowed to live and work where they choose and to engage in trade with those they choose.