by Jacob G. Hornberger

September 28, 2026

Near the end of a video presentation about the bond market, noted financial expert Peter Schiff discussed immigration. He did so mostly in the context of the Gilded Age, which, as longtime FFF supporters know, is my favorite time in American history, one that points us in the right direction that we need to take if we are going to get our nation back on the right track. The immigration part of Schiff’s presentation begins at about 45:20.

The Gilded Age, which American statists have long reviled — and continue to revile — was roughly the period from 1870 to 1910. As Schiff points out, it was a period of extraordinary economic growth and rapidly rising living standards.

He specifically mentions the lack of an income tax. Americans were free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, and there was nothing the federal government could do about it. No taxation on income. No income-tax returns to file. No IRS. No rushing to the Post Office every April 15. That led to massive savings and capital, which made Americans more productive, which raised wages and living standards to phenomenal levels.

There was also sound money. Gold and silver coins were the official money of the American people. That was the legal tender that the Constitution established. No paper money. Sure, there were instruments of indebtedness — bills, notes, and bonds — that were sometimes used as a medium of exchange for convenience’s sake. But everyone knew that they were promises to pay money, not money themselves. The money was gold coins and silver coins. There was also no central bank — i.e., Federal Reserve. The result? No government debasement of the currency.

No foreign wars, except the Spanish-American War in 1898, which American statists succeeded in foisting onto the American people. Also, no national-security state — i.e., Pentagon, military-industrial complex, CIA, and NSA. No state-orchestrated assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, sanctions, embargoes, coups, and other dark-side national-security-state activity.

No welfare state, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, education grants, corporate bailouts, farm subsidies, and other socialist programs.

And then there was minimal controls on immigration, which Schiff spends his time analyzing and praising. Millions of European immigrants, including Schiff’s ancestors, flooded into America. They were asked only a few innocuous questions, such as name and place where they came from, and they were subjected to a health inspection regarding infectious illnesses. There were no passports, visas, green cards, or other forms of governmental permission for entry. At Ellis Island, where most European immigrants entered the United States, around 98 percent were permitted entry, which is why this period is sometimes referred to as an “open-border” system.

But the Ellis Island system wasn’t an open-border system. It was actually the start of a border-control system that would ultimately morph into the massive immigration police state that we have today, which has now broken out of the borderlands and is being expanded nationwide.

A genuine open-border system is one in which there are no restrictions on the free movement of people into and out of the United States. That was the system that characterized the United States from the time that the Constitution was ratified until the federal government began imposing significant immigration restrictions in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was also the system that existed between the U.S. and Mexico from 1848, when the U.S. government eagerly absorbed the northern half of Mexico, until the 1930s, when, during the Great Depression, Mexican immigrants were increasingly blamed for unemployment and subjected to mass repatriation.

We should keep in mind that this emerging federal immigration-control system was used to prohibit Chinese women and Chinese laborers from entering the United States. That’s what the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were all about. It was only the start of what was to come.

Despite his excellent exposition of the virtues of immigration and of the minimal immigration controls during the Gilded Age, Schiff surprisingly ends up coming out on the side of immigration-control advocates. The reason? He says that so long as America is a welfare state, it is necessary to have the government secure the borders.

But he’s wrong. We libertarians should never permit statists to manipulate us into abandoning our libertarian principles and joining the statists on any issue, including immigration. Once they succeed in inducing libertarians to join up with them, they know that they have won because then they can say, “See, the free market doesn’t work, which is why even libertarians have joined up with us in support of statism.”

Consider the drug war and the welfare state. It is a virtual certainty that some drug addicts will go on Medicaid for treatment. Should we libertarians, therefore, support the drug war until the welfare state is abolished? Perish the thought! We must continue advocating the end of the abominable deadly, destructive, tyrannical, and oppressive drug-war racket even if it means having to pay a bit higher taxes arising from addicts’ use of Medicaid. Better to continue calling for the end of Medicaid and the entire welfare state.

As I show in my book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer, the fact is that it is entirely possible to have a system of open borders and a welfare state. That’s what we have here domestically in the U.S. — open borders between the states and welfare states among the states. Nobody calls for state domestic immigration restrictions in order to ensure that everyone from Alabama doesn’t pick up stakes to move to California or New York, where welfare benefits are more generous.

Moreover, there is another option. Libertarians can continue adhering to principle while advocating a position that denies welfare to foreigners. After all, federal law already bars many lawful immigrants from receiving certain means-tested federal benefits during their first five years in qualified status, subject to various exceptions. Those restrictions could be extended into an indefinite prohibition on welfare benefits for noncitizens. That’s a much better position for libertarians to advocate than to join up with the statists in support of a brutal, oppressive, and deadly immigration police state.

Finally, what’s the worst that can happen? That people’s taxes might go up because of the combination of a welfare state and open borders? Is that any reason to abandon one’s libertarian principles? I say no. If we are to lead America to freedom, we must continue standing steadfastly in favor of freedom.