The host’s position
Bob Zadek opened a 2011 episode by stating his own view of illegal immigration in four words: “let them all in.” He said he favored as open a border as possible, provided there was some basic system to weed out the baddest of the bad, people carrying disease and people with very serious records, while the everyday immigrant ought to be welcome. He framed the history of the country as one of prospering not in spite of but as a result of open borders and the healthy flow of immigrants from all over the world. He also posed the question of whether opponents of illegal immigration object to the illegal part or the immigrant part of the phrase, asking whether making immigration legal would change their attitude. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Zadek returned to the same formulation years later, telling a caller that libertarians generally support open borders, expressed as let them all in, while conceding he did not really mean it literally but that it gave the sense of it. Here Comes the Storm (2019) In a 2018 episode he answered a caller’s question about his personal position directly, saying that in general he favored open borders for two reasons: the economic benefits, which he said the scholarship supports, and an individualistic objection to claiming a superior right to the country’s benefits because of the accident of his birth. David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018)
Defining the term
The meaning of the phrase itself became a subject of dispute. In a 2022 episode Zadek described Ellis Island as the first stop of immigrants arriving by boat, where officials looked for disease and criminality and the bar to entry was low, and asked whether any reference to Ellis Island was essentially a reference to open borders. The Economics of Immigration (2022)
Benjamin Powell answered that he found open borders a loaded term that packaged several things together, including the situation on the southern border, which he said was not an open border when people pay thousands of dollars to coyotes to smuggle them across. He distinguished open borders as no checks at all from Ellis Island migration policy or free migration, which he described as no blanket quantitative restrictions on immigrants from any particular origin country, combined with basic qualitative checks at legal checkpoints for contagious disease, known criminals or terrorists. Powell added that Ellis Island policy allowed most people in the world to come legally, whereas at present almost everybody in the world is legally prohibited from migrating to the United States, and that returning to that policy would mean law and order immigration without restricting numbers. Zadek responded that the phrase was poisoned and that advocating open borders did not engender support for a more liberal immigration policy, joking that he would take an oath never to say it again. The Economics of Immigration (2022)
David Boaz likewise called open borders an exaggerated term, while saying libertarians are generally in favor of being an open, welcoming country and of letting people move from less free places to more free places. David Boaz on the Libertarian Ethos (2018)
Amnesty and the law
In the 2011 episode Zadek argued that the problem lay in the law rather than in the number of immigrants, and that amnesty was a legitimate public technique. He compared amnesty proposals to the repeal of Prohibition by the 21st Amendment, which meant that people who were felons a day earlier were no longer felons, and to tax amnesty programs under which authorities collect what is due while waiving penalties and jail time. He said that declaring amnesty would let undocumented residents come out of hiding and participate fully in the system, and complained that proposing it was treated as outrageous. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Sophia Campos, in the same episode, said that many people hold extreme emotions about the issue without knowing the facts, and that the immigration system is broken with no single line people can enter to become permanent legal residents. She described learning of her own status as an undocumented person in her senior year of high school, said there was no legal pathway for her to gain legal residency, and cited the DREAM Act and immigration reform as important, noting that there are 12 million undocumented people in the country who cannot seriously all be deported. She also said undocumented people pay taxes and that undocumented communities include people from many origins, not only Latinos. Immigration Reform Is Broken (2011)
Economics and welfare
Alex Nowrasteh addressed the welfare objection in a 2015 episode. He said legal immigrants on a green card lack access to welfare for their first five years, that holders of work permits such as student visas or H-1B visas have no access at all, and that illegal immigrants likewise have no access to welfare benefits. He said that when the numbers are examined, immigrants generally pay their own way, paying as much in taxes over their working lives as they consume in benefits, and that immigration is about a net zero and does not make deficits worse. He noted the exception under the EMTALA Act, under which emergency rooms must stabilize a patient who shows up ill, which he called a relatively small program. Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015)
Zadek put the Friedman objection to Nowrasteh, noting that Milton Friedman favored open borders but feared the welfare system could not absorb a wave of immigrants, and that this was before laws limited immigrant access to welfare. Nowrasteh replied that the second part of the Friedman quote, usually missed, is that Friedman favored illegal immigration and salutary neglect, under which the government makes immigration illegal but does not enforce those laws, so that people come and cannot get welfare but do work. Immigration Nation: Nowrasteh Sets it Straight Again (2015)
Restrictionist and assimilationist objections
John McGinnis, in a 2019 episode, said he favored a lot of immigration but not open borders, arguing that the country depends somewhat on its culture and that it could not assimilate 100 million people into the American ideas he called an important infrastructure for liberty. He said he was not in favor of illegal immigration and that it needed to be stopped, while criticizing Trump’s rhetoric as sometimes unfairly demonizing people who come for good reasons, and calling it a total mistake not to increase immigration of people who will be real innovators. He said a compromise was needed: very generous immigration without permitting illegal immigration, because the absence of standards would lead to backlash against legitimate immigrants. Here Comes the Storm (2019)
Zadek, in the same exchange, said Trump had been on the wrong side of the issue and that there might be a kernel of common sense in what he was doing, while repeating the let them all in formulation. Here Comes the Storm (2019)
Across episodes: the label and the policy
The excerpts show a recurring argument about terminology rather than a developing doctrine. In 2011 Zadek used the phrase let them all in and asked whether opponents objected to the illegal or the immigrant part; in 2018 he defended open borders on economic and individualist grounds to a caller; in 2019 he repeated the formulation while McGinnis dissented; and in 2022 Powell persuaded him that the phrase alienated listeners and that Ellis Island was the better frame. The later treatment adds the distinction between quantitative restrictions and qualitative screening, advanced by Powell, and the welfare-access facts supplied by Nowrasteh, but the underlying disagreement between Zadek and his restrictionist guests is present from the first episode.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of any immigration legislation, the holding of any case, or the terms of any bill beyond the DREAM Act’s name. They do not give the date or terms of the Chinese Exclusion Act, though one episode’s topic list names it, and they do not describe the Secure Communities initiative beyond mentions of police and ICE collaboration. Several excerpts are topic lists or sign-offs rather than argument, and one ends mid-sentence.