In a previous post, I argued against the claim that nations closing their borders is equivalent to a person choosing not to let poor Haitians camp on her lawn. One objection that comes up is that the poor immigrants who want to come rent your house will need to cross public roads to get there. Don’t democracies have a right to decide who will use their roads?

I already posted about this back in 2012. I’m reposting part of it here with slight editing:

Suppose, following Michael Huemer’s thought experiment, starving Marvin wants to get to the market to make a life-saving trade. You post guards to keep him out. That looks equivalent to killing him–you didn’t simply fail to help him, but used violence to keep him from making a life-saving trade with a willing trade partner. What could justify that?

Here’s the challenge from my Facebook friend: Marvin has to use public roads to get to the market. Thus, Marvin cannot simply assert a right to get to the market. To get to the market, he must use public property. Just as I have the right to turn away homeless people from my property, the government has the right to turn away immigrants who are trying to get to the market to sell their labor. Immigrants invade public property.

I think this challenge is unsuccessful for a number of reasons. I will not go through all the reasons here. I’ll just discuss one.

Let’s think about what it takes for private property to be legitimate. Imagine that you own a small plot of land, say, 1/3 of an acre in nice upper-middle class residential neighborhood. Other plots of land surround yours. Your land is connected to a road. (It doesn’t matter, for our purposes, whether it’s a public or private road). Now, suppose that for some reason, in one day, I purchase all the land—including the road—that surrounds your house. I immediately post “No Trespassing” signs and say I will shoot trespassers on the spot. I put a fence around all my property, and thus put you in a cage.

You are now trapped in your land. Let’s add that if you don’t trespass over my land, you will starve and die. (Or, if you wish, imagine that you have a small garden, and will just barely survive.)

Almost everyone who reflects on this scenario, regardless of ideology, concludes that my actions are illegitimate. While I am permitted to purchase and own the land surrounding yours, I cannot then use my property rights to trap you in your own property. There are a number of arguments one could use to get to this conclusion, but I won’t offer them here, because I expect you already agree.

Most people conclude that in a scenario like this, you are entitled to some sort of easement. That is, I am obligated to permit you to cross some portion my property at will so that you may get to the market, to work, etc., and not be imprisoned in your own land.

As private individuals, we have rights to acquire property in land. We are not obligated to let anyone use our land at any time just because he or she wants it or even needs it. But, we are obligated to allow people right of way over our land if our ownership would otherwise trap them.

Now, back to the point about public roads. This same reasoning applies. Just as a private individual must grant easements to others rather than trap them, so governments must grant easements to others rather than trap them. A government cannot put a public road around the market and say, “Ha, ha! Now you can only come to the market with our permission! And we don’t grant you permission, so you must starve and die!”