A lightly edited reprint of a monograph by Jack Parsons commissioned and published by Negative Population Growth (NPG) in New York, in 1985. This applies the Parsons ‘ecology of liberty’ approach (developed in his pioneering book, Population Versus Liberty, in 1971), to the immigration control problem in the USA. He uses as his working metaphor the then massive renovation of the famous Statue of Liberty.

It demonstrates that the widely used argument that tighter controls on immigration must reduce individual liberty is fundamentally mistaken. True, extra controls in any sphere must reduce some freedoms for some people, but they also may enhance or create extra freedoms for other people – perhaps very many of them – so that the outcome might be an significant increase in total liberty.

Arguments about the presence or absence of FREEDOM cannot resolve these issues. The only way to do that is through detailed analysis and weighting in specific situations, though the key elements of the arguments used vis-a-vis the situation in the USA may be universally applied.

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