Hayek on culture/immigration?

[u/Naive-Rub4792]

I am reading the Constitution of Liberty. I want to get people’s views on the following:

Hayek speaks about rules of conduct independent of laws, like traditions, and that a high level of conformity to these traditional moral rules prevents the need for coercion in many cases. I.e this conformity to certain principles is required for a free society to work.

Hayek doesn’t talk about immigration in relation to this. However, an argument I’ve heard from some on the right is that mass immigration doesn’t work if people come with very different cultural values to a liberal society. This sounds related to the point Hayek is making in CoL.

I’d be interested in hearing anyone’s views on this immigration point, or what feels like a tension between the emphasis on freedom and the need “to conform to voluntary principles”. What might some of those voluntary principles be?

[u/Snifflebeard]

mass immigration

The United States is comprised of 98% immigrants or ancestors of immigrants. Most of US culture comes from elsewhere. This inflated concern about immigrants changing our culture is just bizarre. What, are the immigrants going to get rid of burritos and pizza? Oh the horror!

What makes the United States unusual is that immigrants assimilate into our culture. In most other countries they are shunted off into their own communities, sometimes not even allowed citizenship through any pathway at all, sometimes not even allowed to have decent jobs. No wonder there are problems with immigration in Western Europe! But in the US both my grandparents were immigrants and never caused a problem, fully integrated into society.

The essence of a Classical Liberalism is a Free Society. And a free society does not go around demanding to see people's papers, does not invade businesses asking to see all the worker's papers, does not promise massive deportations, does not look suspiciously at people who have skin tones a bit too brown for the elite's liking.

In a Free Society, anyone who is peaceful is free to join and participate.

When Hayek talks about "law" he does NOT mean "legislation". The law is in favor of immigration. Even undocumented immigration. It is only legislation that makes it a felony. Law-abiding does not mean rigid conformance to legislation by politicians.

Immigrants aren't leaving their socialist and fascist countries for the purpose of infiltration, they're leaving to get AWAY from their socialist and fascist governments! If they bring some language and cuisine and styles with them, that's just bonus for us.

[u/vitringur → u/Snifflebeard]

The US had one of the bloodiest civil wars due cultural differences, traced back to immigration from different parts of Britain.

[u/Snifflebeard → u/vitringur]

It was a civil war triggered by slavery. Plenty of Scots and Irish in the North with no problems. This issue was not foreign culture, the issue was a domestic culture predicated on the enslavement of people.

[u/vitringur → u/Snifflebeard]

There were huge cultural differences between the North and the south.

The Scots and Irish in the north immigrated after a drastic cultural shift had already happened in Scotland. And there were definitely issues with the Irish, famously so.

Every culture in the world was a culture of slavery at that point in time. The specific issue of slavery might have been a trigger, but there were huge cultural differences between the North and the South other than those, and the justification for the war was not slavery but the preservation of the Union as opposed to the independence of states.

[u/Snifflebeard → u/vitringur]

the justification for the war was not slavery but the preservation of the Union

Then the South should not have fired the first shot. Lincoln wanted to keep the Union, but it was the attack on Fort Sumpter that instigated the conflict. Stop apologizing for slavery.