Without Borders, Everything Becomes Stolen Land

Borders, laws, and the nation-state itself emerged to solve this problem: to establish stability and security in a world where might no longer had to make right.

Before you dive into this article, there are a few things you should know about me. First, I am an immigrant living in the United States, and I deeply empathize with the people who seek a better life here. More than most, I understand the hopes and struggles of those who dream of making this country their home.

Second, I strongly support legal immigration and oppose the nationalist populists on the right who aim to dismantle the H-1B visa program. I believe the U.S. should expand pathways for high-skilled immigrants to gain citizenship, recognizing the immense contributions they bring to the economy and society—an issue I’ve even written about in a separate article.

Third, I do not support the deportation of DACA recipients and hope for a viable path to citizenship for them. At the same time, I recognize the need for border security to prevent future generations of children from being brought into the country illegally, only to face the same uncertainty and legal limbo as today’s Dreamers.

These are fairly standard takes, but to leftist internationalists and decolonization activists chanting: “No one is illegal on stolen land,” I might as well be a xenophobe desperate to appease white colonizers by shutting the door on other immigrants.

Beneath the trendy slogans and ad hominem attacks, there are no substantive arguments in favor of illegal immigration—only red herrings designed to distract from the core issue. Strip away the rhetorical theatrics, and what remains is little more than hippie communism repackaged for the modern era. Their call to “abolish borders” is just the macrocosm of their war on private property—an ideological crusade to erase sovereignty, ownership, and order. In their utopian whimsy, the world is a communal free-for-all, where we abandon civilization, revert to primitive nomadism, and wander aimlessly, guided only by the ebb and flow of natural resources like water and grazing lands.

This is the same ideological underpinning found in Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land—a folk tune often paraded around as a patriotic anthem but laden with unmistakable socialist, if not communist, undertones. The song’s lesser-known verses peel back any pretense of subtlety:

As I went walking I saw a sign there,

And on the sign, it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing.

That side was made for you and me.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.

The sign was painted, said “Private Property.”

But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.

This land was made for you and me.

These verses do more than critique private property—they reject its legitimacy outright. Guthrie sneers at land ownership, portraying property lines as capricious scrawls designed to exclude those he believes have a rightful claim to take what they need. Just as his lyrics cast fences and “No Trespassing” signs as tyrannical obstructions to human mobility, leftist internationalists and decolonization activists argue that national borders are equally illegitimate—antiquated remnants of colonial conquest. To them, immigration laws function as geopolitical “Private Property” signs: arbitrary, oppressive barriers that unjustly restrict free movement.

To steelman the argument of leftist internationalists and decolonization advocates, “No one is illegal on stolen land” is primarily rooted in a self-flagellating strain of Western guilt—notably American guilt. The West, we are told, bears a uniquely malignant original sin: colonialism and imperialism. This framing is not just historically selective—it is dishonest. It isolates European conquests as a singular evil while conveniently overlooking the reality that migration, conquest, and displacement are universal constants of human civilization.

From the Khmer Empire’s expansion in Southeast Asia to the Arab conquests across the Mediterranean and Southern Asia, history is an unbroken chain of blood-soaked struggles for land, power, and survival. The notion that European colonialism stands alone as some unparalleled horror is a self-serving delusion, one that flattens historical complexities and ignores the simple truth: conquest is a cardinal—if tragic—part of the human condition. Scholars may debate the nuances of European colonialism and its particular moral dimensions, but for those who suffered under conquest, distinctions between oppressors are often irrelevant.

The idea that native land was “stolen” becomes far more complicated when examined through the broader historical lens of territorial shifts driven by centuries of tribal warfare. Long before European colonization, North America was home to hundreds—if not thousands—of distinct Native American tribes, each with its own language, culture, and rivalries. These divisions inherently fostered intertribal competition and conflict, with warfare serving as a means to secure land, resources, trade routes, political dominance, or even personal glory for young warriors seeking to prove themselves. War in pre-colonial America was not an anomaly—it followed the same patterns of conquest and power struggles seen across human history. And like all conflicts, these wars had winners and losers, with spoils that were economic, territorial, and political.

A common argument posits that Europeans and Native Americans held fundamentally different views on warfare. Europeans, motivated by economic expansion and imperial ambition, fought large-scale, calculated wars, while Native Americans engaged in localized, ritualistic combat and avoided wars of annihilation. Nonetheless, this distinction had less to do with any intrinsic restraint or nobility on the part of the natives and more to do with technological limitations. The absence of horses, steel weaponry, gunpowder, and naval power meant that large-scale, long-range military campaigns were utterly not feasible.

In the meantime, the Industrial Revolution in Europe introduced innovations that enabled decisive battles, long-distance conquests, and the expansion of political networks through cavalry and maritime dominance. As indigenous groups gained access to steel weapons and firearms during the colonial period, the nature of their warfare inevitably evolved, becoming deadlier and more expansive, just as it had across other civilizations when military technology advanced.

The Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Five Nations, exemplifies this transformation. As historians Donald E. Worcester and Thomas F. Schilz have noted, the Iroquois became a formidable military power by integrating their tactical prowess with an early mastery of firearms. Their animosity toward the French dated back to 1609, when explorer Samuel de Champlain repelled an Iroquois force with the superior firepower of European weaponry. However, by 1639, Dutch traders began supplying the Iroquois with muskets in exchange for beaver pelts. Armed with these new weapons, an Iroquois force of 2,000 warriors launched lethal attacks on pro-French tribes in 1640, gaining a crucial advantage over opponents who still relied on traditional weaponry.

Fearing French retaliation, Dutch officials initially attempted to curb the sale of firearms, even instituting the death penalty in 1641 for anyone caught supplying the Iroquois. Yet black-market exchanges persisted, and as the Iroquois expanded their influence from the Ottawa River to Tennessee and from the Kennebec to Illinois, the Dutch ultimately reversed their policy. By leveraging their military dominance, the Iroquois not only controlled major trade routes but also became prominent middlemen, equipping western tribes with firearms.

This pattern of territorial expansion and military conquest continued well into the modern era. It was not until World War I that several multi-ethnic empires collapsed, giving rise to new nation-states from the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the Ottoman Empire. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson championed the principle of self-determination, arguing that ethnic groups should have their own sovereign states. This idea shaped the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and led to the redrawing of borders, particularly in Eastern Europe.

The devastation of World War II further weakened European powers, accelerating the dissolution of colonial empires. Britain and France, once dominant, could no longer maintain control over their vast overseas territories, spurring a wave of independence movements and the emergence of new nation-states. The founding of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 formalized the recognition of national sovereignty and self-determination, granting newly independent nations legitimacy on the world stage. Institutions such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Geneva Conventions established legal frameworks to deter territorial aggression.

Today, the “No one is illegal on stolen land” crowd seems resolved to subvert everything the nation-state stands for. They treat borders as if they are nothing more than unjustified nuisances—mere lines on a map that should never dictate who enters, who benefits, or who belongs. In their vision, nations have no right to determine their own citizenry or control access to their resources. They dream of a world where people drift freely, unbound by national identity, law, or responsibility—because, in their minds, sovereignty is an outdated relic of a bygone era.

About 50 people were on the corner of Ocean Avenue and H Street, many holding Mexican flags as well as homemade signs. Photo by: Jason Orr/KSBY News

But if a country has no authority over its borders, how is it any different from the nomadic tribes of centuries past? Before modern states, societies functioned in loose tribal structures, where land belonged to no one, and everyone fought over scarce resources. Predictably, this led to cycles of endless conflict—because when no one “owns” anything, the only law is that of the strongest. Borders, laws, and the nation-state itself emerged to solve this problem: to establish stability and security in a world where might no longer had to make right.

And yet, these self-righteous border abolitionists think they can unravel centuries of history without consequence. They believe that by erasing borders and surrendering national sovereignty, the world will miraculously reorder itself into a harmonious utopia. If only we relinquish control—if only we open the floodgates to mass migration without rules or restrictions—somehow, everything will work itself out. It is a fantasy so naive, so intellectually bankrupt, it implodes the moment it meets reality.

Resources are finite. Infrastructure has limits. Economies are not magical bottomless pits that can sustain unfettered demand without consequence. This is not an abstract thought experiment—it is real life. Even the most charitable welfare state cannot absorb an unending influx of migrants without collapsing under its own weight. Yet, the same activists who demand open borders also insist on universal free healthcare, free housing, and free everything else, as if these resources materialize out of thin air. It is a recipe for disaster: invite millions, promise them uncapped benefits, and then act surprised when social services buckle, wages plummet, and public resentment boils over.

Of course, none of this will touch the activists pushing these policies. They won’t be the ones competing for low-income jobs or waiting in overcrowded emergency rooms. They won’t be the ones watching their communities transform overnight into insular enclaves of unassimilated populations with little regard for the cultural or legal foundations of their host country. No, they will be safely tucked away in their elite academic bubbles, penning self-righteous think pieces on the moral imperative of border abolition while sipping oat milk lattes in gentrified cafés.

But for the rest of us, borders are not just imaginary lines—they are the difference between order and anarchy. They are the reason our cities don’t resemble war zones. They are why nations have distinct cultures, economies, and laws rather than descending into lawless, resource-starved wastelands. To pretend otherwise is not just historically ignorant—it is suicidal.

What these activists fail to grasp is that the alternative to the nation-state is not some post-colonial paradise where everyone holds hands and shares equally. It’s a regression into the brutality of the past, where warlords and strongmen fill the power vacuum left by the disintegration of governance. It’s Somalia in the 1990s. It’s Syria during the civil war. It’s every failed state where lawlessness reigns, and the weak are trampled by the strong.

Members of the Free Syrian Army in January 2012. Alessio Romenzi/Corbis

And if they think this is just a historical abstraction, they should look at Russia and Ukraine right now. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a textbook example of what happens when borders are treated as mere suggestions rather than inviolable lines of sovereignty. Putin didn’t waltz into Ukraine preaching decolonization and open borders—he marched in with tanks, missiles, and the revanchist dream of resurrecting a lost empire. Ukraine is now fighting for its very existence precisely because international law means nothing if it isn’t enforced, and borders mean nothing if they aren’t defended.

How exactly do leftist border abolitionists think this works? If nations don’t have the right to defend their territorial integrity, what stops a stronger power from obliterating them altogether? If borders are just artificial constraints, what stops authoritarian regimes from redrawing them at will? Ukraine’s survival depends on its recognition that borders are real, tangible, and worth fighting for—because the moment they aren’t, the nation ceases to exist.

So, the next time someone smugly proclaims that “no one is illegal on stolen land,” remind them that without borders, without enforcement, and without national sovereignty, everything becomes stolen land. And history shows that the strongest, the most ruthless, and the most willing to wield power will always take what they want.