This is an old article, but one which addresses an issue that has, once again, become a hot political issue.

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Adam rightly points out that the purpose of our government is to protect our individual rights, and not the individual rights of those who are outside of our border.  He makes a strong argument that it is the rights of American citizens that are being abriged when they cannot interact in a variety of ways with those who are being prevented from coming into the United States.  The American citizen can't rent them property, hire them, bring in a spouse or lover, and in many other ways are effectively prohibited from taking certain actions because of immigration laws.

First, as an aside, Adam always couches this as dealing with NON-CRIMINAL immigrants.  But I need to point out that whether the person is a criminal or not is immaterial under Adam's own method of analyzing this.  For example, could you rent a house you own to someone who is an American citizen who has a criminal record - i.e., a person who has was convicted and punished for criminal acts taken in the past?  Yes, and the government would be wrong, on the basis of only enforcing the protection of individual rights, to prohibit that.  What if the person is wanted for a crime somewhere (an American citizen or someone attempting to come here)?  No difference.  As long as you are not guilty in aiding in the commission of a violation of an individual's rights as a kind of accomplice, then there is no problem trading with that criminal (not in so far as this immigration issue is concerned).  Adam says that he was prohibited from selling his house because the scientist couldn't immigrate from Hong Kong.  But there is a degree to which the immigration and the sale of the house are separate.  He could have sold his house - that wasn't prohibited, but the person couldn't immigrate and CHOSE not to make the purchase for that reason.  What if the person were a convicted swindler instead of a scientist?  And that was the reason that he was denied entry to the US?  The way Adam writes, that would have been acceptable - which doesn't make sense to me.

Let's look at this from the other direction.  Let's say that you have entered into a partnership with a group of individuals where you have agreed to make certain decisions only by mutual agreement.  That is a circumstance where you cannot, as an example, sell the property on behalf of the partnership, without the partnership member's agreement.  You might say, "But, that isn't a good example because I didn't agree to some deal where I can't sell my property to a person who wants to immigrate."  Well, the nature of government is such that we are seen to be living under some agreements by "the consent of the governed."  I believe that "consent" is a poor concept in one way, and an excellent concept in another.  It is poor in a literal sense of each individual having had the opportunity to sign, or not sign, an agreement - as one would have done to be part of the imagined partnership.  But it is an excellent concept in another way.  "Consent" is an exercise of choice and the nature of a proper government is to separate choice from force.  Apart from immediate self-defense, we all live in a system where the best defense of individual rights is to have the government prohibit acts that would violate individual rights, and exercise retaliatory force against those who are violators.  You cannot act as if you have rights that others should respect, without, by implication, accepting that a government can act to protect rights by recognizing that people can choose to do anything they want, so long as it doesn't violate another's rights.  That is our implicit consent.

But I still haven't explained how a government - whose sole purpose is the protection of individual rights - could get the moral (and thereby legal) right to prohibit someone from entering the country.  A proper government, by it's nature, can only act in ways that protect individual rights.  But this carries with it more complexity than is seen at first glance.  For example, to try criminal and civil cases requires the use of a courtroom.  If that court rooom is part of building that is 'owned' by the government, it is a building that is actually owned by people of that jurisdiction.  It is property held in common.  The same can be said of a police station, a military base, and so on.  The government manages these properties on behalf of the people.  The ownership by the people, as is the case with the ownership of a corporation by its shareholders, is limited - as is the case for any form of group ownership. 

Look at the example I gave above where a partnership is formed, where some decisions can only be made by mutual agreement.  There will be rules and procedures in place to determine how the citizens can direct the managers (e.g., the government) of the common property.  One community might have laws in place that allow a city council to sell an old court house and build a new one.  Or the community might have laws in place that state that only through a special vote can this kind of transaction occur. 

We can see the bridge between individual rights and the court house that is required to carry out the protection of the rights and the management of the court house property by the government and the concept of public ownership of the court house.  But where is that chain of logical connection for the justification of immigration laws?  It is in property rights. 

In this case it is the property rights inherent in the common property of all citizens: mostly, our laws - but actually, aspects of the culture and society that the maintenance of our particular laws, and our particular history have given us.  Clearly, under our current welfare state and our view of democracy as a way to elect mini-tyrants and the passing of oppressive laws, we should not want to allow the immigration of those who would favor that view as opposed to the view of a constitutional republic based upon individual rights.  But let's imagine that we are in a nation that has finally achieved full capitalism and has no trace of the welfare or regulatory state that we have now.  We would, in that case, have a far more valuable common property.  And it would be easier to control immigration in a way that accords more with individual property than common property.  We could have simple laws that allowed someone to enter if a citizen wanted to rent to him.  It would be like a homeowner in a gated community telling the guard at the gate to let someone in because they were coming to their house.  Our common agreement would, in effect, be "a person can come in as long as it is to the property of someone who is a property owner."
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In the comments following this argument we have one by a Dennis Wilson where he writes, "The idea that some culture could flood us with immigrants, take over and subvert our political structure is xenophobic, racist, conspiracy theory at its worst. Those who continue to advance such a theory should check their premises because the theory, which defies logic, also does not hold up against the evidence of history."

This is an ugly argument usually heard from Progressives who follow the Saul Alinsky tactics of demonizing their opponent - a form of argument that should be beneath any Objectivist.  I'll just say that the other part of the argument - that part based upon the 'evidence of history' - could have been made in Europe just a few decades ago, but witness the destruction to their culture, to the stability of their laws, to the destruction of the very fabric of their society that we have seen from the flood of middle-eastern refugees.  Imagine that flood trippled, quadrupled... all within the realm of the possible, and see how a nation state could end being so totally changed that it is like a vessel filled with a fine wine developed over many generations is emptied and a vile, toxic liquid takes its place.  That is just a simple reality of nation states in a world where mass migrations are possible, where people come with their own ideas as to what society should be, where some ideas are toxic to liberty, and where ideas will matter.  The fact is that the greater the freedom of any two nation states, the less of a problem there will be in traveling between them.  The only sensible approach to one day having open borders is by first ensuring that the nation states are based upon individual rights.

Most of the comments in this thread that decry any regulation regarding immigration are based not on the realities of immigration but from adoption of the ideology of anarchy and that is an argument that has been exercised quite well in other threads.