Imagine if you were prevented by force of law from emailing certain people, adding certain friends on Facebook, or texting people.
Imagine a government body that excluded vast swaths of the population from the list of those you are allowed to communicate with. Imagine if every Facebook friend request or Twitter follow had to go through some months-long approval process, and most got denied.
Imagine how your world would shrink.
We’d cry “censorship!” and “I have a right to free association!” and we’d be right.
Immigration restrictions do the same thing, only with even more grave consequences. Lives and livelihoods are at stake. Bureaucracies and armed agents preclude you from hiring, renting to, selling to, or inviting into your home or business the majority of the earth’s population without near impossible approval processes. I can think of no greater violation of human rights and dignity.
Government logic:
If you don’t do business with someone based on circumstances of birth, you’re illegally discriminating.
If you try to do business with someone born elsewhere, you’re violating immigration law.