Open borders
There are endless straw-men arguments about borders, at least from the loudest voices on the topic. Those loudest voices are, from my point of view, all on one side: The side of wanting more restrictions imposed.
I am aware that the loudest voices do not represent all, and I don't want to nut-pick, so here is also a link to YouTuber Lindybeige who also thinks the arguments are straw men but whose position is so different to mine that they think my position is one of the straw men. (TLDW: He's inviting people to come up with a number between 0 and ∞ as an answer to "how many immigrants should there be?")
I'm going to write something most of you will consider madness: I think the borders should be open. Totally open. No restrictions.
You may be flabbergasted by this. Possibly even as speechless as I was when someone I had previously respected had gone on an anti-immigration rant — he hated immigration and wanted the UK population to fall (he's British, voted UKIP and Leave, and I don't think he ever really grasped that that meant people like me moving out of areas like his, but no matter). One of his arguments was, and this is just paraphrasing despite my best effort to quote him: "Clearly a quadrillion people couldn't fit in this country, so we shouldn't accept any immigrants."
(As an aside: not only are there not a quadrillion people in total, not only is population growth going down so there may never be, but if you extrapolate growth from current annual changes to the point where there are a quadrillion, then a quadrillion people happens about the same time humanity's energy use is enough to make a new Earth-mass planet in about 6-7 days by matter-antimatter pair production — bonus irony points as the guy had recently become Christian and that's a nicely biblical timeframe).
Quite a lot of the newspapers think my position is somehow common amongst their political opponents — it isn't, and I'm sad about that. Most of the politicians seem to be happy to point to a random unimportant group (currently refugees, previously single mothers, before them the disabled, who in turn followed after ethnic groups including Irish and Jewish) and blame all their own failings on that group, so the majority blaming immigrants isn't going to change until some other conveniently weak scapegoat emerges. (In the UK many Leave politicians seem to want to blame Remainers, but that's not likely to work with such a narrow margin… at least, I hope it's not likely to work).
Are these papers nut-picking when they talk about me, or not? (I don't think I'm mad, just eccentric and independently minded, but who would call themselves mad?) Depends how well I can justify myself.
So, analogy time: Right now, anyone British can move freely across the England-Scotland border, and anyone American can freely move across the California-Nevada border. The laws are different in both these examples. Imagine that Scotland declared independence from the UK and California from the USA: Now the default is nobody with Scottish/Californian citizenship can cross the border to England/Nevada respectively — further arrangements have to be made first, before any crossings are allowed again, and even then at the whims of the governments on the other sides of those borders.
What's changed? What about the situation means that it is now important to stop people crossing that border? Anything that applies to an existing border applies to that border, and vice-versa.
Military? You can spot an army, and use your own to defend yourself. Criminals fleeing from you? Extradition is a thing. Even if it wasn't, the USA already has different state-level and federal-level laws, and Scotland already has a different legal system from England-and-Wales. I don't know if/how extradition gets involved in a dispute between states, nor between Scotland and England; only that in an extradition beyond the UK border, a Scottish judge doesn't do exactly the same thing as an English one. Criminals entering your country? Ditto, and if you're sharing police records internationally this should be easy to do: use the current A.I.-driven surveillance (already present at UK border controls!) in normal CCTV cameras. Although, for some things, you might explicitly want to let them come without fear of extradition — Gay men fleeing nations where it's illegal, for example. Voting dominated by migrants? Same as the EU: tied to citizenship, not residency. Service-tourism? (E.g. unemployment benefits, NHS)? Same as Germany: Demonstrate you can support yourself ("pay for your own health insurance" seems to be the main one) in order to get the ID card you need for basically all civil functions. Locals not being able to get things because of all the migrants? (E.g. school places, hospital beds, jobs, houses)? The fear represents a total misunderstanding of economics, as migrants supply both sides of supply and demand equally, just like natives. Overcrowding? Same as literally every country larger than a city-state: the same (free-market and other) economics that also stops the entire population of countries like the USA or the UK moving internally to "where the jobs are". Yes, there is some movement, but this leads to the next criticism… Brain drain in the countries people leave? Yeah, the best and the brightest move, while those who stay behind are those unable or unwilling to move. Generally asked in bad-faith, because those asking show no other interest in the well-being of these places, but that doesn't mean I can dismiss it without thinking about it.Actually, I'll go further: every reason one country* would want immigration is also a reason it would want to prevent emigration. (*This applies to any geographic region, including a city within a country; Detroit, for a famous example.)
Is that your problem, as an immigration nation? I don't know — but it's a thing. Perhaps it's a good thing, because it will force shrinking nations to make themselves more attractive to reduce departures? I can't predict it, and this is just a thought.
It's also where I'm going to stop this blog post and get on with updating my CV. I'm busy looking for work in a foreign country.
Original post: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/open-borders/
Original post timestamp: Tue, 28 Aug 2018 11:02:41 +0000
Tags: border control, economics, emigration, immigration, open borders
Categories: Politics