An argument for open global immigration

http://reprints.longform.org/homelands-deca

by arelangi • 11 years ago

49 50 11 years ago

reprints.longform.org

schoen2• 11 years ago

The title takes on a striking significance about 3/4 of the way through the article. I bet most readers won't see that coming. I sure didn't.

mlinksva• 11 years ago

I knew where it was going the moment I saw the title. Pity more people don't know about http://yves-bonnardel.info/en/manifesto-for-the-abolition-of...

schoen2• 11 years ago

I even knew about that manifesto (from you), and the reference still flew right past me.

smegel2• 11 years ago

Lets me guess - it's really really good for all the poor people from impoverished, war-stricken countries?

Or if you want a daily dose of extreme left-wing nonsense, subscribe to The Guardian or your country's equivalent.

rntz• 11 years ago

it's really really good for all the poor people from impoverished, war-stricken countries?

What part of this argument do you disagree with, and why?

Retric• 11 years ago

It's the equivelent of robbing someone and giving that to charity. Consider is you moved 100,000,000 poor people without English skills into the US just how much chaos that would creat. Now reolise there are several times that many people who would like to live in the US. As a general rule if something is significantly worse for group A and better for group B, but group A makes the choice your argument falls on deaf ears.

Anyway, the other far more obvious solution is to move manufacturing to war torn areas. A billion dollars can creat a lot of jobs, and with reinvestment things can quickly snowball. Sure, setting up sweat shops is not going to give you the same kind of feel good boost, but poverty breeds corruption which breeds poverty.

smegel2• 11 years ago

The bit where it's not so good for everyone else...?

kazagistar• 11 years ago

So accustomed are we to this game of geographical roulette that we have been blinded to the fact that it’s morally indefensible to divide the people on Earth into rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged, victims and survivors according to a criterion that is largely arbitrary and completely out of their control.

This is a weak argument. We do this for wealth in general: the mechanism is called inheritance. Of course, the author does not want to make this argument directly, because doing so would actually make the counterarguments more obvious, so the focus is instead based on emotion.

The second problem with the "free migration solves everything" hypothesis is that the wealth and health of a nation exist as a direct consequence of the existence of the barriers, both political and cultural, rather then some arbitrary geographic accident. Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor; it only risks the problems coming over with the people.

jacquesm2• 11 years ago

Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor; it only risks the problems coming over with the people.

It all depends on the rates, the degree of integration and the mentality of both the hosts and the immigrants. Some countries get this right, others fail miserably.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

Yeah, did the article really address this at all? I think everyone agrees that most countries suck and it'd be great if every human could enjoy benefits like e.g. Canada. But it's not like "good" countries are magical. If you moved most of Africa and Latin America to North America, it seems unlikely all the services would just scale. After all, if that was the case, we could "just" make other countries better.

Also, personal anecdote, but out of the people I've met in Guatemala and expats in the US, essentially all of them recognize the US or Canada is way better and would prefer to live up North. The exceptions are the more better off, higher educated folks. And even then, it just takes a few reminders of the constant violence and insecurity to remind them and make them change their minds. <Generalization disclaimer>

icebraining• 11 years ago

Moving people from poor to rich nations does not do anything to help make the poor nations less poor

Yes, they do. There are hundreds of billions of dollars every year being sent as remittances from those workers to their families in those poor countries.

jbapple2• 11 years ago

We do this for wealth in general: the mechanism is called inheritance. Of course, the author does not want to make this argument directly, because doing so would actually make the counterarguments more obvious, so the focus is instead based on emotion.

Can you elaborate on what counterarguments you're thinking of that become "more obvious"?

josu2• 11 years ago

The second problem with the "free migration solves everything" hypothesis is that the wealth and health of a nation exist as a direct consequence of the existence of the barriers, both political and cultural, rather then some arbitrary geographic accident.

There is a very nice example in Spain, there are two autonomous regions next to each other (there isn't any kind of border): Cantabria and the Basque Country[1], the former has a GDP per capita of 20,855 euros while the latter one 29,683euros. The same language is spoken in both [2], and the cultural diferences are minimal.

The reason while wealth of nation exists nobody knows, and nobody may ever know.

[1] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Comunidades_y_ciudades_au... [2] While some government jobs may require being able to speak Basque, 2/3 of the Basque Country don't speak Basque, and there isn't any kind of discrimination.

hibikir• 11 years ago

In that case, it's not very difficult: Bilbao is a better port than Santander by a significant margin, drastically better communications to Madrid and France, both road and rail, and more natural resources. Santander doesn't have much of a competitive advantage, and as such, does worse. Having a nationalist party in one, while not in the other, also makes a big difference in national investment too. You don't have to pay a lot of attention to see that infrastructure investment goes to different places depending on the government in charge. Cantabria is electorally unimportant, and no big politicians came from there, so good luck getting any investment.

It's also important to know that advantages and disadvantages carry over with time, so a place might be doing much better than another because of semi-arbitrary decisions over the years. Like why does Madrid do better than Toledo? Once the capital moves to Madrid, investment moves towards Madrid, and the one real reason they keep doing better it's this original investment, that brings people, which brings more investment.

Sometimes the differences aren't so arbitrary, but are down to bad bets. In the 1800s, Chicago bet on the power of Rail, St. Louis on the river. The river became less important, while rail became more important, so Chicago got way bigger.

joshuaheard• 11 years ago

Very good article. His argument definitely makes sense on an individual level. When I was in living in France, I wondered why it was impossible for me to buy a house and live there permanently. It was only because of artificial borders. It didn't make sense.

However, on a population wide basis, it is a different story. The article uses refugees and oppressive governments (exceptions to the rule) in order to make his argument. A tactic I distrust. He does make a good point about the EU, although I think the jury is still out on that one.

I believe we should have more immigration in the US. However, we limit immigration for a reason. And the reason is too many people at once burden the infrastructure. We can only build so many freeways, schools, and hospitals at once. So, a large influx of immigrants will cause traffic, crowded classrooms, and long waits in the emergency rooms. Anyone who lives in LA can tell you this is the case since California has had a rapid population primarily driven by immigrants.

tokenadult• 11 years ago

I have been thinking about this a lot since living in what was then still the Third World (Taiwan, with visits to Hong Kong and to China when China was still very poor) in the 1980s. Today, Taiwan is wealthy, and is on track to be one of the richest countries in the world by 2050.[1] Taiwan is far from having open immigration so far, but it has taken in tens of thousands of guest workers from other, poorer countries in Asia, and is a bit unusual in having a big phenomenon of "foreign brides."[2] Free movement of people into Taiwan doesn't yet match the former rather vigorous movement of people out of Taiwan into the United States, but it is increasing, and all around the world the countries that are especially welcoming to immigrants are largely also countries that gain in prosperity over time.

As the article correctly points out, just more than a century ago in the United States, many people worried that HUGE rates of immigration from non-English-speaking countries would be dangerous to this country. They were wrong. Both my maternal grandparents were born in the United States, but their schooling was conducted entirely in the German language. My paternal grandmother was also born in the United States, and attended school only in English, but she attended church services in the Norwegian language and spoke Norwegian at home. Even the descendants of languages less closely cognate to English than those have grown up to be English-speakers just like me. This is not a problem. The strength of the United States (as the article points out) was established in the era when the United States had essentially no restrictions on immigration. I wouldn't mind bringing back those days. If other countries didn't try the same policy, the United States would just grow faster at their expense.

[1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/48686889

[2] http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jun/15/news/adfg-brides15

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023041980045751712...

notworthmyjob• 11 years ago

It's worth remembering that the USA had heavily regulated borders between 1921 and 1965 and it's impossible to know how things would have turned out if they had stayed open. More incidentally, starting during WWI, speaking German in the USA was not encouraged, to say the least.

Furthermore, I would argue that the modern US government was _invented_ during the era of closed borders. Consider the New Deal's various incarnations, Social Security, robust regulation of business, the Wagner Act, etc. Continuing on to post war managerialism. Libertarians may want Guilded Age business policy and immigration policy, but a lot of people just want to cherry pick the immigration policy.

mynameishere• 11 years ago

Just skimmed it. His "argument" seems to be an emotional appeal that poor people in poor countries can improve their lives by moving to Western countries. This is probably true, but it's absolutely true that it not the responsibility of people in Western countries to help the billions of poor in this world by importing them. That's called the "White Man's Burden" and it's exactly what he's arguing for.

Poor countries are almost always poor because of the populations contained within--and if it's from some other cause, such as communism in China, then the resolution to poverty does not require migration, and in fact suggesting migration as a solution is plainly foolish in such cases.

MichaelGG2• 11 years ago

Yeah it was very heavy on the emotional argument. Some folks in Guatemala even tried to claim asylum for all women on the account that Guatemala's a violent place. (Although the homicide rate against men is about 6x than women.) It sucks, but importing people isn't a real fix. (Now, the US taking over GT and running the government and all services... That'd be a real start, but folks get offended by that workable suggestion.)

josu2• 11 years ago

Your underlying assumption is that the people in Western countries have both the duty and the right to close their borders to foreigners.

mistermann2• 11 years ago

You don't think they have that right? Does that same logic apply to your house?

jbapple2• 11 years ago

it's absolutely true that it not the responsibility of people in Western countries to help the billions of poor in this world by importing them

Do you feel that it is the responsibility of rich people to help poor people generally, if they have a good reason to believe they have an effective way of doing so?

sologoub4• 11 years ago

The other point the article seems to completely miss is that it's natural for parents to pass on the fruits of their labor to children. Societies place limits on inheritance to help balance the wealth accumulation, but in general, this ability is see as integral to a health society with strong incentives for building a better future.

The fact that children in the well off countries benefit enormously from the work of previous generations is a very natural and positive fact. Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that other countries are plagued by the missteps of their previous generations. These are hardly questions of fairness, as a misstep could be having a weaker army in the face of an aggressor, but it is a fact of life.

Being an immigrant myself, I cherish the opportunity I have to make a better life for my family and work to make the most of it, but I will never dispute the right of the people of a given country to protect what their fathers and mothers have built for them.

ForHackernews2• 11 years ago

other countries are plagued by the missteps of their previous generations

Plenty of poor countries are plagued by the legacy of crimes committed against them by rich countries (and in some cases, ongoing exploitation today).

It's pretty glib to write that off as "oh well, natural state of affairs"

patmcguire• 11 years ago

We're not talking about a system where people would rather stay at home, and the Western countries decide they know better and take them away.

We're talking about a situation where people desperately want to get to Western countries, so much so that they risk their lives journeys of hundreds of miles over deserts on foot and oceans in shitty boats, and the Western states are employing thousands of people to keep them out.

This isn't "Take Ye Up The White Man's Burden," this is "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

bjourne• 11 years ago

This is probably true, but it's absolutely true that it not the responsibility of people in Western countries to help the billions of poor in this world by importing them. That's called the "White Man's Burden" and it's exactly what he's arguing for.

The argument is that the fortunate has a moral obligation to help the unfortunate. It may be of religious origin (it's central in Christianity but probably also exists in Judaism and even earlier religions) or it may be just something that is a consequence of empathy.

Some people believe that people born handicapped should have to take care of themselves and that they shouldn't have to contribute anything (eg paying taxes) to their welfare, even if they die. Their lives is not their problem so why should they pay for something like handicapped children that they didn't cause?

I think you have a duty to help the less fortunate because that's the right thing to do, others may disagree. Scale the argument up, and fortunate countries have a duty to help less fortunate ones.

mistermann2• 11 years ago

Scale the argument up, and fortunate countries have a duty to help less fortunate ones.

I generally agree, but only if they are willing and able as a culture/society to reform and help themselves.

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

On the other hand, people are perfectly willing to argue that capital markets must be both global and open, and that markets can't operate effectively without free movement of capital. Any country that institutes currency controls is heavily restricts capital inflows is regarded as an economic basket case.

ISTM that if you want a proper free market you have to allow free movement of both labor and capital. Willingness to work is what the poor have instead of capital, and it's their only option for accumulating some capital. Furthermore, if you have open immigration that means migrant labor is also free to leave during times of low demand because departure isn't necessarily a one-way ticket, which means that labor markets can be more flexible and responsive to economic conditions.

I am extremely distrustful of free market advocates who say that their principles suddenly shouldn't apply where labor is concerned. Last time we tried that inside the US, with towns posting signs telling economic migrants to keep going and using vagrancy laws to criminalize the poor, it didn't work out well for anyone. We shouldn't be looking to go back to that.

Really, we're approaching an era of increasing wage equalization as more and more of the world falls out of abject poverty, such that wealthy countries like the US may well face demographic problems from about 2030 onwards due to an inability to attract sufficient numbers of younger migrants to offset the fiscal costs of looking after retirees.

I refer you to this study from the Social Security Advisory board for a more in-depth explanation: http://www.ssab.gov/documents/immig_issue_brief_final_versio...

mc322• 11 years ago

So, when china becomes the most affluent society, I wonder if the author believes people should move to China and put more pressure on their environment.

When people move to more affluent societies they tend to increase the pressure on natural resources. Imagine 7 billion people living first world lifestyles. I think it's unsustainable with current policies and technologies.

Living in the first world would first have to mean leaving leaner before it allows masses of people (billions) to move and consume greater amounts of resources.

senorito• 11 years ago

This perspective is ignorant at best, if not arrogant and maybe even plain stupid.

Africa is the poorest continent on the planet. And one reason why so many countries there are in such bad shape is very well directly connected to the "White Man".

Are you aware of the damage European colonialism caused in the 19th century and how much of damage to socities, environment and economics in African countries was caused by US corporations enforcing political systems and establishments that would allow them to steal resources from those countries?

The Western countries do have a lot of direct and indirect responsibility for people suffering over there.

Donwangugi• 11 years ago

In the US there are states which would benefit from high immigration as opposed to the more popular coastal states.

I wonder if there is some way to use this as a way to ease some immigration laws.

seiji• 11 years ago

Yeah, the root problem is everybody wants to move where everybody already is. Big cities have large immigrant communities because cities are walkable or transit-able and have, at the edges, cheap housing stock, so you don't need a car or large funds—you can just move in and start your life over. Then, when you move there, more people from where you were will move there and you will help them get acclimated, then those people will help more new people, then before you know it, where you set down roots is now "Little WhereICameFrom."

But, NYC breaks down if another 8 million people move into it. San Francisco is 1/10th the size of NYC and it already can't handle the people it has.

The only way fully open and accepted and world-wide immigration works is under unconscionable "living area restriction" schemes limiting already overly-popular areas. You either pick an "open" area (Idaho! North Dakota!) or slot new people into some pre-allocated catchment areas/states with restricted residency/transit for the first 5-15 years of their relocation? But, that sounds a bit too ghettoy.

China can build new cities in the blink of an eye, even if some of them end up going completely unused. The US can't maintain the cities it has and spends $30 billion to dig a new 2 mile subway ($5 billion towards cost, $25 billion towards corruption). There are solutions to "everybody wants to live in a better place" problems, but it takes organization, time, resources, a vision for a better future, and generosity. The world isn't currently offering those as a packaged deal. Be 70s forward-thinking-by-30-years-ahead California, not 2010s only-plan-for-6-months-later California.

But, that's assuming "aspirational" immigration where 30 million to 300 million people would want to move "to the west" for a chance at a better life. What about "i got mine, i just want to move" immigration? NYC<->London? Sydney<->Chicago? Something between an educated worker visa and an investor visa? We don't have an answer for that. You are just incidental to a combination of where you were born and where your parents had citizenship at the time you started breathing outside the womb.

mirimir• 11 years ago

Liberalization of international investment and trade since WWII have been justified in part to promote peace through economic connection. While the article focuses on human rights and social justice, liberalization of global immigration would arguably have the same impact.

There's another issue that makes open global immigration more attractive to wealthy nations. Free investment and trade move jobs to nations with competent workers who demand less pay, leaving behind industrial decline and unemployment. Open global immigration would ameliorate that.

treedy• 11 years ago

Open borders will never happen, because it would bankrupt rich countries (sadly, it appears that the recent wave of African refugees in the Med are heading for Northern European welfare states for this reason). Also, there are many people who lack the aptitude and desire to leave their first-world home countries-they will simply be out-competed by migrants (most third world migrants who open little shops tend to employ people from the home country rather than locals).

There are ways to help poor third world countries: 1) focus on ameliorating eradicating the worst forms of preventable suffering. Bill Gates is doing this. Improve childhood nutrition to reduce stunting. 2) Trade with them. While Europe and the U.S. were bailing out their banks, South African corporations have been getting rich selling satellite TV, cellphone services and introducing chain supermarkets to Africans. You see, they want the same things that the rest of us have. Invest in their countries and make a profit. That will help them in the medium-long term.

smil• 11 years ago

A country can have open borders or a social safety net, not both. If you choose the latter, you're effectively denying the existing population the services they have already paid for, for themselves and their offspring, through their taxes.

So, in an open border society, it would make no sense to pay taxes because they wouldn't give you as a tax payer anything.

For this reason, global corporations who want zero tax rates and the supply of the entire world's population to hire from and effectively pay slave wages, and these "progressives" are united in their wish to dismantle the welfare state.

jogjayr• 11 years ago

Something worth pointing out here: apart from the EU, there isn't even open immigration among rich countries. A Swede, (or Briton or Canadian) can't just decide to pack his things up and come to work in the US (though the visa waiver program for tourists is pretty sweet). There are still visa hoops to jump through, paperwork to be done. It's easier, if you're a rich-country-citizen, to move to another rich country, but by no means a done deal.

It's hard to make a logical argument that immigration controls exist purely for economic reasons; social services and weather apart, Sweden (or the UK or Canada) and the US have comparable standards of living and levels of English proficiency. None of the arguments against allowing unchecked immigration from poor countries to rich (education, overwhelming public services, falling wages etc) apply in this scenario and yet (again, apart from the EU), open immigration between roughly equally developed countries doesn't exist.

ajays• 11 years ago

The problem with open migration is that then those with the means (even limited ones) get up and leave, leaving the rest even poorer. As a very loose analogy, think of it as evaporative cooling; it results in a net loss for the source.

Instead of short-term fixes (which include distributing food, clothes, etc.) I would hope that Western countries would actually help build up the infrastructure in these poor countries, and let them run their own affairs.

And, for the sake of all that's good and holy, stop propping up dictators all across the world, if that means our gas is $0.05 cheaper or our phones are $.25 cheaper.

pdonis• 11 years ago

This article, to the extent it makes a valid argument at all, is not an argument for open immigration. It's an argument for removing barriers to adoption of children in poor countries by parents in rich countries. Extending that (valid) point to a claim about open immigration in general is not justified.

Also, I find at least one factual howler in the article: the claim that South Africa after the end of apartheid has been a stable country.

Torgo• 11 years ago

Arguing that citizenship laws are complicated and burdensome so we should get rid of all of them is the left wing equivalent of the right wing argument that taxes are complicated and burdensome so we should get rid of all of them.

klagermkii• 11 years ago

Seems nuts to use South Africa as a case study for the potential success of opening borders, when it's in the grip of massive xenophobia against immigrants from upper Africa (that has already resulted in a number of murders).

http://www.ibtimes.com/south-africa-xenophobic-attacks-2015-...

buyx• 11 years ago

South Africa has strict immigration laws. Unfortunately widespread corruption in the Department of Home Affairs (especially in the period 1994-2010 ca.) has meant that these laws were not worth the paper they are printed on.

How exactly Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nigerian and Chinese shopkeepers provide rare skills is a mystery, and it is very hard to justify the presence of unskilled labour from countries like Malawi in South Africa, which has 25% unemployment. There are also many Somali "refugees" who manage to bypass 3 countries in East Africa and end up in South Africa, where they also open up small businessss.

Of course, anyone who asks these questions in South Africa is labelled a "xenophobe" by the media.

stegosaurus• 11 years ago

Does it need an argument?

To me, open borders are an obvious thing to strive for.

The only reason not to have them is as a sort of hack to hold together systems that are going to fall apart eventually anyway (e.g. welfare systems that treat people differently based on a bit of land they were born on).

It really seems to me that the only argument against is basically 'I deserve my wealth'.

Can people not see how ridiculous the current scenario is? Westerners are basically superhumans, welcome almost anywhere, with a bunch of money that allows them to basically go colonial if they decide to leave.

Just be honest with yourself. You can be hypocritical and vote against it whilst accepting that it makes sense.

Similar example: meat production, especially battery hens etc. It is mind blowingly obviously a cruel and bad thing to do. You can accept that and still eat meat. You don't have to lie to yourself and others and pretend that you have a 'different opinion' or whatever.

I use and buy leather. I know that it is not morally a nice thing to do. But I am human, I have vices, I am imperfect. What I refuse to do is somehow pretend that it makes sense or is kind or rational or should be done.

An argument for open global immigration

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