Facts on Open Immigration
It is important to look at facts. I only had to google "nations with open borders" and choose these citations from the many links offered. As this is a forum for Objectivists, allow me to suggest a cautionary argument from Understanding Objectivism by Leonard Peikoff and Harry Binwanger. Answering a student's question, Peikoff warned against "monism" attempting to derive all truths from A is A by pure logic. Answering another question about the hierarchy of knowledge, Peikoff said that you cannot make metaphysics antecedent to epistemology: reason and reality must always be tied to each other. So, too, here I point out that Harry Binswanger's blogpost advocating for open immigration does describe the United States of the near-capitalist 19th century, We had open borders. We also defended our national sovereignty against the United Kingdom (and lesser threats). Similarly, living as I do in Texas, when we were a republic, we declared and then defended our sovereignty in part specifically to have open immigration.
A Harsh Climate Calls for Banishment of the Needy
The key to Svalbard’s status as probably Europe’s closest thing to a crime-free society, according to the governor, is that unemployment is in effect illegal. “If you don’t have a job, you can’t live here,” Mr. Ingero said, noting that the jobless are swiftly deported. Retirees are sent away, too, unless they can prove they have sufficient means to support themselves.
Although governed by Norway, a country that prides itself on offering cradle-to-grave state support for its needy citizens, Svalbard, an archipelago of islands in the high Arctic, embraces a model that is closer to the vision of Ayn Rand than the Scandinavian norm of generous welfare protection.Even Longyearbyen’s socialist mayor, Christin Kristoffersen, a member of the Labour Party, wants the town — named after an American industrialist, John Munro Longyear, who founded it in 1906 — to stay off limits to all but the able-bodied and gainfully employed. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/wo...
How Open Borders Died in Five Countries
By Bryan Caplan
https://www.econlib.org/how-open-bord...
This is a summary from a free market perspective of this journal article:
"Immigration Policy Prior to the 1930s: Labor Markets, Policy Interactions, and Globalization Backlash" by Ashley S. Timmer and Jeffrey G. Williams
Population and Development Review
Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 739-771
The Case for Immigation
IN his novel “Exit West”, Mohsin Hamid describes a world very like our own, but which is suddenly changed by the appearance of mysterious doors. A dark-skinned man falls out of an Australian woman’s wardrobe in Sydney. Filipino women emerge from the back door of a bar into the alleyways of Tokyo. As the incidents multiply and scores of people from poor countries walk through the doors into richer ones, rich-world inhabitants respond with violent resistance. Governments crack down hard on the new arrivals. But it is not long before they are overwhelmed by their sheer number and abandon efforts to repel them. The world settles into an uneasy new equilibrium. Shantytowns emerge on the slopes of San Francisco Bay. Conflicts in war-torn places burn out for want of civilians to kill and exploit.
Mr Hamid’s story comes close to what many advocates of open borders believe the world would look like if people were free to move wherever they wanted: fairer, freer, with more opportunities for a larger number of people. But it also nods to the fears many people have about unfettered migration: uncertainty, disorder, violence. Would such a world be a dream or a nightmare? The answer depends on whom you ask.
https://www.economist.com/open-future...
A Harsh Climate Calls for Banishment of the Needy
The key to Svalbard’s status as probably Europe’s closest thing to a crime-free society, according to the governor, is that unemployment is in effect illegal. “If you don’t have a job, you can’t live here,” Mr. Ingero said, noting that the jobless are swiftly deported. Retirees are sent away, too, unless they can prove they have sufficient means to support themselves.
Although governed by Norway, a country that prides itself on offering cradle-to-grave state support for its needy citizens, Svalbard, an archipelago of islands in the high Arctic, embraces a model that is closer to the vision of Ayn Rand than the Scandinavian norm of generous welfare protection.Even Longyearbyen’s socialist mayor, Christin Kristoffersen, a member of the Labour Party, wants the town — named after an American industrialist, John Munro Longyear, who founded it in 1906 — to stay off limits to all but the able-bodied and gainfully employed. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/10/wo...
How Open Borders Died in Five Countries
By Bryan Caplan
https://www.econlib.org/how-open-bord...
This is a summary from a free market perspective of this journal article:
"Immigration Policy Prior to the 1930s: Labor Markets, Policy Interactions, and Globalization Backlash" by Ashley S. Timmer and Jeffrey G. Williams
Population and Development Review
Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 739-771
The Case for Immigation
IN his novel “Exit West”, Mohsin Hamid describes a world very like our own, but which is suddenly changed by the appearance of mysterious doors. A dark-skinned man falls out of an Australian woman’s wardrobe in Sydney. Filipino women emerge from the back door of a bar into the alleyways of Tokyo. As the incidents multiply and scores of people from poor countries walk through the doors into richer ones, rich-world inhabitants respond with violent resistance. Governments crack down hard on the new arrivals. But it is not long before they are overwhelmed by their sheer number and abandon efforts to repel them. The world settles into an uneasy new equilibrium. Shantytowns emerge on the slopes of San Francisco Bay. Conflicts in war-torn places burn out for want of civilians to kill and exploit.
Mr Hamid’s story comes close to what many advocates of open borders believe the world would look like if people were free to move wherever they wanted: fairer, freer, with more opportunities for a larger number of people. But it also nods to the fears many people have about unfettered migration: uncertainty, disorder, violence. Would such a world be a dream or a nightmare? The answer depends on whom you ask.
https://www.economist.com/open-future...
Previous comments... You are currently on page 2.
Lucky: "There is no way out, a government that allows unrestricted migration will fall, the kindest way is by peaceful internal protest. If this fails, the next kindest is violent rebellion. If this fails, the nation will be conquered.". The article by Bryan Caplain looked at five cases of open immigration. Did any of those nations fall into chaos as a result? Has any?
The fact that technology has made travel easy also means that communication erases national borders. Go to Wikipedia and look at the list of Technology Centers around the world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
and then look at the list of rocket launching platforms around the world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
If you want more of that, then you want more freedom. That is an argument worth having. Free trade and free minds means open borders for the free flow of goods, services, information, and people.
N: "I also do not see the Norwegian Islands method as "workable". Do they have to pay taxes, and do those taxes simply fund their locale, current needs and nothing else? I have not found a government on earth yet that does that, so if these guys do, they should be held up as a shining example."
People who live in the town of Longyearbyen on the Svalbard Island pay taxes to the government of Norway like everyone else in Norway. Read the article. Google more for yourself if you are not satisfied. But the fact is that the town has its own ordinances. As mentioned in the article, everyone in Norway gets a basic income. But if you are a retired Norwegian citizen and your Norwegian retirement does not pay the rent in Longyearbyen, then you cannot stay. They have no free rent, no free food. But given that, they do have open immigration. And if you read the article, you will see that it even extends to visas that get you through the airport in Oslo. Open immigration does not mean open welfare -- or (as in William Shipley's nightmare scenario) having hordes of people voting to take your property -- aside from the actual normal way of doing in Norway (:-)
N:Look at the effects of illegals: Groups use them for voting, (even when it is illegal) they want to give them drivers licenses (when they cannot be held legally responsible, because they are not citizens)...
But look at the history of the Irish in America. Are you suggesting that our nation was destroyed by Tammany Hall? Corrupt as the "bandwagon" of liquor on the way to the polling place was, it was largely irrelevant in the big scheme of things. Have you seen The Godfather or read the book? "Don't get one of our judges, give it to a Jewish judge," said Don Corlenone. And yet, we had Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. Do you think that Anthony Kennedy was a corrupt Irish Catholic on the Tammany Hall bandwagon? All you present comes down to xenophobia. The fact is that ethnicity, however perceived by the first generation of co-ethnics, simply erodes in a complex, capitalist, urban environment.
N:This all ties together, and the people pushing the open borders are the same ones with "sanctuary cities and states" and get the sheeple to vote for them with promises of continued programs like state retirement programs that are bigger than any company ones, free stuff and people educated to believe the state is the answer to anything.
Absolutely not true was the original essay cited at top comes from Harry Binswanger, an Objectivist who does not propose more free stuff.
"You don’t know my conception of self-interest. No one has the right to pursue his self-interest by law or by force, which is what you’re suggesting. You want to forbid immigration on the grounds that it lowers your standard of living — which isn’t true, though if it were true, you’d still have no right to close the borders. You’re not entitled to any “self-interest” that injures others, especially when you can’t prove that open immigration affects your self-interest. You can’t claim that anything others may do — for example, simply through competition — is against your self-interest. But above all, aren’t you dropping a personal context? How could I advocate restricting immigration when I wouldn’t be alive today if our borders had been closed? (Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew, p. 25.)" --
https://ari.aynrand.org/blog/2017/02/...
Do you think that Ayn Rand wanted free stuff for everyone?
N: they are all engineered to support a disruptive social change that shatters all existing norms, so the people running that show can reshape it in their own image."
That is two arguements in one sentence. The first is that you are opposed to disruptive social change, whatever that means. I trust that you are not opposed to the disruptive social change caused by capitalism. Silicon Valley was just the modern expression of steel mills and railroads. Railroads tore the very fabric of village life by destroying the town clock and replacing it with "railroad time" the time zones we have today. I can imagine 19th century conservatives being horrified by that. Is that your complaint?
The second part of that is the more cogent. You are opposed to "the people running that show [who] can reshape it in their own image." What you mean is "they" have a plan. Maybe "they" do, but it is not "in their image." Do you think that Hillary Clinton wants to create a world of billionaires? Ayn Rand did. I do not that "their image" (whatever that may be for each one individually) is what "they" want. Among "them" may be many back-to-the-land village idiots. But those people can be found in the Right as well. The anti-capitalist mentality crosses party lines. The radical left is just another kind of alt-right. They are both opposed to bourgeois society.
N: I don't get a cerebral about philosophy,"
I am disappointed to learn that about you.
By definition, people who come to America leave their old cultures behind. Over a couple of generations, all ties to the old country have evaporated.
Millions of non-citizen immigrants served in US armed forces. Some did that for love of their adopted nation. Many served in order to obtain citizenship. One man who served in World War I was denied citizenship solely on the basis of his race:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_.... Asians were not allowed to become citizens. Period. (Their culture was too alien. The millions of them would flood our shores and overewhelm our Anglo-Saxon heritage -- or so it was claimed at the time.). But the funny thing - if such things can be funny - is that under Jim Crow, Asians who were ineligible for citizenship were allowed to ride in railway cars with white people. That is just an example of the irrational consequences that inevitably derive from irrational premises.
If you want to make a case for closing the border - and thus sealing us in - you need to be consistent in logic and the logic must be based on facts.
Technology has transformed life on earth. Back in those days when some nations encouraged inward migration, the cost of travel was ~ ten times higher than it is now. Package deal tourism started for the middle class, then for the working hoi polloi. Now mass migration is affordable.
Look at the pics of passengers in evening dress on the Titanic, and then of the lower deck migrants who may or may not have owned a suitcase. Journeys that once took weeks now take hours. Ways of thinking from the age when thousands a year could cross the Atlantic have to change when that figure could be millions.
The motivations are the same as they have always been - work, better pay, to escape discrimination, to flee from massacre, to colonize and to conquer. But now the numbers are far larger.
Can people cooperate to form a nation? Yes they do and they will whether it is legit in your philosophy or not.
Can those people require the state to protect them from colonization, real or imagined? Again yes, unless there is a powerful state that will ignore the people.
There is no way out, a government that allows unrestricted migration will fall, the kindest way is by peaceful internal protest. If this fails, the next kindest is violent rebellion. If this fails, the nation will be conquered.
"Those who do not learn from history will be doomed to repeat it."
Isreal knows this when it not only passed the "law of return" which allows Jews anywhere to move there and become citizens but at the same time deny the Palestinians a right to return for their decedents. It is an acknowledgement that the makeup of the population will determine the future culture and the laws.
One cannot sit secure in your private property, even it if extends to an entire valley that you invite people to come and live in with no concern over the makeup of the population at large. That population has the ability to overturn whatever protections you have and seize your property through unhindered democracy.
This is the ultimate flaw in any "gulch" scenario because new immigrants, and even descendants, can decide that it's unfair for people to 'hoard' resources and send the police that they control to make things more 'fair'.