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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Open borders are scary probably because the upside is relatively limited for rich countries, because we are already rich. We can either make ourselves a little richer, or on the downside we can make ourselves a lot poorer, by becoming overcrowded with worldwide economic refugees.

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It's a complicated topic but there were real world "experiments": In 2004 in Europe:

"By allowing anyone in the eight relatively poor new members of the EU to come and work freely, Britain, Ireland and Sweden are putting these claims to the test. All seventy-five million people in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are now free to move to Britain and work. Since wages in Poland are typically only a fifth of those in Britain, Poles have a big incentive to come and work here. If opponents of immigration are right, Britain should now be deluged with East Europeans and unemployment should be soaring.... But it isn’t. In fact, only 427,000 East Europeans have so far applied to work in Britain (many of whom were already in the country illegally) – and most stay only briefly: net migration from eastern Europe was only 48,000 in 2004.5 Unemployment remains at thirty-year lows, tax receipts are up and jobs that British people no longer want to do are being filled."

-- Philippe Legrain

However, those are western civilizations which value rationality and equality. Rationality and equality (and inclusiveness) aren't values in a great many cultures.

You should really travel more, especially to cultures where you consider are below yours. Hopefully one day you'll come to the realization that humans are not that different from each other.

First, no-one mentioned cultures being superior until you did. Why is being rational, equality-oriented, and inclusive in your eyes superior?

Second, I'm sure there are some wonderful people in cultures where women (for example) are considered second class citizens. If I travel there and return with some feel-good anecdotes, I fail to see how that changes anything.

This is an easy problem to solve. You can start open borders restricted to EU. This is a reason for particular implementation of open borders, not a reason against open borders.

There is also a the income : cost of living balance and barriers of language & culture.

Another thing I wonder if they can take advantage of welfare? Can a polish person get UK welfare and NHS services indefinitely if they just move there?

As a Canadian living in the UK on a temporary work visa I get to vote (LOL THE QUEEN IS ON THE LOONIE), and am served by the NHS for emergency stuff but my visa says "no recourse to public funds" which I'm pretty sure means I don't get things like disability benefit.

Pensions on the other hand, I'm not sure about. I'm getting tax relief for my pension contributions, but maybe there will be a withholding tax if I leave without naturalising.

European Union citizens who are habitually resident in another EU country are entitled to receive welfare benefits. (The current UK government wants to renegotiate this arrangement.)

At the time, after registering in, they could not claim welfare benefits for two years.

Were I live this is being debated: People can come here, have kids and move back and have significant amounts of money thrown back at them over the border.

Not really. You should read:

"The Flood that Never Arrived: German Open Borders Too Late for Polish Workers"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/the-flood-that-ne...

It says:

"Since May, Polish workers have had the freedom to seek employment in Germany without restrictions. But the expected onslaught of laborers never materialized. Many Polish view jobs in the neighboring country with disdain, with Germans suffering from a reputation for stingy wages and lousy working conditions."

Here you had completely open borders between a poor nation and a rich nation, and most Poles decided to stay home or go to some other country, such as Britain, where they felt more welcome.

So there are many variables at work. It's not a simple invasion of the poor moving into the rich country.

Perhaps Germany/Poland are not exactly the best examples. How many Latin Americans would move to the US if they had free passage? I'm guessing it's a little different than germany/poland.

For one, if you take global warming seriously it's a disaster. Each immigrant from a poor to rich country increases their CO2 emissions by about an order of magnitude.

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