When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas
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'Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police.'
It's hard to believe how much we've given up.
Passport control as immigration regulation/deterrent definitely rings true to me, and some countries see less need for it with richer travelers.
Jesus Christ, where are you getting your lunch from?
Ryanair use the low fares for marketing, pretty successfully. They probably expect many people to add luggage (£10-40, depending on route), or buy food on the plane (£10+) or be disorganized and end up paying more.
In Western/Northern Europe they use out-of-the-way airports -- London Stansted is 47 minutes by the fastest train from London, or over an hour by car. They have a reputation for reducing the fees they pay the airport by threatening to move to alternative airports, unless they're given a very good deal. People walk to the plane, they don't use jet bridges. The whole plane is economy class, and the seats plasticy-fake-leather, which must speed up cleaning. At airports, they'll usually use the worst (farthest) gates. All the planes are the same, so maintenance is simplified and pilots easily moved around.
As to why the US doesn't have them -- I don't know. Norwegian is a budget airline, and has fares like New York to Paris for $175 one way (Tuesday, no luggage, no food!).
In the US this standardization process happened over a century ago thanks to the railroads. Starting in the 1980s competition law was successively weakened. In addition the cartels were able to buy legislation they needed. Hence there is little competition in airfare or internet service compared to Europe. Large chains control the downtowns of most cities and suburbs.
I see Timisoara, Romania to London for £4.49, or US$5.80. That's a 2.5 hour flight!
(No baggage, no food, but that's the real price -- the airlines aren't allowed the "hidden fees" any more.)
See, for example, Ryanair's London Stansted to Anywhere -- and note that a train (£19) or bus (I'd guess about £8-9) from Stansted to London will cost more than some of these fares: https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/cheap-flights/?from=STN&out-fr...
A lot of European Jews in the 1930s were trying and failing to emigrate, in a system pretty much like today's (plus the unusual bonus that their home state wanted them to leave). https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007455
It's weird, for all our progress, our world is more locked down and restricted than ever before.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Restriction_Act_...
Or at least someone with a good enough accent to pass for one.
Humans are individuals, individuals form into groups, and those groups when large and cohesive enough form into societies, civilizations, and now nation states. If those groups are to exist as a "group" they require these shared norms, values, culture to remain a viable group. If part of that culture is to exclude outsiders on the area of land on this earth that they control, then who is one individual or many individuals to say that this is invalid?
This presents a lot of opportunity for places like the United States where immigration and freedom of movement is more accepted - so you get more immigration and more growth. But that is something citizens of the US have decided, not external actors.
No human rights are innate though, they're all man made.
Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.)
Without governments, there is no impedance to freedom of movement. This isn't merely theoretical: as governments have become stronger and their reach extended across the globe, the ability to move freely has correspondingly decreased.
This is a rude way of approaching a discussion. Don't make my assumptions about my knowledge.
A much better way of starting a discussion would be to state what you believe the definition of a human right is. There are in fact many different philosophical views on what human rights are, with many philosophers in fact arguing that their origin is in natural rights. [0]
> "Human rights" are something that didn't exist in the state of nature but were invented afterwards.
That's pretty much what is implied by my first line:
> Sure there is, at least if you acknowledge the notion of human rights in the first place. (There's no "innate human right" to not be tortured.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_human_rights
HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive to enjoy those benefits? Do you:
* Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens?
* Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes?
* Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers?
Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)
You are absolutely right that countries which enjoy greater public benefits would likely enjoy a greater influx of people. But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if residents of Iceland make it so appealing to just live there without contributing to society, then I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible.
Let's not forget: The people supposedly moving into those economies would likely be fleeing oppressive regimes with very little economic opportunities. And, with free movement, it would become much harder to give away freebies, AS it would become much harder to become an oppressive government. Stories like Venezuela would be more hard to come by if people could simply leave the country more easily.
Just take familiar HN-turf: Software development. What do you think would happen if all Indian developers (many of whom are actually really, really talented), could just as easily apply for jobs in the US? Undoubtedly worse for US-based developers, right? And maybe there is some sense that such a massive disrpution should be avoided, at least "suddenly" as you say.
But now you multiply this across every industry, with all of their individual justifications, and what you end up with is with an ossified global society. We end up trying each to protect our pie (from crop subsidies on out), all perfectly justifiable. But, as a global community, we make it worse for all of us.
Just this week Elon tried to inspire us about the idea of an interplanetary species. It just seems inconsistent to me for us to dream about being a people who can travel freely to the stars, but that we need to ask permissions of random strangers to visit family members, to employ our talent productively far from where we were born, etc.
I think you raise really valid points. But in my eyes, those are issues to be dealt with in the pursuit of this ideal, not justifications on why it should not be pursued/is not feasible.
Regarding "I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible." - to be honest I tend to agree in principle, but I worry that the practical effect would be far more negative. Making the decision to move less feasible seems to mean making the destination country less desirable, which sucks and is a bummer for those who live there. Then again, there's nothing fair about me being paid ten times as much as someone in India to work with databases. I just happen to like the stuff I can buy by making 10x as much cash.
I want to live in a liberal democracy with a high standard of living and low carbon emissions (so apartments close to amenities with lots of bike lanes and very few automobiles) with a steady or slowly decreasing population, because there are too many people in the world for it to support. If such a place existed (Denmark comes to mind, or perhaps Japan), it would probably be a desirable target for migrants from all over the world, which would strain the systems that could make such a place possible. How do you build schools to house families with 4+ children when your budget was built on the idea that you would need to build no more, or slowly downsize them with time? How do you allocate land?
Yes, but I think that's what happens at t=0. And I think that your preferences are probably widely shared by a large contingent of the world population. As it stands, those who enjoy it are either those who had the good fortune to be born in those societies, or those who manage to migrate there through some way or another. Yes, perhaps immigration initially makes it less feasible for those societies to continue operating like that, but it makes it MUCH more difficult to governments who don't support those policies from existing. That's the factor that I put a lot of faith in. The important factor in my eyes is not just the influx of immigrants, but the exodus which will force other countries and governments too look much more like the Danish one (in your example) if they are to survive.
Google and Facebook fight over employees, and the ultimate winners are engineers in place to be hired by those companies. Elsewhere in our economy and the world, we seem to understand that in competitive environments, "customers" win.
Within the US we understand that too! Just take all the states who try to entice businesses through tax policy, old people who move to warmer climates, etc. You don't hear nearly as much complaining about state and local politics (which accounts for a much larger swath of gov't spending than national politics) here in the U.S. And I think some of the issues you mention ARE present. There are municipalities and states that offer friendlier policies in one shape or another, and you do see athletes moving to Florida because of the lack of income tax, for instance. But I think those issues are far, far outweighed by what the country gains by having these "open borders" between the states.
I suspect we don't have more issues because if you don't like something about where you live, you move. This is one of the most distinct things about the U.S. with my experience overseas (I'm from Brazil originally).
For better or worse, accessing a modern economy there means living in one of two cities. Here? I can make a rich matrix of climate, culture, job environment, etc., and find a few candidate cities in which to live in. That's amazing. And I think that's how you get some pretty unique experiences -- Silicon Valley to NYC -- which are all world-class.
With respect to your housing point, I think you are right. But again, I see greater migration as a way to also solve those problems. The influx makes land and housing more valuable in Denmark, which in turns makes more development there more valuable and more feasible. And, conversely, makes places people are leaving less valuable and land there cheaper.
I see it as a way to equate opportunity over the world. And, like in the U.S., no doubt that the steady state will yield places that are very different from one another in terms of culture, or climate, or how it is run by their local government. But the threat of exit will be a great check on their ability to diverge from the will of and preferences of the people.
As for the "sudden influx," I think it's important to recognize what the real problem is. In Europe, Muslim immigrants seem to rape and commit other crimes a lot more than natives.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-o...
I say "seem to" because stats on this are notoriously hard to come by. For example, Sweden censors that data in their crime statistics. Similarly, various police agencies seem to ignore crimes in order to avoid seeming racist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/12...
https://www.rt.com/news/328465-police-500-assaults-cologne/
I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a problem.
NYC and London have faced a sudden influx of foreigners over the past 15 years but no one really cares. Why worry about some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home?
Russia has a clear interest in destabilizing the European Union. The Daily Mail's motive is less clear.
See eg. http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/09/daily-c... or http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/putin-fights-wa...
Is wikipedia also Russian propaganda?
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? If the immigrants are all "some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home" then we're fine, but unrestricted immigration would mean accepting the violent criminals, or racists, or foreign agents under orders to move to strategic voting districts etc.
> From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come even remotely close to the benefits of open borders.
Open borders make competition much more aggressive. A complete lack of competition is inefficient, but competition within borders is generally adequate for that, especially when the border is the size of the US or the EU.
Sufficiently aggressive competition produces local maxima. It means no one has any margins to invest in the future. It erodes the tax base because taxes have to come only out of discretionary income or people will starve, but with enough competition employers can pay subsistence wages. And consumers making subsistence wages are price sensitive which drives down the margins of businesses. This is all very "efficient" -- it's the thing competition is "good at" -- except that it means there is no money for people to go to college or do any R&D that won't pay out in the current fiscal year or anything like that.
Borders artificially reduce competition somewhat. That isn't always bad.
A basic income helps with this. It gives people unconditional money that they can use to escape the local maxima created by aggressively competitive markets. Then those people can go to college and invent medicines and technologies that benefit people on the other side of the border.
That works better than everyone being "equal" because everyone is making subsistence wages.
Is there any reason why that argument doesn't apply to inequality within a country as well?
In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?
Having some amount of inequality is the only way it's possible to have long term business investments -- or any investments at all. Because we need doctors, engineers and businessmen but also miners, truck drivers and janitors. These professions will never have equal status, and it will always take more resources to train an engineer than a janitor, but it isn't "fair" that one person gets to be the engineer while another has to be the janitor. Yet that unfairness is inherently necessary if we want to have engineers.
> In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?
The goal is to have a moderate amount of competition. Too much and everyone is making subsistence wages and no one can afford to go to college (and your government has no tax revenue to subsidize it). Too little and the inequality becomes unnecessarily excessive (which is, among other things, inefficient).
Notice that there are two different kinds of competition here. Between employees we have quite enough already, because employees largely aren't organized. But competition between business entities is currently on the low side. Compare e.g. the market share of Facebook in the market for social media with the market share of an individual Facebook employee in the market for software developers.
So the questions have different answers. The sweet spot for employees seems to be no restrictions within the US/EU but restrictions between countries. For business entities even the trade barriers between countries seem to restrict competition too much. (Or at least, a lack of trade barriers doesn't inherently lead to ruinous competition there, because there are other factors inhibiting competition between businesses.)
Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade barriers to keep our size down to the optimum?
This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have hugely different sizes.
And there are obviously political considerations. Nobody is going to let you carve up national borders over this, so we're stuck with the existing borders even if that isn't 100% perfectly optimal. Estimating the optimal size is going to be at the "orders of magnitude" level anyway.
A claim like that needs a lot more hard data than is available, both to support or refute. I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but regardless, noting the differences between the values of immigrant and native populations is worthwhile. I moved to Europe because I like the lifestyle here, so I'd be pretty upset if a bunch of Americans moved here and demanded all environmental protections be removed, mandatory paid holidays abolished, and turned every city into a wasteland of parking lots.
Regarding NYC and London, at least London certainly seems to have noticed the influx, in this case due to the large wealth (rather than poverty) of the newcomers:
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/29/london-mayor-...
You could combine this by aggressively deporting people found sleeping rough (which given the extreme cold in Iceland would also be helping them).
If there are millions willing to enter the country and be granted a free income, then anyone with some capital has a guaranteed payday in hastily putting up the cheapest livable accommodations and renting it to these people.
Of course nations want to control borders. If you don't, you can't deal with the population flow and all of the above. And you need to deal with the above. Just hoping everything will be ok if you don't think about it is like hoping schools will be ok if we don't think about it.
I believe you can have only one of the two - open borders, or social safety net. Having completely open borders with generous social safety net is mathematically impossible, unless you want to discriminate against the newcomers by denying them the benefits (which is, again, a bad thing according to many people).
Besides, while it is a country strength, it did and still do have a cost. Whether this cost is worth the benefit is something you can only answer if you have metrics to do so, and illegal immigration make it hard to have those metrics, or change your policy to adapt to your new situation.
People always see immigrations as being a moral issue first, but it really is not. It has strong moral implications by nature, but it's first a management issue. Just like eduction, science, etc.
If you allow total freedom of movement, you're basically creating a system similar to a business where you have zero predictability and control over your income and your costs.
You can't really compare the US state system to different countries that are openly hostile or may not even talk to each other (e.g. US and Russia, or US and North Korea) and expect to have the legal cooperation that could enable freedom of movement.
That reveals a fundamental difference in how we see the world. The hostility which you mention is real, but I see it as a byproduct of the kinds of walls and separation we artificially place between ourselves. Let's not forget that same animosity existed between the U.S. and China, and more commercial relations reduced those tensions.
I fundamentally believe that the PEOPLE in the U.S., Russia, and yes, even the North Koreans, are fundamentally good. These artificial barriers we palce between one another create this us v. them environment, and that leads to this hostility.
How many times don't we hear complaints about "our jobs going oversaas," for instance? Mind you, many of the people voicing those complaints are also people who loudly advocate for increased job opportunities here at home. The lack of empathy for people in other nations is real. But it is created by these restrictions.
In fact, the barriers seems completely irrelevant to the relations between different societies. We have had atrocities without them or with them.
You've simply asserted this, without any explanation. Want to try giving an argument in favor instead?
In any case, it's not at all obvious to me. Let's say that I own a private piece of land somewhere. Shouldn't I be allowed to say how has the right to traverse it, camp on it, or build their homes on it? If I were forced to let anyone make use of it, I would say my rights were violated. How is immigration any different? We the citizens of country Alphastan collectively own our land and govern what goes on there. Why should we be _forced_ to let anybody tramp through it? How is that liberty, for us?
Corruption isn't the only cultural artifact that's under threat, but if we understand what's going on well enough, I'd be much more confident that opening the borders won't cause existential threat to what makes the host nations great.
I genuinely believe that some of the "negative" things countries experience are directly related to certain cultural norms/values that many of their citizens may share, and that by moving to a different country, some of those values could also be embedded in the receiving country and similarly "pollute" it.
But I think that the answer to that is MORE immigration, not less. By restricting immigration, we're introducing small pebbles into the gears which allow people to find the best opportunities for themselves and their families. I think is it precisely those issues which allow public policies and cultural norms to distort so much. With MORE immigration, I think competition would very quickly weed out norms and practices which are inconsistent with a healthy and productive society. I think a story like Chavez's and Maduro's would be a lot more difficult to come by in a society where their citizens could not be forced to live under their regime.
But at the same time, it will be bad for the host countries whose social safety nets will be strained and whose citizens will now have to put up with masses with vastly different values. And the interaction will not always be pleasant (eg. Cologne incident in Germany earlier this year).
So my question to you is - why do you think its a better solution to improve condition of some societies at the expense of some other societies?
'Leave' voters have often been portrayed as racist bigots by liberal 'Remain' voters. (I'm one of the latter, and I've been guilty of this myself at times).
But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's possible to make the liberal case for EU freedom of movement without being something of a hypocrite. And I say this as a (confused) Remain voter.
EDIT: Before anyone says, I know there is more to the EU debate than just immigration, and that not all Remainers are liberal/lefty, just as Leavers are not all right wing. But there's no denying that immigration was the main issue on many (most?) voters minds.
Furthermore, where does it say that the freedom of movement is due to some ideology which considers all nationalities to be equal, rather than just being a policy to improve the welfare and trade between EU members?
That isn't really right either.
Suppose it was known that if you allowed it, millions of people with a different ideology than you would choose to become citizens of your country, and moreover that they would then enact policies you don't agree with. Typically this argument comes from the right because the currently-disallowed immigrants are low income and would favor leftist policies, but imagine the immigrants are from conservative countries and would vote to e.g. prohibit women from traveling without being accompanied by a male relative.
Is not wanting that really "xenophobic"? There is a difference between hating or fearing someone and just not wanting them to make your decisions for you.
That's true, but can't it still be considered racist? It may not be direct, intentional racism, but the net result of UK policy is that white people can enter the UK much easier than black or brown people.
If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, isn't that a sexist hiring policy?
Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?
If you require loan applicants to have income sufficient to make the loan payments, and that is true of more white applicants than black applicants, is that a racist policy?
Side note: Not sure about better, but definitely get paid more according to some studies.
You could work that same data to group people by age, gender, political bias, shoe size, arm length, eye color, favourite sport, etc and discriminate against many, many things :-) but actually you should only look at the income and decide on that.
Because that right is reciprocated to British people in those countries!
It's just that such deal would not be beneficial for Britain, whereas as in Schengen, there are clear benefits.
I'm fine with discriminating against individuals based on how "beneficial" they are as a person, provided the criteria are fair and objective.
I'm not so fine with discriminating against individuals based on how "beneficial" it was to make a deal with their country.
To give an extreme example, an illiterate, unemployed German with criminal convictions can enter and leave the UK freely, while a Nigerian brain surgeon is still going to have to jump through a lot of legal hoops to live here. How is that not unfair discrimination, or even racism?
It is unfair, and it is discrimination. The benefits of having unrestricted borders with Germany are simply more valuable. Like, I'm okay with unfairly admitting an illiterate unemployed German felon if it means that we get a bunch of highly valuable movement, trade, and collaboration between our countries. The German felon is part of a valuable package of cross-border interactions, and if you're not part of the package deal, you have to convince us on your own merit.
Another tack: being a German citizen is Bayesian evidence that you're probably like the average German. How is it fair to the German to spend large quantities of time and money to prove something we already have good reason to believe is true?
I could write more but I'd just be repeating the blog post I wrote recently (https://unop.uk/automation-and-remote-jobs/). The video in there is worth a watch if you're interested in the early days of Silicon Valley.
Without saying that this is right, the general logic is that the countries in the EU have met certain criteria (economic, legal, etc.) in order to join the club. The citizens of these countries have mostly similar standards of living, education, judicial systems, etc. Hence, allowing free movement is not a big deal because it is assumed the citizens of one country won't move en masse to another, and if a significant number of them do, they won't be a financial burden on the host country. There are also a bunch of reciprocal and cost-sharing agreements (e.g. medical services may be charged to the country of origin, etc.)
This whole framework and inter-country cooperation doesn't exist with respect to countries outside of the EU, and that's why these countries aren't willing to take a chance with universal freedom of movement. (Just a recent example comes to mind where a bunch of non-EU migrants were deported from Greece for various violations and their country of origin refused to accept them. In the EU any member state can deport/remove citizens of another member for certain violations and the country of origin is legally required to accept them.)
I've heard a good argument for something like that - let me see if I can convey it well.
Countries have varying levels of corruption in them. See: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015#results-table . In particular, notice how high up many of the Schengen area countries are.
We don't really understand why some countries are corrupt, and others aren't. It might be another byproduct of industrialization and wealth, like the low birth rate and later marriage age. But, scarily, it could be a cultural accident; people in the west aren't corrupt simply because they're surrounded by others who aren't corrupt and would punish corruption.
There's other magical cultural things too - economic productivity and innovation aren't well understood either.
Anyhow, the thrust of the argument is that there's some special cultural factor that causes all sorts of incredibly valuable things to happen in countries like the UK. You don't have to bribe the police officer when you get pulled over, you can generally trust that you get what you're buying in stores, people often try to make money by innovating rather than extracting, and talking about controversial subjects gets you a discussion rather than a beating. We don't know why we have this, and opening our borders puts it at risk.
Our global system is supposedly based on something like collective
self-determination, but it’s grafted onto a map drawn by colonial
violence and pseudo-scientific ideas about Gauls and Teutons. Fascism is a
particular combination of Romantic/Victorian ambitions and modern tools
that sparks to life as the two eras grind against each other. Frankenstein
with the arms of capitalist industry and the heart of a monarchist.
Patriotic young Hitler inhaling mustard gas in the trenches, like a panel
from the first issue of a comic book.
Modern liberal states have never truly reconciled their racial character
with their democratic pretensions. I’m not clear on how such a thing
could be possible; where would a truly pluralist state draw its borders
and why? Flipping through a history book it’s hard to argue that the
nation-state system doesn’t exist for the arbitrarily divided glory of
western Europeans. The official line is that we’re supposed to ignore
that part, or be sad. But some people don’t want to ignore it and they
aren’t sad. Instead they wonder why we have the nice borders that their
conquering “ancestors” drew but all these people on the wrong sides.
If taking Mexico’s land for white people was illegitimate, then why
haven’t we given it back? And if it was legitimate, then what’s wrong
with a wall to protect our side from a reversal? The liberal patriots,
they say, are lying to themselves; there is no nationalism that is not
ethno-nationalism.I've seen this mentioned by many people; all of which said they'd voted Remain, but argue in favour of Leave in every discussion. Interesting nonetheless.
Answering the question itself: A French a German or a Romanian have the right because their countries reached and agreement with the UK. The other countries have not. That agreement is called EU.
I can't see the hypocrisy in that. If the UK doesn't like that agreement anymore they're free to walk away. Oh, wait... :-)
What I was trying to point out is that making a moral defense for EU freedom of movement (as many remainers did) is basically impossible without being a hypocrite. There are, of course, other reasons to defend it.
I find it an uncomfortable fact that almost all modern immigration policies judge people by where they happen to have been born rather than their personal qualities. People have taken issue with me using the word racist (I still think it applies, even if we're not strictly talking about ethnicity), so what's the correct term? Nationality-ist?
> What I was trying to point out is that making a moral defense for EU freedom of movement (as many remainers did) is basically impossible without being a hypocrite. There are, of course, other reasons to defend it.
Your logic is flawed. EU FoM is not a barrier to increase FoM by adding more countries to the FoM treaties. It is a barrier if you want to do so unilaterally: i.e. if the new FoM country doesn't meet the required criteria to join the FoM space. It's a shame because that might mean that country has a lack of human rights respect or civil liberties, so we make it more difficult for its citizens to escape... But that's why we should be mindful about refugees and asylum seekers.
Man, it's funny how some people argue that the EU is racist because of FoM (talk about twisted arguments) and then they don't want to get any refugees from non-white/non-slavic/non-catholic countries that are escaping literal hell.
Going back to FoM, one of the Brexiteers mantras was "Turkey is going to join the EU and we will get flooded!"; which would be another step in extending FoM to more countries.
Funnily enough it was the UK the one pushing for a fast Turkey accession... and in any case it's vox populi that ain't gonna happen in decades due to Turkey not meeting the requirements by a long shot.
> I find it an uncomfortable fact that almost all modern immigration policies judge people by where they happen to have been born rather than their personal qualities.
Yes, it's a shame we have to come down to that. However it seems that's the fastest way to approve FoM between countries and, you know, at least "it's not personal". I'm not trying to defend it and I wish we had something better (like FoM for all), but other systems have shown to be less fair:
https://medium.com/@rachelnabors/wtfuk-73009d5623b4
And if you're in the UK surely you can watch all those Aussie Border Control shows in Dave or one of those Freeview channels - an American dude flying to Oz with his GF for holidays was refused entry because he got caught with some pot 20 years before in the US. Also there was this Aussie dude that overstayed his UK tourist Visa by something like 14 years (no kidding!) and he was sent back to Australia effectively destroying his life (friends, partner, ...) - were any of those fair? I would argue "no", other people might say "yes" - I don't really know what's the right answer, but it's clear that's not easy to decide who gets in and who does not.
Individual qualities are also subjective and subjected to other influencing factors: I'm sure you have in mind a Visa points system. What makes you think that that's the best system? Are we good at evaluating how "good" a person is? With that points system, would we still get unqualified EU labour to fill in jobs? If we don't, those factories might actually move to the country of origin of that cheap labour, throwing a sizeable % of British workers into the benefits system (and only a part of them would be able to get out - see Thatcher's years), putting a bigger strain into the welfare system. Wait, actually that might be the Tory plan after all, destroy the welfare system :)
> People have taken issue with me using the word racist (I still think it applies, even if we're not strictly talking about ethnicity), so what's the correct term? Nationality-ist?
IMHO "racist" perfectly conveys the message and it's only challenged by those who don't want to be tagged as "racist" while being so. You could get picky and use "xenophobic" which would be the 100% right word as far as I know, but I'm on your same side on this one: Arguing that racist is not the right word is an argument usually used by racists :) and pointless.
For many of us the idea of having a bad passport is only theoretical in nature but it decides many things in life for others and sets stupid arbitrary ceilings that should not exist.
Nothing specifically American about it though. Many people in France think they're better than Syrian refugees because they're born from a pussy in Paris.
Full transcript: http://www.cswap.com/2004/Chris_Rock:_Never_Scared/cap/en/25...
Is it our fault that other people that have had the same hundreds of years to build advanced societies haven't done it? Do we have to literally live worse because of it?
A few comments up you're saying the French deserved their stuff because their ancestors worked for it.
For tens of millions of people that were conquered by, or had democratically elected leaders overthrown by, or had their economies crippled by (US, UK, Russia)
Yes. It is our fault.
Although there are many countries that don't demand visa, they will only allow you in for 3 months maximum.
It never occurred to me that the world was like this as recently as 100 years ago!
Also, 100+ years ago an immigrant was less likely to be viewed as a burden, because there were fewer (if any) government supports for regular citizens. I'm pretty left politically, but I acknowledge that the more government spends on its people the less likely the government (and the voters) are to be inclined to let newcomers in who are not immediate contributors.
Yes we do! How many people do you know who were born in the state you now live in?
I don't think one person in my office was born in this state.
Though maybe the fact that people can move to take advantage of state giveaways, is a big constraint on the way they're currently designed? What conditions does Alaska put on its Permanent Fund payments?
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-fa...
50% of American live their life within 18 miles of their hometown. 80% live within 370miles (that's half the length of CA for comparison).
For instance, say you've built a society that is ecologically sustainable and the birth rate is equal to the maintenance rate. Will you be pleased when the nation next door where people have far more children despite knowing the Earth is well over carrying capacity sends you its people during famine?
Suppose you are on a ship carrying a thousand people. If all people want to go to the left side then there's a big chance the ship will sink. Passengers are free but there must be some limitations to what they can all decide on total.
To put it another way, would you be okay with the entire Chinese army "immigrating" in preparation for an attack, as long as they all represented themselves as private citizens during the trip?
If not, then you agree with immigration restrictions in principle, "and we're just haggling over the price".
It would be great if all people were kind and caring, if there were no corruption, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, crime or discrepancies in standards of living. But we've seen over and over that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a good example of that.
Is it? Are illegal immigrants more likely to cause problems that both natives and legal immigrants? From what I can tell, at least the attacks that make the news have all been perpetrated by people born and raised in Europe.
EDIT: http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased-crim...
The Nice attack was made by a legal immigrant, living in France for more than a decade. The Brussels ISIL cell members were almost all born in Belgium, France or Sweden. The Charlie Hebdo shooters were born in France, as was the guy who took those hostages in the supermarket. The Munich shooter was born in Germany.
Which ones am I missing?
There are reasons why countries all over the world have immigration policies. Each country is interested in immigration that serves its interests, and the leaders are well aware of the negative consequences of unrestricted immigration.
The experiments with this like the Schengen Area might not survive the consequences in the coming future.
Most people here seem to blinded by some liberal pipe-dream.
A lot of immigration policies only serve the interest of a particular group or a particular industry. I don't know how to make an objective count on either side though.
Is this an argument against the discussion? That (whether countries should even have borders) seems like a reasonable question to ask. Nonetheless, borders seem to have existed effectively for a long time without the aid of passports. From the article:
> Indeed, for much of the 19th century, as an International Labour Organisation report stated in 1922:
> > Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience.
(Also, I'm not sure it's so obviously true that not requiring passports is the same as not policing borders.)
> As a fixture of the european scene since 1915, the passport now seems so natural that one forgets the shock and scandal it once occasioned. Robert Byron is one who treated his with a due contempt. In the space asking about "Any special peculiarities," he entered "Of Melancholy appearance," and in the square reserved for a photograph of bearer's wife he drew a ludicrous cartoon, "resulting," Anthory Powell recalls, "in the document being withdrawn."
I think in the past there were much more restrictive laws in place at times, other times maybe more lax.
>But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a
>passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to
>the global conditions that prevailed before the start of
>the first world war.
Surely a combination of say retina + finger + voice etc would provide more security than could ever be needed...
How would this data be held and who would see it or have access to it? The privacy implications would be enormous.
Ironically, many European countries already issue biometric passports that require you to provide your fingerprints before the passport is issued.
But maybe it doesn't really matter - you already provide so much of your personal details when you travel to another country.
Same way as its currently held - by the various governments with (limited) agreements in place to to check each other's databases. Its not that big a leap to have a unified system in place I think. Or at least starting with the 1st world countries.
Not a fan of big government, but this is an area where I think streamlining things would help.
>European countries already issue biometric passports that require you to provide your fingerprints
Yeah got one of those. The fingerprints aren't actively used at borders though - just facial recognition.