I'm on your team, but we've got a long way to go to get America ready for open borders, even with our nearest neighbors that are longtime trading partners and allies.
All these details are negotiable. The question is: what would it actually take to do that?
The US can't provide universal health care to its own citizens...how could it offer it to tens of millions of poor Mexicans.
Gun control is an issue in the US now, imagine the arguments against it when really nasty criminals really do have sizable armories. Good luck convincing the average person to give up the right to carry a pistol.
I agree there is a challenge here (because I support universal healthcare and I support open borders, while seeing how that could be disastrous for fiscal responsibility). It really should have happened years ago...Mexico would be economically healthier (though they're actually in better shape than most Americans have been led to believe), and it would be easier to find a path toward universal healthcare across the continent, so that'd no longer be a major factor for where people choose to live.
Also, by even the most pessimistic measure immigrants become a net positive for our economy by the second generation...and that fact is a big part of US economic growth over most of its existence. So, we just need to find a way to hasten that transition to contributing member of society, reduce the inefficiencies of the "emergency room and debt" universal healthcare system we currently have for immigrants, the homeless, etc., and negotiate with Mexico to normalize services across the continent (normalizing means we've got to start to catch up with Canada, too).
Sure, it's a longterm project, but I think it's worth doing. Economic growth in the US has slowed tremendously. Expanding our trade with Mexico, including free movement of human capital, would be a great thing, IMHO.
We're just in such an ugly time in our history. People are lashing out at any convenient scapegoat, and a few billionaires are happy to point at Mexicans, lest people start to question their own motives and actions.
European nations are able to retain both language and national identity in spite of freedom of movement.
And this is why open borders are becoming increasingly unpopular in Europe.
http://i.imgur.com/xWbLa2f.jpg
But I get your point. :)
There are challenges on both sides of the border, but losing sovereignty isn't one of them. It just takes both states agreeing to the terms, which has been done in numerous states across Europe for many years, without disaster.
Most Mexicans are good people (like everyone else), but there are "bad guys" and horrors. What's the argument for allowing their spread?
Not that interested in piles of mutilated corpses in major towns...you can find plenty of examples of narco terrorism like that.
We should own that, instead of shaking our heads and lamenting how awful Mexican crime is. It is American crime, too, it just happens south of the border because that's how the economic incentives our failed drug policy dictate things will go. Yes, there's higher corruption, at the police and judicial level, and that plays a role. And, yes, there is higher poverty, which empowers criminals and enables recruiting. All are solvable and a significant portion of the solutions are on our side of the border. We've been shitting on Mexico with our failed drug policy for decades.
That being said, if that happened today the cartels still exist and they'll exist for several generations and they'll still have military, police, and government collaborators. Unless that goes away then the mindset which allowed the cartels to engage in what is essentially a cold civil war and has allowed more than 100,000 people to be killed (many tortured) will continue to exist.
Until that stops existing there's no way in hell the US should open their borders and allow movement into US territory. You'd have the cartels (heavily armed and financed) moving into US cities and claiming turf, and then you'd have that violence here and even more guns available. It just isn't worth it. The cartels could be more powerful than the Italian mob ever was.
If the cartels lose influence and Mexico becomes a much less violent place in a few generations, maybe then you can consider opening the borders. But how would it happen any time soon without harming a lot of innocent people?
It's hard to exaggerate the brutality or (potential) reach of the cartels:
Doesn't open borders mean US law enforcement, like the DEA/FBI, gets to operate in Mexico now? How would the cartels survive under that, if they can't even survive in the US?
Why would the cartels not move into the US given the chance? You underestimate their reach, there's no way the DEA/FBI could shut them down when they can't control the drug war as it is.
If you aren't aware of them in the US it's because they aren't as open about violence.
I mean, they don't want to be a "prison gang", do they?
Remember, the reason cartels exist is because of corrupt Mexican police, something the FBI is good at controlling.
But I guess a real open-borders system would require things like common currencies or common judicial system across North America?
That would be a disaster, and would hurt the dollar and therefore US NatSec and power.
It's not. Cultural, language differences, asymmetric shocks, many reasons why. It would be the same catastrophe as the euro, where the euro is severely undervalued for Germany's economy, unfairly helping their exports, and severely overvalued for Greece, unfairly harming their exports.