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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

By that definition the US is the least nationalist country on the planet. 20% of the world's foreign born population lives in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

And it seems to me that it's that lack of "nationalism" as you've defined it that's helping US-based companies exploit cheap labor in (or from) other nations.

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Even if you were to define nationalism solely based foreign-born population, the least nationalistic country would obviously be Vatican City with 100% foreign born or UAE with 84% if you want to exclude extreme outliers. The US isn't even particularly high at 14% of the population being foreign born.

And of course, restrictions on freedom of movement can't be summed up exclusively with number of immigrants. There are many countries that are much, much easier to get into than the US; people just don't want to go there as much. And of course, nationalism isn't exclusively border control. That is just one nationalistic behavior.

I think you know I was only offering foreign born population as an example of the US's freedom of movement, not as the definition of nationalism.

If you're intentionally misinterpreting me, this discussion isn't going anywhere. But in the hope that that's not the case, I'll try again:

What country offers freedom of movement to the most people? The US, by far.

China offers far more freedom of movement. US is at the bottom. By far.

China doesn't even offer freedom of movement to its own citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

Nonsense, you are completely ignoring country size, and even in absolute numbers every country in the Schengen Area allows every citizen of other Schengen Area countries complete freedom of movement. For any given country in the Schengen Area, that is more foreigners who are allowed complete freedom of movement than the entire population of the US, much less just the foreign born population of the US. Just because most of those people don't choose to exercise that ability, doesn't mean they don't have it.

The Schengen area is more like the US itself. A federal system of once independent states uniting to eventually form a single nation.

The freedom to move from France to Germany, or from California to New York, has nothing to do with the freedom of movement of people born outside those systems.

LOL, you are basically saying that by entering into an agreement like the Schengen Agreement and becoming less like nations, the overall group becomes more nationalistic. That seems like absurd circular reasoning.

The constituent countries in the EU are still sovereign countries. Unlike US states, they are free to leave at any time.

By your definition of nationalism, Europe is simply replacing French/German/etc nationalism with EU nationalism.

The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?

You are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.

This discussion is becoming too hostile for Hacker News. I'll make one more attempt to explain my point of view, then I'm out:

Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone.

Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people.

In the Vatican, for example, a given person either has a 100% chance of migration or a 0% chance. Israel has similar numbers. In the Schengen area, it's either a 100% chance or a very small chance.

Update:

Perhaps this will be clearer. Every free country grants total freedom of movement to some group of people. In Israel, this is Jewish people. In the United States, US citizens. In the Schengen area, citizens of the Schengen area.

What does that have to do with nationalism? Nationalism is a distinction between the treatment of in-group people and out-group people.

In the Schengen area, people from the Schengen area are the in-group.

This line of argument is absurd. You cannot become more restrictive by becoming less restrictive.

Nationalism isn't standalone, it's tied to a particular nation.

Changing loyalty to a larger nation isn't the same as becoming less nationalistic.

The Schengen Area is not in any sense a nation. Look at the definition of the word nation: "a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory". The Schengen Area checks off people and territory but nothing else.

It doesn't even have a shared government to try to make it fit if you are trying to use "nation" as a synonym for "country". Most of the countries are part of the EU, but Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are part of the Schengen Area but not the EU.

> united by common descent, history, culture, or language

Are you saying Europeans don't have any descent, history, or culture in common?

Descent, mostly not. Culture, mostly not. History, yes, of constantly fighting each other for hundreds of years (which is the type of shared history that creates national separations, not the kind that unites nations).

There are some groups of countries that have some descent and culture in common like Portugal/Spain or Benelux or Scandinavia, but there is no pan-European culture. Portugal, Greece, Monaco, Latvia and Iceland have almost nothing in common.

Then why hasn't the Schengen area admitted north Africa or the middle east?

Spain is a lot closer to Morocco than to Norway, but Spain partnered with Norway rather than Morocco because they share the same descent (European) and culture (Christian).

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