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Comment by cr0sh | Hacker News Reader

It's hearing things like this that make me regret having supported Luckey on his Kickstarter. I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2".

I suppose he did do that, and while I didn't like the "sell-out" to FB and Zuck - I couldn't blame him, either. Then it seemed like things went downhill from there.

I don't have any problem with someone being a republican or a conservative, but I can't and couldn't understand why someone would support a person like our current POTUS. To me, it would be similar to continue to voice support for Manson while saying "well, it isn't like he killed anybody himself, so it's ok" - umm, no - it's not ok.

...and now this.

I sometimes wonder if we humans will ever get over this artificial border fetish we have. I don't have problems with property rights, to a certain level, but I'm not sure it has really worked well at the large scale level. All it has seemed to do is create some level of tension at best, and outright violence at worst. I am not certain that we as a species can continue on this path for much longer, not without some very terrible things occuring.

So - while I would prefer a "monitored solution" to border control over physical imposing measures, my real preference would be for us to all work toward eliminating these national-level borders completely. Instead, it seems like we're going the opposite direction, even online, and erecting virtual barriers to separate us from each other, instead of working to understand each other and work together on solving our world problems.

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>So - while I would prefer a "monitored solution" to border control over physical imposing measures, my real preference would be for us to all work toward eliminating these national-level borders completely.

You sound like someone with the ability to live anywhere, who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere." Lots of Americans (and people in other countries) don't have this flexibility. They are directly and inescapably effected by the de facto U.S. open border policy for low-skilled workers. For example:

I have family in New England who ran an all-organic dairy farm. They had to shut down a few years ago, in part because they couldn't compete with the farms who paid undocumented workers under the table. At the same time, their rural community has been decimated by the opioid crisis. Most fentanyl in the U.S. comes in via the unsecured border with Mexico [0].

We've seen what happens when other countries adopt wholesale open borders policies. In Germany, the 2015 migrant crisis nearly brought the far-right "Alternativ für Deutschland" into power. That crisis only abated once the Balkan states took it upon themselves to secure the E.U.'s southern border.

Finally, I also think it's likely that any compromise to solve the border crises will involve additional border security measure. We've come close enough before to know what such a bill might look like - remember when George W. Bush strongly supported the DREAM Act, amnesty, and a path to citizenship? [1]. Why not develop the necessary technology now?

[0] https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-d... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Immigration_Refo...

> who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere."

As first generation American this is dangerously misguided and follows the debunked lump of labor fallacy. It reminds me of the "rootless cosmopolitan" slur.

>It reminds me of the "rootless cosmopolitan" slur

You have no idea how offensive and ridiculous that statement is to me.

It’s the reality that if you earn more than a certain amount of money, and posses an advanced degree plus a certain amount of capital, your relocation options are vastly greater than someone with fewer credentials, less capital, and a smaller salary.

If we want to stop undocumented workers from fueling a race to the bottom in unskilled labor markets, we should make more than a token effort to go after the business owners who employ them, and impose meaningful punishments to deter others. This is just another example of the gross hypocrisy of the GOP: it's well documented at this point that businesses owned by their top man make a habit of employing undocumented workers.

We won't fix anything without accountability, and there are two sides to supply and demand. What we're doing now is theater.

I agree. We should have a guest worker program if they job exists. Have an app that monitors compliance, pays taxes etc... It's the businesses that want the unlawful immigrants precisely because they can pay them so little and have no worker protections. And we see that ICE raids basically shutdown processing plants and farms when they clear out a whole community.

>This is just another example of the gross hypocrisy of the GOP

I’m not a member of the GOP. Extremely far from it.

>We won't fix anything without accountability, and there are two sides to supply and demand.

Yes, of course. Punish those who exploit undocumented workers. Of course, it’s much harder to exploit an undocumented workforce when it doesn’t exist or is reduced in size. Many ways to achieve this (paths to citizenship, etc.); Anduril is just one piece of the solution, as I suggest in my original comment.

> I’m not a member of the GOP. Extremely far from it.

I didn't mean to imply you were or were not a member of the GOP. I included the observation about their hypocrisy simply because they are the largest group making the most noise about border security while clearly not actually giving a shit about Americans' jobs being "taken" by undocumented laborers.

> Yes, of course. Punish those who exploit undocumented workers. Of course, it’s much harder to exploit an undocumented workforce when it doesn’t exist or is reduced in size. Many ways to achieve this (paths to citizenship, etc.); Anduril is just one piece of the solution, as I suggest in my original comment.

If hiring them gets you thrown in prison, they will suddenly have a much harder time getting hired, and after some time employment will cease to be a reason to cross the border illegally. We don't have to fuck around with "virtual border technology" to accomplish this; all we have to do is recognize that (relatively) wealthy business owners are not above the law, but in America we have an astonishingly hard time with this. It's like the Brock Turner judge's mindset is baked into half the population from birth.

What you're talking about is basically a surveillance based internal border. It can work that way for people if you have massive levels of internal surveillance (otherwise how do you think the government can catch employers of illegals with any efficiency), but it doesn't do much for goods or people who cross the border without wanting to get a job, like gang members, dealers etc.

> What you're talking about is basically a surveillance based internal border. It can work that way for people if you have massive levels of internal surveillance (otherwise how do you think the government can catch employers of illegals with any efficiency)

What you're talking about is called law enforcement and it has existed in this country for a long time. Until you clarify your point (what are "massive levels of internal surveillance"?) and justify it (why isn't the current investigative toolbox enough?), this is nothing but FUD, and ridiculous FUD at that.

> it doesn't do much for goods or people who cross the border without wanting to get a job, like gang members, dealers etc.

To the extent that this is actually a real problem, why do you think these people are crossing the border? Are they just coming up here because they feel like it, or are they responding to some kind of demand?

The current setup of law enforcement doesn't scale to millions of lawbreakers who aren't being reported by any victims of crime.

Are they just coming up here because they feel like it, or are they responding to some kind of demand?

That's incoherent. They're moving because they can earn more money in America. The fact that there are people who 'demand' lower wage workers is irrelevant: there will always be market demand to get more for less. The issues with immigration aren't on the employer's side.

> The current setup of law enforcement doesn't scale to millions of lawbreakers who aren't being reported by any victims of crime.

It scales to far more than the handful we go after now (seriously, it's a handful, look it up) and guess what: business owners don't want to lose what they have, and they don't want to go to prison.

It's called a "deterrent", and it's the reason e.g. bars and restaurants don't sell liquor to kids despite the fact that the overwhelmingly vast majority of kid-looking people who would try to buy it if these laws weren't enforced are not actually undercover cops. (it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing, but I'm sure you understand)

> That's incoherent. They're moving because they can earn more money in America. The fact that there are people who 'demand' lower wage workers is irrelevant: there will always be market demand to get more for less. The issues with immigration aren't on the employer's side.

I think you're confused. Are you talking about undocumented workers, or "gang members and dealers"? I addressed the former in the comment you originally replied to; the bit of my last comment that you quoted refers to the latter, and my question stands. Why (do you think) "gang members and dealers" are coming to America?

LE could do more today true, but if there were no borders at all how would they not be overwhelmed? They don't even have the law successfully enforced at the moment, let alone in a world where nothing stops people moving at all. And what stops illegals just being self employed?

Why (do you think) "gang members and dealers" are coming to America?

Ah sorry. I interpreted "they" as "all people crossing a border".

My point is raids on employers only catch cases where people are working for legitimate employers. If that's all you rely on, you can't try to filter out people who have alternative illegal income streams before they enter the country and become much harder to find and deal with.

I would be interested in a system whereby an internal border is so effective no external border is needed. But it's not clear to me it'd actually be better: there'd have to be constant checking of identity documents all the time, hugely ramped up law enforcement, and without a border it's unclear deportation would mean anything at all. People could just turn around and come right back in. It'd be sort of like trying to solve theft by just spending lots of money on police but not having door locks anywhere. There's a fundamental mismatch of costs.

> Most fentanyl in the U.S. comes in via the unsecured border with Mexico

"Unsecured" is being asked to do an awful lot of work in that sentence. Smugglers aren't driving trucks full of contraband over the open desert through areas where Trump's (or Palmer's) "wall," whether real or virtual, would stop them. They're smuggling them through established checkpoints. If you want to reduce the drug trade, better techniques for catching smugglers at the checkpoints will help, and reducing demand -- which is being driven by customers in the United States -- will help even more. "Build the wall!" will not.

I'm sorry about your dairy-farming family in New England, but if we go by statistics rather than anecdotes, there's been a lot of studies on the modern industrial farming economy which conclude that trying to chase out all the undocumented immigrants is attacking the wrong side of the problem. If farmers weren't hiring them, they wouldn't come here to work. Most farmers will tell you that Americans won't work for the low wages that they feel they have to pay farm hands, so they have to hire those undocumented workers. They feel they have to pay the farm hands that low because the prices they can charge are largely set by their huge agribusiness customers. Going after the infamously exploited undocumented workers at the end of this whole chain isn't going to solve the problem.

In any case, there aren't actually many people in power in the US who are calling for "wholesale open border policies," the person you're responding to notwithstanding. The intense fight in the Trump era over this stems from the uncomfortable fact that the people we're seeing in camps and cages on the borders of the US, the people we keep trying to punish for coming here in ever more brutal fashion, are not trying to make illegal border crossings. They are coming here to legally apply for asylum.

If the world is serious about solving "the migrant crisis," then perhaps we should stop trying to desperately fight against people being displaced and driven out of their homelands and start trying to address the issues that are displacing them and driving them out.

>Most farmers will tell you that Americans won't work for the low wages that they feel they have to pay farm hands, so they have to hire those undocumented workers.

If cheap labor was unavailable, would American farms shut down? I don’t think so. I think they’d raise wages until Americans were willing to work for them, and pass the price along to consumers. I think the status quo (undocumented laborers working for low wages in terrible conditions with no healthcare, all to subsidize $0.50 oranges at Safeway) is a humanitarian tragedy equivalent to the worst Nike sweatshops.

>the people we're seeing in camps and cages on the borders of the US, the people we keep trying to punish for coming here in ever more brutal fashion, are not trying to make illegal border crossings.

Right. Anduril’s work would not affect these people, so why all these comments calling them literally evil?

If cheap labor was unavailable, would American farms shut down?

If you increase cost it's going to have an effect. Some farms will shut down, some will automate, some will "move" (by way of imports) to other countries where the working conditions are worse.

> Smugglers aren't driving trucks full of contraband over the open desert through areas where Trump's (or Palmer's) "wall," whether real or virtual, would stop them. They're smuggling them through established checkpoints.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but how do you know the specific means by which fentanyl is getting into the US?

> The intense fight in the Trump era over this stems from the uncomfortable fact that the people we're seeing in camps and cages on the borders of the US, the people we keep trying to punish for coming here in ever more brutal fashion, are not trying to make illegal border crossings.

I'm also curious about this, how you know the actual motivations behind people's concerns about the border?

Fully agree with your final point though, fixing the problem at the source should at least be seriously attempted, and I don't see any sign of that happening.

The amount of downvoting on legitimate questions is starting to get a bit out of hand around here. If people can't answer a mild challenge to their claim, should they be making it in the first place?

I didn't downvote you (you can't, AFAICT, downvote a reply to your own message). Having said that: I did start to compose a reply to you last night, but decided against it for two reasons:

1. The process by which drugs are generally smuggled into the US from Mexico has been covered by a multitude of news sources for decades. The vast majority are smuggled through border checkpoints; a small minority are smuggled around border walls using tunnels, speedboats, aircraft, etc. It's hard to believe that you've had no exposure to any of this news in the past yourself if you're concerned about border security at all, but even if you hadn't, you could literally have looked this up by typing "HOW ARE DRUGS SMUGGLED INTO THE US" into the search engine of your choice.

2. The more I thought about "how do you know people's motivations for border concerns" question the more I was at a loss to answer it. I didn't say anything about people's motivations; I pointed out that to the extent there is a real migrant crisis on the US-Mexico border, it is a crisis caused by refugees seeking legal asylum, a problem which is entirely orthogonal to any problems that could be solved by a border all, real or virtual. The belief that the United States is treating those refugees inhumanely is also entirely orthogonal to any beliefs about border security, immigration quotas, etc. The "Trump era fight" that I refer to is the fight over the ethics not only of treating refugees this way, but over the honesty -- or, bluntly, lack thereof -- in the way the Trump administration and its supporters have been framing the debate in a way that conflates a refugee crisis with illegal immigration.

Good questions, I shall reply :)

Sad that you make almost no effort to push responsibility on the people hiring undocumented workers

Your low-effort comment on a throwaway account is detracting from this discussion. I absolutely support harsh punishments for those who employ undocumented laborers illegally (why would I not?). That issue has zero bearing on whether Anduril’s work is “evil.”

All I’m saying is that it’s appalling to see all of these “solutions” almost completely ignore the root problem and instead become obsessed with “border security”. Our borders are secure, immigration is not a threat to your life, the problem is almost purely economic and I think that is the more fruitful discussion

I meant no particular offense to you, I see this sentiment regularly in online forums and repeated throughout comments here, your comment was just the one I happened to reply to.

> immigration is not a threat to your life

My wife and I have both been hit by illegal immigrants. One of them driving drunk and drinking in the car while he hit me, and had no insurance or license, and had a prior DUI that he missed court for. The other (one that hit my wife’s car) simply didn’t have insurance, but wasn’t drinking.

My wife’s car had to be repaired heavily (over $5,000), which was paid for by our insurance, and the $500 adoptable was paid for by us. When my car was hit in the back, both of us were in the car, both of us had serious concussions because this accident was much worse. This is the one where the guy was driving with a beer in his hand, and he tried to leave the scene of the accident but one of his engine’s Peripherals was hanging out Of his hood and he couldn’t get his car to start.

The fact that the people in question were immigrants (one from Honduras, the other I’m not sure) Is not the problem. The problem is that they are here illegally and in a sanctuary county, which means that the law-enforcement is in a Weird position where they cannot really do anything about petty crimes like driving under the influence, because it’s an expensive process of dealing with the county. So, in both cases, these people are still roaming around probably hitting other people, meanwhile both of us have had to pay to fix our own vehicles and had at least medium level injuries (concussion symptoms last for a lot longer than I realized, and we were both Having serious issues a month later).

So, while immigrants don’t necessarily Harm people, illegal immigration certainly does.

That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not sure I understand your argument. If one or both of these drivers were legally in the US, what would law enforcement do differently? From my reading of your situation, it sounds like you had the misfortune of twice encountering under-insured drivers, and had to deal with the consequences. How did you make the (il)logical jump from that to, “Illegal immigration harms people?” It sounds like a causal logical fallacy to me, but I’d appreciate being corrected if you think I’m wrong.

Some general problems your situation unintentionally alludes to (not perhaps in your state, but common in the south) are criminalizing the issuance of drivers licenses to undocumented people (which literally prevents them from obtaining insurance), and the fact that these people are working in the shadows and thus being underpaid (and thus not being able to pay for insurance).

The problem of under-insured drivers (estimated about 13% of all drivers) is real. Many folks have proposed ways to quantify and address the problem (e.g., [1]).

[1] https://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_uninsured_motorists.h...

Thanks for the reply. Both were illegal immigrants; one had a license and wasn’t DUI. The answer to why I think this is caused by the illegal status is that, pertaining to when the Honduran immigrant (the DUI one) hit me, I went out of town with my wife during the period of time when he was supposed to go to court and obviously go to jail because he had done the same thing 11 months before and actually left the scene in that case, so he was already wanted, and so I thought “surely he will go to jail for many months...” when we got back to town I called the prosecuting attorney to ask her what happen with his sentencing/verdict/etc., and she told me that he didn’t show up to court. So I asked her “so are you going to go arrest him?“, And she informed me that they don’t handle cases like this by going to the house to arrest him. I was confused thinking ‘oh so this is going to be like an outstanding warrant and he will get arrested when he gets pulled over at some point’. I was frustrated but I thought ‘well it’s only in evitable that he will go to jail eventually’. But then I realized, ‘wait a minute, if he was already arrested for the same thing 11 months before and they didn’t even keep him in jail longer than 12 hours in the drunk tank, why would they ever put him in jail...’. That’s when I started asking more questions and found out (from the PA’s secretary) that the reason they couldn’t arrest him is because if they were to try him for contempt of court they would end up having to deport him, and this is when I found out we were living in a sanctuary county.

So the reason he was drinking and driving isn’t because he’s an illegal immigrant or because he was from Honduras. It’s because there is no rule of law when you are letting people break your laws to get into the country to begin with. And if there is no law there is no accountability. If I didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble myself, I might be out drinking rum runners on the highway 24 hours a day.

We all like to think of ourselves as virtuous, but, without accountability to the rest of society, we are just wild animals on this rock floating through space.

>Our borders are secure, immigration is not a threat to your life

Police keep finding bodies [0] of MS-13 victims [1] buried in parks [2] in my area, so pardon me if I disagree.

[0] https://beta.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/ms-13-me...

[1] https://patch.com/virginia/greateralexandria/teen-pleads-gui...

[2] https://beta.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/fairfax-...

Risk is relative. What’s your standard for being secure? The homicide rate in the US is 4.9/100k people, which is lower than the global average. Is your standard for security measured by this metric? If so, you should feel quite good; the rate in Fairfax county is 1.9/100k people. Or is it that you’re allowing the emotion aroused by the splashy headlines you linked to color your judgement?

In response, I'll ask you this: how do you feel about the private ownership of assault-style rifles?

Risk is relative. What’s your standard for being secure? The rifle homicide rate in the US is 0.18/100k people [0], which includes hunting and "traditional" rifles in addition to assault-style weapons. Is your standard for security measured by this metric? If so, you should feel quite good. Or is it that you’re allowing the emotion aroused by splashy headlines to color your judgement?

To answer you directly: I wouldn't make my home more dangerous if I can avoid it, barring some counterbalancing upside. The counterargument that, "it's still way better than living in a favela!" doesn't work for me.

Economically, mass low-skill migration has significant downsides for low-skill American workers. The "upside" is an increase in the total economic pie for U.S. citizens, but only because capitalists can exploit migrant workers even harder, and non-citizen workers' shares of the pie don't count.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-da...

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...

Wrong. I’m not bothered by privately owned assault rifles because of the homicide rate. And, this time, you went to a straw man logical fallacy. I said Fairfax was better than the rest of the US, and not a favela. So, I’ll go back to my original question: what’s your standard for feeling secure?

>Wrong. I’m not bothered by privately owned assault rifles because of the homicide rate.

Sure, and neither am I bothered by your statistics.

My standard is feeling safe when I walk late at night. I don’t feel safe when gang members dig shallow graves in the park up the road, or tag buildings in my neighborhood with gang signs, or recruit in increasing numbers from local high schools. I don’t feel safe when the police chief describes gang murders as “out of control.” [0]

Nor am I comforted when Internet strangers patronize me, and deny the validity of my own thoughts and experiences. I don’t have anything left to say to you within the HN community guidelines.

[0] https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/springfield/sites/springfield/...

How? Good luck conducting an ICE raid on a business in 2019.

ICE raids businesses in 2019. They just arrest the workers and not the management that hired those workers.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/ice-raids-...

This needs to be repeated often. If you want to stop illegal immigration, arrest those who employ illegals. A few business owners spending the night in jail, being charged with felonies, and facing huge legal fees and fines will have a large chilling effect. If there are no under the table tax free jobs to be had, the flow of migrants will diminish quite a bit.

Here's a thought: make those who employ illegals liable for back taxes and back wages at US minimum wage. That will hurt.

Or is that already the case? If it is the law is not being enforced at all.

> You sound like someone with the ability to live anywhere, who consequently has little stake in their current "somewhere."

And you sound like someone with the same privilege speaking from a place of paternalism. Restrictive borders disproportionately harm the poor.

> I have family in New England who ran an all-organic dairy farm. They had to shut down a few years ago, in part because they couldn't compete with the farms who paid undocumented workers under the table.

Others have already debunked your trafficking claim, but your anecdote about an all-organic dairy farm is particularly laughable. 'Dey took ar jerbs' has been debunked for decades now.[1]

My mom grew up on a dairy farm in New England (I'm visiting my Grandma there in a month), and I can tell you that there's plenty of reasons that most of them are closing/consolidating, and undocumented labor isn't even top-5.

> In Germany, the 2015 migrant crisis nearly brought the far-right "Alternativ für Deutschland" into power. That crisis only abated once the Balkan states took it upon themselves to secure the E.U.'s southern border.

Wait, the migrants and open borders are to blame for xenophobia?

You do well to point out that Bush supported the DREAM act and take about as wrong a lesson from that as you possibly could. The lesson is not 'give the xenophobes a compromise to get slightly-more-sane immigration policies', it's that the rise in ultra-right wing nationalism/xenophobia around the world in the last decade should be the real thing keeping people up at night, not some imagined migrant 'invasion'.

[1]https://contexts.org/articles/the-economics-of-migration/

And open borders hurt everyone

That's why we have closed borders between us states, right?

No they do not have closed borders.

Btw, since you are so pro open national borders. I am a Mexican based in Mexico City, I know a lot of people who would like to live in the US, would you be interested in sponsoring them, maybe hosting them at your place? That way they wouldn't have to risk their lives trying to just get to the US border Feel free to reach out.

Your article leaves out a lot, and you present a false consensus. Here are some counterpoints:

"Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men."

This would seem to contradict your statement that, "Restrictive borders disproportionately harm the poor."

https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pd...

"Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year."

"But that’s only one side of the story. Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer. And the additional profits are so large that the economic pie accruing to all natives actually grows. I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year."

tl;dr Low-skilled citizens are still hurt, and the "bigger economic pie" from illegal immigration turns out to mainly be due to wealth concentration and bad statistics.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinto...

>Wait, the migrants and open borders are to blame for xenophobia?

No, lots of people in Germany are worried about mass-migration because... you know, just read my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20957989

> We've seen what happens when other countries adopt wholesale open borders policies. [..AfD]

You make it sound like there was an actual negative impacts. I haven't seen much "horrible" data on that front. It certainly gives ammo to fearmongers, but how does this make it a less good goal to strive for?

You mean besides the mass sexual violence in Cologne, the Berlin Christmas market attack, or the fact that migrants in Germany are disproportionately more likely to commit violent crimes [0][1][2]?

What really gets me is headlines like “German far-right capitalizes on migrant crimes,” as if those politicians were happy the crimes had been committed or consented to the policy decisions that led to them occurring.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-c...

[1] https://www.thelocal.de/20190415/german-far-right-capitalize...

[2] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/germans-shaken-...

> At the same time, their rural community has been decimated by the opioid crisis. Most fentanyl in the U.S. comes in via the unsecured border with Mexico [0].

Pretend you are a border control officer and your sole objective is to stop illegal drugs from entering our borders. What situation would you rather have:

a) Thousands of peaceful people jumping the border in pickup trucks intermixed with a handful of drug smugglers and gang members.

b) Thousands of peaceful people lining up at a border checkpoint or consulate, with a handful of drug smugglers and gang members jumping the border in pickup trucks.

You should try legalizing more immigration. It gives us more control over the process and more selectivity and enforcement capability, not less.

And wouldn’t it be great if some company - say, Anduril - built the tech to catch those drug smugglers and gang members?

Radical idea: why not giving a legal path to whoever wants to enter instead? Illegal work would become much less frequent and convenient and business owners would be forced to pay a fair wage to these now documented immigrants or get sued. Then you would not have any more unfair competition.

I applaud your honesty in expressing a desire for open borders. I think culture would benefit from more open and honest discussions on this topic as all the double speak makes it frustrating and boring to discuss, normally.

I’m not really very interested in borders one way or the other but national borders certainly aren’t “artificial.” There are certainly some artificial aspects (lines of longtitude, etc) but borders are also created by geography and culture and saying that culture is artificial is odd to me. There are distinct peoples with different values. We also have lots in common as humans, but the border of France and Germany, for example, is very real and those countries have different cultures.

I think the EU is a good example of improved relations between countries but it’s certainly fine and not some sort of mental disorder to think that Switzerland and Italy are different and it’s fine that they are different.

If nations want to have distinct boundaries and populations then there should be an avenue to respect human rights and not resort to racism and undue nationalism. It’s also a good time to point out that immigration has been essential for major countries and is a very powerful positive force.

The thing is, everyone should have a right to change countries/cultures as they want - it shouldn't be determined by the birth lottery.

The "birth lottery" is a metaphysical construct. There is no such lottery, in which souls are assigned at random to bodies. Each human being is a rooted thing with a multigenerational history which is (in the typical case) deliberately created. Some stochastic variability is at work in this process, but it is by no means random.

Every nation must have the right to choose the people it wishes to assimilate and those it doesn't. I should not be allowed to go kicking in doors and demanding acceptance. This is the fundamental basis of sovereignty.

The only exception is that a nation must accept those born to its own members, as stateless persons create a potential burden to others.

> Every nation must have the right to choose the people it wishes to assimilate and those it doesn't. I should not be allowed to go kicking in doors and demanding acceptance. This is the fundamental basis of sovereignty.

I don't necessarily disagree with this notion, but it has its limits. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, Sodomy laws, and voting restrictions on females have all been reflections of sovereignty...and they were all fucking terrible decisions. And they were eventually overthrown not by a peaceful process of deliberative change, but through massive grassroots dissent that was absolutely illegal in every respect.

If our sovereign decision is to decide that we don't want rapists and terrorists in our country, I don't have a problem with that. But if terrorist or rapist becomes conflated with brown people, restricting all of their entry regardless of their individual merits, that's gonna be a big fucking no from me dawg. I will gladly and willingly help subvert those laws, because they are unjust laws motivated by pure racism. They deserve to be subverted.

What if it were "we don't want poor, unskilled people"? Is that really anyone's fault either?

Try to think in terms of individuals, not nations. As for your sovereignty - it ends outside of your condo - you can't restrict someone from Oklahoma to move to SF.

I prefer to think in terms of nations.

There is no such thing as a sovereign individual. Unless you refer to the Libertarian cranks hassling cops on YouTube.

In practice, nations can restrict people from moving if they choose to. Perhaps mine won't, but China certainly will.

The reason, by the way, that Oklahoma and California can't restrict migration between them is that US states are not sovereign. The original colonies ceded essential parts of their sovereignty to form a national federal government. This is US history 101.

>>> As for your sovereignty - it ends outside of your condo

Why do you have sovereignty over your condo? Why can't I express my right to sleep on your couch, regardless of your consent? If you can express access control rights over a particular piece of territory or property that you consider your own, then why can't a collective group of people also express access control rights over their common, government-managed and administered property/territory?

To eliminate the birth lottery. Remember, we are talking about the reasons - restricting the movement of someone only because he/she was born in the "wrong" coordinates on the map (and in the "wrong" time) is simply inhuman.

I'm slightly confused regarding your position, are you seeking open borders, or solely the elimination of birthright citizenship?

I think there's enough responses in the thread regarding open borders that I won't belabor that point again. To the question of birthright citizenship, I'd probably be ok with eliminating it if we replaced it with service-based citizenship a la Starship Troopers (to include volunteering in the Peace Corps, volunteer firefighting, and maybe law enforcement). But it leads to the question of: if people (including native-born ones) don't meet the citizenship requirements, do they become stateless persons? Do we deport them? To where?

There are many angles/perspectives. Lets consider two categories for whom it is declared that we need them or they are allowed to enter: high-skilled workforce and refugees. We all know (here at HN) about the huge bureaucracy and obstacles when it comes to work permits. As for the refugees - everyone declares that they are allowed to enter, but in order to qualify for such status they need to be [almost] drown in the sea or [almost] killed at the border.

https://www.liberties.eu/en/news/why-refugees-do-not-take-th...

https://blogs.berkeley.edu/2016/02/11/why-dont-refugees-fly/

So....all of the problems you've mentioned, and they ARE legitimate issues....can be resolved via means other than eliminating birthright citizenship, or adopting open borders. So can we agree to attempt implementing other measures and policies first before jumping to a drastic and likely highly-disruptive policy shift?

>>>but in order to qualify for such status they need to be [almost] drown in the sea or [almost] killed at the border.

There's not much we can do about natural geography. I'm not sure what alternative course of action is suggested in the case of, say, Cuban or Haitian refugees attempting access by boat. Secondly, no one is "almost killing" refugees that show up at designated legal points of entry to the country. Finally, anyone other than Mexican citizens attempting to seek asylum/refugee status by crossing the US-Mexico border is probably in error (I wouldn't go so far as to say "not acting in good faith").

Consider this from: [1] "Once refugees or asylum seekers have found a safe place and protection of a state or territory outside their territory of origin they are discouraged from leaving again and seeking protection in another country."

In other words, Hondurans/Guatamalans/etc... should not be transiting Mexico to seek refugee status in the US to begin with.[2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee#Restriction_of_onward_...

[2]https://www.unhcr.org/3c064aab4.html

But in the physical reality that we live in, individuals don't exist "on their own", they don't exist as completely separate entities. They have a lot of personal thoughts and experiences, but they also have a lot of traits that are predetermined by their culture, family, education, nation, society values of their immediate surrounding etc. It is just not honest to only treat people as individuals when there are obviously parts of them which are decided by the nation. So that's why people think in nations.

> There is no such lottery, in which souls are assigned at random to bodies.

citation needed. Are you claiming that some invisible hand assigned me to this planet and this time in history for reason specifically tied to myself?

> it is by no means random

Please provide evidence.

I am only claiming that you are an organism that was created by sexual reproduction, and that your current state of being is a result of genetics and environment. Surely this does not require evidence.

We don't seem to get wrapped up in questions of why a particular tree is "that" tree and not some other tree. It seems to me, as an atheist, that once you start carving out a special metaphysical nature for humans you're dabbling in the religious.

What requires evidence is this spiritual "you" that was "assigned" to this planet. If we admit that, whether the mechanism is a spiritual hand or a spiritual lottery machine is purely a theological question.

This isn't some mere abstract debate - the meme you're expressing is a radical egalitarian (Protestant) system of ethics being smuggled in under a secular guise.

> it shouldn't be determined by the birth lottery

This chips away at the advantages those winners have particularly when they don't have much else going for them (see the many low education, low income people being vocal opponents of any kind of immigration into their country). Which is why a lot of those people see someone changing country as a big threat. It's any group's right to choose who they want to let in and they will use this to make sure that either the newcomers pull them forward too, or they don't get to move at all around that group.

I too am vigorously in favor of communities right to expel people. Being born to American or Saudi citizens shouldn’t give any special rights if you the community decides they’d be better off without you.

Less sarcastically we have no evidence that democracy, unrestricted immigration and welfare states are compatible. I’ll happily bite the bullet and see massive restrictions on immigrants’ and even their children’s rights to access the state’s largess as the potential welfare gains are enormous. But that’s probably among the least important and disruptive changes of open borders. The EU, Canada or the US could easily attract immigrants in similar numbers to their total current inhabitants. You think their politics could cope with that well? California can’t even force the amalgamation of the Bay Area into a single city or copy working models of dealing with the homeless. The US can’t copy international rail infrastructure. The EU can’t get it together enough to pay Erdogan his bribe to not let the Syrians into Greece and the rest of the EU. Canada barely has an internal market in goods and services. Politics doesn’t work very well as is. How will it work with a sudden huge increase in non-native non-citizen population?

Borders being primarily geography and culture is a very western perspective on things - in Africa for example a huge proportion of borders were arbitrarily drawn by colonisers. And even in Europe and other western regions, certain borders are the way they are more for political reasons than because of true distinctiveness.

Also, different regions within countries tend to be able to maintain their distinctiveness rather well despite a lack of internal borders, and in parts of Asia and Africa were borders were recently enforced by external intervention, culture continues to exist across them and despite them, so it feels like cultural differences and borders are not as closely correlated on a global scale as one may at first think.

You're mistaken about borders being some kind of fact of human nature, and you're mistaken about different countries having some kind of fundamental "different cultures".

Nation states are an invention of the last few hundred years. Before that, kingdoms had borders between the lands they controlled militarily, and while they would certainly stop an invading army, they didn't have the administrative capacity or desire to stop small scale migration of individuals.

Historically, the culture and language of people living on the Baltic in what is now Germany would certainly differ greatly from the language and culture of people living on the Mediterranean in what is now France. But there was not some magic dividing line between those 2 points, between "the French" and "the Germans". People living around what is now the border of France and Germany would have had a very similar culture and spoken a very similar language.

In the last few hundred years, with the help of such technologies as the telegraph, the railroad, and the radio, nation-building rulers enforced speaking of the Parisian dialect in what is now France, and the Bavarian dialect in what is now Germany. They also created a lot of propaganda and myths about their "national culture" and invented far-fetched stories about the greatness of their national ancestors. In Germany's case, this went way too far and had disastrous results. The French national myths were much more benign, mostly centering around arrogance about cheese.

> The French national myths were much more benign, mostly centering around arrogance about cheese.

I'm not sure if it was your intent, but this sentence made me smile. =))

I’m always amused when people dismiss something because it is merely “an invention of the past few hundred years.”

People often want to believe that modern social structures are based on human nature. That's sad rather than amusing.

> the border of France and Germany, for example, is very real and those countries have different cultures.

You'd be hard-pressed to identify a more artificial border in Europe than that one (maybe the former Yugoslavia). Curious if you've ever been to Alsace-Lorraine, and if so why you think the culture there is distinctly French versus their German neighbors.

I have but only as a tourist. I called out that border because Alsace and Lorraine have gone back and forth quite a few times. I don’t think that’s a “natural” border but I think being exchanged by war and treaty is a pretty purposeful expression of local and national desires. So it’s not random. That wasn’t kind of what I was trying to express.

Some borders are arbitrary (Kenya and Tanzania) and some are based on rivers or natural borders (France and Spain, Nepal and India).

But curiously the people are different in Alsace than Germany. And also different from Alsace and France. Some differences are the result of French laws and culture, some differences are the result of local custom, some differences are the result of historical German laws and culture. This doesn’t mean that people here are alien or have no commonalities. I think that people have much more in common than they have different.

> a pretty purposeful expression of local and national desires

I don't think local desires have anything to do with that.

woah's explanation is much better than mine, and getting at the same thing.

Culture isn't artificial, but lines in the sand create hard disconnects where culture is much more fluid. I'm a Seattlite, and I can tell you I feel more cultural similarity to British Columbians than I do to Texans. And people from Miami have a lot more cultural similarity to Cubans and Veneuzuelans than they do Alabamans. And Guatamalans have a ton of cultural similarity to Hondurans and Salvadorans, but northern Mexico might as well be Thailand to them. Cultures didn't define our borders, Manifest Destiny did...and cultures transcended those borders.

We have a 250 year precedent as an immigrant nation. We have always been at least somewhat tolerant of massive waves of migration, whether they were Germans, Italians, Irish, British, Chinese, etc. We have already lost any claim that our borders are lines in the sand for our socioethnic culture.

The only aspect of "American" culture that seems to be represented by our borders is a love of capitalism. And considering the fact that you can't really have capitalism with restricted trade and restricted movement of labor, it seems to me that Trump is more of a cultural invader than Salvadorans are.

> We have always been at least somewhat tolerant of massive waves of migration, whether they were Germans, Italians, Irish, British, Chinese

The US wasn't tolerant. I don't even know where to begin. A single comment cannot convey how anti-immigrant the US was.

Nativism took hold of the US when the Irish and Germans arrived (mainly due to religious reasons & also fear of cheaper labour) Given that Italians were majority Catholics, they'd have the same intolerance shown. The Chinese were also hounded.

Laws were passed to discriminate against all those groups.

The only people who possibly got off lightly were the British (due to same religion & culture)

Yes, I'm well aware of the racist sentiments and actions of the past in the US. The simple fact of the matter is that we still let them in the country.

But that attitude resulted in much less allowed into the country than desired to enter.

I think it’s weird that the US seems to always have a struggle where there’s lots of racism but still makes some progress. For example, I figured that the current vitriol against immigration meant the US was some sort of racist hellhole limiting immigration but this article [0]states the census estimates 13.7% of the US wasn’t born in the US. And this Pew [1] article shows this as near the historic highs of 14.8% at the end of the 19th century. I think this is pretty cool and refreshing. So despite lots of heated statements, the US is improving in the number and quality of people immigrating.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-data-idUS... [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/30/immigrant-s...

I think the EU is a good example of how the border as 'a thing that prevents people from moving about' has been eliminated (via the Schengen Agreement) while it still maintains them when it comes to nation states, voting and so on. I think that's exactly the right way to do it - I think people should be able to move about, but it's also important to let people vote on a small enough scale that it is meaningful, and within a small enough group to share a culture and world-view.

Incidentally, the EU also provides examples of where the borders are completely arbitrary. Consider the border at Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau:

> The town is the site of a complicated borderline between Belgium and Netherlands, with numerous small exclaves of Belgium, of which some contain counter-exclaves of the Netherlands.

> Some houses in the town of Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau are divided between the two countries. At one time, according to Dutch laws restaurants had to close earlier. For some restaurants on the border, this simply meant that the customers had to move to a table on the Belgian side.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Hertog

I agree with everything you said except this: > borders are also created by geography and culture

It seems to me that borders exist because certain people could wield power, and gain benefits from controlling land.

When we were hunter gatherers, the idea of "territory" makes more sense, because different clans were taking things from the land (including the ability to traverse it without getting into conflicts).

Also, there weren't enough people to fill the entire Earth, and no one had a house filled with every model of Playstation, so being Nomadic wasn't a huge burden compared to staying in one place.

Later, when we had organized militaries, and food came from working the ground for months, Kings could benefit by stealing land and serfs from other Kings that had rightfully stolen them from some other King, and so on.

I don't think too many land-grab wars started with the thinking, "You know what the French need? Culture. And boy, are we gonna give it to 'em".

And also this: > the border of France and Germany, for example, is very real and those countries have different cultures

I hear that near the border, the Germans are even allowed to make wine, and the French are allowed to make bier! ;)

> I hear that near the border, the Germans are even allowed to make wine, and the French are allowed to make bier! ;)

Of course. My point was not that cultures create entirely different species with absolutely no commonalities. I think people have much more in common than different. But there are differences and customizations that are real and not arbitrary. Although I think they might have been triggered and evolved from arbitrary factors (ie weather in one region is kind of arbitrary because it exists whether people are there or not).

So while Germans may make wine and French make bier (these are both done far away from the borders as well btw) that doesn’t make Germany and France the same. It just means they have lots in common.

What I struggle with is how to think about what the right relationship is between different groups that have many things in common but aren’t the same, and don’t necessarily need to be the same.

> borders are also created by geography and culture

If this was true we should have the right to enter any country we want as long as we align with its culture.

> distinct peoples with different values

Can you provide a list of values that make you suitable for your country?

One could wonder: would it be ethically acceptable to run value exams on citizens and non-citizens to decide who can enter / stay / gets expelled? Would the exam be reliable?

> If this was true we should have the right to enter any country we want as long as we align with its culture.

It seems most people would be ok with that, yes. The question is of course of the practicality of determining someone's culture to a great extent, when there would be incentives for them to lie on the applications, interviews about their culture - if that would be the deciding factor (in some countries it is) for getting into the country or not.

> Can you provide a list of values that make you suitable for your country?

You have probably a favorite style(s) of music and other styles that you don't like. Can you really provide a list of traits of that music taste exhauistively and exactly? Probably not, and it's not because it's random. There are definitive differences in those styles, and yet it can be very hard to pinpoint them. And now we are talking about one individual, and you are asking a question about something much more complex, like a nation. Not being able to list the values exactly in all cases does not mean that there are no values or that they are meaningless or have no effect on people.

> would it be ethically acceptable to run value exams on citizens and non-citizens to decide who can enter

Some countries do that already. It might not always be in the form of simple written exam, but there are people who determine your cultural values and make a decision on whether you can stay or not depending on them.

> my real preference would be for us to all work toward eliminating these national-level borders completely

I mean, ok, that means that you literally support open borders.

It is fine for you to think that, but you should realize that the vast majority of the population does not support it.

So it is not just "republicans or conservatives" that oppose open borders. It is instead basically everyone.

This company is not deporting anyone. It is just putting cameras at the border.

I think you might be surprised how many people support open borders.

Oh, there might be quite a few in terms of absolute numbers, but as a percentage of the population they are most definitely in the minority.

See this Harvard poll from last year: https://caps.gov.harvard.edu/news/caps-harris-poll-immigrati...

Not only do the majority of Americans not want open borders, they want less immigration than is currently occurring.

Oh, clearly they are in the minority but I was responding to a claim that indicates they are negligible it non-existent.

I would argue that many people oppose open borders in practice but not in theory. There are good practical reasons why open borders are a bad fit for many situations. That does not mean that those situations can't be changed to make that no longer true.

> Oh, clearly they are in the minority but I was responding to a claim that indicates they are negligible it non-existent.

That's fair. I didn't necessarily read it that way, but I think we're more or less on the same page.

> I would argue that many people oppose open borders in practice but not in theory.

I'm not sure that we will see a practical set of circumstances where people would actually be OK with open borders. People have always had some reflex against migration (for cultural reasons, as well as perhaps an instinct fear of disease) and mass migration has historically almost always led to violence.

On top of that, most developed countries have an established welfare state. Any sort of communal system needs a way to ensure that the contributions to the pooled resources is greater than the demand on those resources. If you don't have immigration control then you get a "tragedy of the commons".

> On top of that, most developed countries have an established welfare state. Any sort of communal system needs a way to ensure that the contributions to the pooled resources is greater than the demand on those resources. If you don't have immigration control then you get a "tragedy of the commons".

This one of the practical reasons I alluded to and is part of my reasons for opposing certain types of welfare systems (and thus something I wish more attention was paid to in the creation of policy proposals.)

Many services (e.g. education, infrastructure, policing and more) pay off so well in the long term that paying these costs for immigrants is in our own interest as they increase the long term value of those immigrants. (I think the US would be greatly served by doing something like what Germany does, offering free higher education to foreigners who qualify to attend their public universities.)

If other public services are actually being abused they can be limited to citizens of the US (and of countries with which the US has reciprocity agreements with.)

Immigration fears make a strong argument in favor of a citizenship dividend. I think subsidizing your workers and making them more competive vs. immigrants is far better for our country than the dehumanizing policing (not just at the borders) required to effectively enforce immigration laws.

Personally, I view this as a negative since I think immigration has been unabashedly good in the long term for our country throughout it's history. Immigration controls may offer some sort term benefits, but it seems hypocritical to ask for those benefits for ourselves (at the cost of future generations) while reaping the advantages of historical immigration.

This strikes me as one of those things where the polled results vary drastically depending on how the question is asked.

The border situation (between whatever countries) is affected by globalization and communication, including the creation of the internet. When people realize how much better they can have it elsewhere (which is much easier to realize than it used to be), it creates more demand to move. But this results in a spike of demand that will normalize over time.

And this is because other effects of globalization have already started to normalize the differences between countries. For instance, it's not as cheap to offshore as it used to be, and that trend will continue. Human rights are increasing in other countries at a faster rate than they used to, just from the greater visibility of the rights people enjoy in other countries.

If we're all lucky, most of the normalization will be that other less advanced countries will improve, rather than other countries degrading - like hopefully we can all "grow" enough fast enough that it'll lift those boats, rather than sink the boats in the more societally/technologically advanced countries.

And that fear that "them getting ahead" might mean that "we will fall behind" is basically what drives the demand to "protect" our borders, even while generally people are in favor of everyone having a better life.

So I think it's totally possible for a majority of the country to be in favor of more open borders over time, while also being against entirely opening all our borders tomorrow.

> This strikes me as one of those things where the polled results vary drastically depending on how the question is asked.

I've seen a few different polls on the subject. From what I understand open borders has always been a minority position (even among immigrants).

> And that fear that "them getting ahead" might mean that "we will fall behind" is basically what drives the demand to "protect" our borders, even while generally people are in favor of everyone having a better life.

I think it's deeper than that. I've tried to address some of the reasons why in other comments on this thread.

>I had followed him for a few years on the MTBS3D forum when he was experimenting with various HMD prototypes (usually modding the heck out of the Forte VFX-1). He just seemed like a kid with a dream, and the will and ability to make it happen - and potentially revive VR for "Round 2".

He already worked in the military before the Kickstarter, I've seen posts on MTBS about his experimental VR stuff at Lockheed. He was 17 or 18 back then, most likely got the miltitary connection from a familiy member or somebody close.

If you're young like he was your political views are mostly shaped by the people who surround you. From interviews it's known that he was homeschooled and didn't have many friends, so most likely no punk rockers, hip hoppers, skaters or other street dudes who could influence his views in other directions.

Eliminating borders is a recipe for disaster. You can't expect your country to remain the same if you let millions or dozens of millions of people freely coming in from different cultures and backgrounds. Immigration is all about "how much is still OK to let in (trade-off between risks and benefits)", and once you say "whoever wants to enter", it's hard to take this kind of opinion seriously.

> it's hard to take this kind of opinion seriously

The economic argument for free migration is identical to the one for free trade[1].

Do you find it hard to take free trade advocates seriously?

[1]https://contexts.org/articles/the-economics-of-migration/

If free trade ends up being bad for a country, it's much easier to change that compared to deporting some insane amount of people. Especially when the migrant home country can't even be determined.

Having a constant flow of immigrants is fine, however I think it's important to monitor how it affects the vitals of the country and not crash its welfare system etc.

The risks of immigration (of any sort) include:

- spread of disease

- erosion of social trust due to conflicting cultures

- erosion of other social capital if immigrant culture has a higher time preference than native culture

- identity politics (people vote along ethnic rather than ideological lines)

Now, there are certainly benefits to immigration as well, but they must be put in balance.

I agree that trade and immigration have many parallels, but there is still a difference between an economic transaction at arms-distance vs. inviting someone into your home.

He didn’t make an economic argument, he made a social and political one about changes to culture. I support open borders for the same reason I support free trade but the idea that it would be anything but massively disruptive to most existing political settlements is a joke. The US fifty years after open borders would have a lot in common with before but the Roman Empire had a lot in common with the Republic too.

No way a welfare state, democracy and open borders go together. Open borders isn’t going to be costless for existing residents.

Borders are an authoritarian tool of control, so allusions to empire and talking about a democratic society with a safety net being unable to handle open borders is bizarre to say the least.

The entire point of the argument is that in aggregate the benefits outweigh the costs, not that it's costless.

> The entire point of the argument is that in aggregate the benefits outweigh the costs, not that it's costless.

True, if you don’t have the concept of community. If you do you value fellow members differently than non-members. From a net human welfare perspective the conquest and settlement of the Americas was pretty great. More people, richer people, healthier people, more educated people. Not so great for the people and peoples who were there before 1492 though.

> If you do you value fellow members differently than non-members.

This is where xenophobia comes from, nevermind the fact that however slice it (unless counting military action/colnialism as immigration, like you do) 'community members' are more likely to commit acts of violence on other community members than non-members.

> From a net human welfare perspective the conquest and settlement of the Americas was pretty great. More people, richer people, healthier people, more educated people. Not so great for the people and peoples who were there before 1492 though.

This is a rich example to use given what you're arguing for. Colonizers weren't immigrants, they were colonizers. Blaming the original inhabitants' border control (in a world where borders were very different than the ones we have today) for colonialism, and conflating modern-day migration with colonization, is disgusting.

Countries should not remain the same. Stealing all this land from California to Texas from Mexico was absolutely not about leaving the country the same. Expelling the Latinos from there was certainly not about conservation of the then current state of affairs, it was a social adventure.

Moreover the US actually had more or less open borders for a long time, calling into some kind of date at which its society should be preserved at is a little bit arbitrary.

> Moreover the US actually had more or less open borders for a long time

Well, what's changed is that the US is rich and traveling is pretty easy.

Moving to the US doesn't make you rich though, it merely gives you a better opportunity to become so. That has never changed.

You think you expelled the Latinos and stole the land? That's simplistic perspective. If you go read the real Mexican history books (serious scholars and historians) you will realize that many people in those state were pro-leaving Mexico. Why? Well, Mexican 19th century history is defined by the conflict between Federalism and Centralism where everything was to be controlled from Mexico City. You can guess how people living on the outskirts of Mexico took to taxations and impositions of politicians from the center of the country. Sure, the US swooped on this, but you can bet the people in those territories were not particularly bothered, au contraire. Also you have to factor in that Mexicans have not felt particularly united as a nation until after our Revolutionary War in the 1900's

> You can't expect your country to remain the same

Why would anyone want or expect their country to remain the same? Especially the US? There are massive problems here, with millions of people hurting every day. The current state of the US is not a nice place for tens of millions+ of its residents.

Stating that you'd expect a country to 'remain the same' is tantamount to stating you want the current horrible problems that presently plague our society to persist - with no action against them. That doesn't make any sense.

Things are awful right now. Thing should _not_ stay the same. Things should improve, and people should work every day to improve them.

> it's hard to take this kind of opinion seriously.

Please do not belittle or demean other commenter's opinions. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Stating that you'd expect a country to 'remain the same' is tantamount to stating you want the current horrible problems that presently plague our society to persist - with no action against them. That doesn't make any sense.

This was the entire premise of the current president's platform; going back to before things "changed" and everything was "better"

Nonsense, and you don't believe that either. Otherwise you'd be arguing for hard borders between US states to preserve their unique character. Border politics are drive by racism, pure and simple. You may not be racist, but you should look into the history around the politics of this and the extreme right wingers that back the various anti-immigration front groups.

> Border politics are drive by racism, pure and simple.

How did you come to know the underlying motivations behind millions of people's political beliefs? Are you sure you're not speculating?

Are you implying that wanting to have a border is a belief that is "basically racism"? What you are doing is stretching and expanding the word "racism", which doesn't do anyone any good because you are diluting the real phenomenon, you make free speech harder, because suddenly you call many more phenomenon "racist", you alienate a lot of people who would even agree with you otherwise - you are basically corrupting your language.

This is not a good thing for any cause, this is just a tool that is used in a political debate to try to win arguments through linguistical tricks, not through real arguments.

You might not but racist, but your username is, aNigBroWL

It becomes a bit of a tragedy of the commons. People elect awful governments who promise paradise and country’s economy craters resulting in mass exodus (Venezuela).

Why should Colombians or Chileans (or Americans) shoulder their poor choices of government and civil society?

If some country wants to grow unsustainably and follow unhealthy land use habits and then have problems, why should others shoulder that (outside of unforeseen natural) disasters?

By that logic, should we not confine the residents of West Virginia to their home state as its coal-based economy collapses? Or should we allow them to move to other parts of the country to seek jobs so that they can lead happier, more productive lives?

No, we should try and fix the area and make it better. Throwing your arms up and saying "fuck it, we're leaving" is understandable on an individual level, but on a societal level the effects are devastating.

Fortunately, for West Virginia, they joined the union and as such we help each other out since they are under federal regulation and are taxed at the federal level.

Would you be for Mexico joining the union?

If we let New Mexico in, why not? Obviously it would require harmonization in many regards, just as we’d require from Canada. Obviously it would have to go through whatever formal process they have in addition to our own process —which typically involves becoming a territory, etc.

I don’t think I’d want to go beyond North America as then it would gather enough momentum to enable a one world government. I don’t think we need that. Nations should be free to follow self determination. A one world gov would not allow that.

Now, Greenland, being a small pop., would be much easier to incorporate into the Union than a Canada or a Mexico.

No, it is a different country and population, and the people there probably like having their own country.

Not everyone in the world needs to be in the same world government.

I do not want to take away Mexico's right to self determination. The people there don't want that.

The US has been very hands on with South American politics (and not only those), so pretending now like their current state is solely the consequence of their own poor choices is ignorant at best.

The US has had hands in Chile and Panama. They’re doing pretty well. We haven’t touched Argentina or Uruguay or Bolivia. Uruguay is doing well, the other two not so much. The U.K. and France and others had their hands in the US, we’ve done okay. [and let’s not ignore the lengths the USSR went to try and destabilize us as well].

It’s not what someone has done to you, it’s what you do for yourself.

Look at S Korea, Taiwan, etc. they were very much poorer than Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, etc. They had little in way of natural resources, but with grit and determination they overcame despite being occupied and decimated by imperial Japan, they helped themselves. They didn’t have the best governments initially, yet they have done very very well. It’s not about who invaded you or had you as a vassal state, etc., it’s what you do for yourself that really matters. Singapore is another.

Yes, what a fine time the population had under Pinochet

The point countering the parent comment is that the country didn't fall apart. Since it is not an inevitable outcome, the US shouldn't get all the blame. European and Asian countries also suffered heinous acts of subjugation and total war but they do not have an inevitable permanent incapability as a result.

Concerning Pinochet - despite his many abuses, in a pragmatic sense he did improve the country's stability relative to the actions of other South American leaders, and stopped a popular slide into socialism by showing that free markets can also create prosperity. Note that his successors kept most of his economic policies intact due to their efficacy and popularity.

"we haven't touched argentina". that is not true at all.

Compared to others on the list who have overcome? Taiwan, Singapore, S Korea, Qatr (looking at you VZ), Panama, Chile. At some point they have to realize they need to help themselves and forge a future.

You should not..Nobody will force you.But as a Venezuelan is my duty to mention some reasons to counterbalance your POV:

1- No country is an homogenous group.In the case of Venezuela after Chavez first election the country basically was splitted 50/50 . In Maduro's case the split is easily 90/10 against him.When you refuse to help venezuelans you refuse to help a gigantic group of people who did not choose Maduro at all,either because they never voted for him.or because they were/are minors and unable to vote at all.

2) Funny you mention Chileans and Colombians 2 groups that were received in mass by Venezuela.Chileans fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship and Colombians fleeing from poverty and the historical violence there. To be fair to those countries they have returned the favor in a gesture I hope will never be forgotten. When I see my nieces aged 4 and 1 living happily in Chile there are no words to express the magnitude of the gratitude we will always have with Chile.

3) Venezuela is.not an isolated country. We in South America have an incipient integration model a la UE. This give us Veezuelans the right to settle in certain countries (Ar,Br,Uy,Py) by just complying with basic requisites.If markets are going to be free an open ,the.movement of.person should be too. Many venezuelans also have European citizenship ,being the children and grandchildren of thousands of Italians,Spaniards and Portugueae who made Venezuela their home and helped to form its culture.

4) This should.not count but, stil.Venezuelans have a very high rate.of tertiary education for the region and most of the migrants seek to integrate themselves in the adopted country in the regular job market. The migrant influx ( especially if controlled by checking crimer records) is a net positive for the receiving country.

> If markets are going to be free an open ,the.movement of.person should be too.

Facts.

Thanks for coming on here and helping balance the rampant xenophobia in this thread. Please know that some of us in the USA are aware of how our government has treated and continues to treat the Western hemisphere, and that we're doing the best we can to change it.

Unfortunately, comments like the one you replied to reflect the majority opinion. Or at least the more vocal one.

It’s a multipolar world, the USSR is out now but China is in and so are other wealthy states. We’ll see how it goes.

Technically, that is an opinion not a fact. Or can you cite an agreed upon proof I'm not aware of?

No problem. I understand that with the model we have right now (nation-states with closed borders) most people do not like to receive migrants for certain valid and not-so-valid reasons. I just wanted to provide the perspective from the migrants point of view.

Maybe I am naive, but I like to think that if we dont destroy ourselves first, in some moment in the future (100-1000 years) the earth will belong to all of us, so a person from Africa could visit Yellowstone, Montreal and Stamford Bridge without giving their dignity away in a visa process. Same for an American going or settling in Beijing , Vladivostok or Brasilia.

Is it possible for a government to provide a high level of services to it's citizens while having no border?

I don't have any problem with someone being a republican or a conservative, but I can't and couldn't understand why someone would support a person like our current POTUS.

88% of Republicans think that Trump has done a good job as president, so if you think supporting Trump is not okay, then you basically do have a problem with someone being a Republican.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ra...

40% of the country is Trump supporters, so we shouldn't be surprised when one unicorn founder is a Trump supporter.

> 40% of the country is Trump supporters

Why muddy things? His approval rating isn’t analogous to 40% of our population’s support. It’s the support of individuals who bothered to spend time entertaining the poll. He has a very consistent approval rating with his base but you sound like the PR announcement after one of his rallies with inflated attendance counts.

Polls are usually pretty good at correcting for response rates. Claiming he has a 40% approval rating is hardly the sort of statistic that would be at a rally!

They support the current president because they are republican or conservative.

This is entirely consistent. Pretending otherwise is just that, pretending.

Everybody is a speech maker these days. It's basically a Trump tactic that everyone is blindly reusing.

Which is why Trump will probably win the next election.

Cause if the game is all about pandering, naming/shaming, blaming, guilt tripping and triggering people he is better that anyone else.

Change the rules of the game please. Don't play the game he wants you to play.

> I sometimes wonder if we humans will ever get over this artificial border fetish we have.

Sounds like you believe that humans are the only animals that get territorial.

Do you strive to be more animalistic? That doesn’t seem like a very noble pursuit for a human being

My point is: if it's a natural phenomenon, it obviously isn't artificial. Animals do it, it wasn't invented by humans for some arbitrary reason. Pretending that it was leads to confused thinking.

You have short shrifted and belittled his views on this issue. Suggest you listen to this podcast where he expounds on his views, which are thoughtful and deep -- https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/turner-podcast-network/the-...

Is everyone in silicon valley a flaaaaaming, communist level liberal? At least Hacker news is frightening so, and I believe a lot of commenters here live in California and work on the industry. I mean, I live in Brazil and it shocks me to see that the mighty US, the bastion of freedom and capitalism, can harbour such idiotic ideas.

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