Ask HN: Shouldn't free migration be a human right? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Shouldn't free migration be a human right?

19 pointsAvtomatk58 comments

I have the citizenship of a country with which I do not share its politics, I do not share its culture, I do not share its economic structure, I do not even have things in common with the people who live in my country (being someone highly intellectual in a country where the incentive to science is almost nil).

And I am forced to pay taxes destined for projects that do not benefit me and that are built on ideas that I do not even share.

My humble and miserable vote in the next elections is not going to change anything in my country at all.

It is like being born in tribe "a", but having the culture of tribe "b", the political and economic inclination that tribe "b" has, even living better with the people of tribe "b", but being rejected by tribe "b" for the simple fact of being born in tribe "a"... It was a decision made by my parents and now I have to pay for something I didn't do? And there isn't even a way to fix it? Does the migration system of the countries currently have any kind of logic?

There is no argument (based on philosophy) to support the current migration system.

any constructive criticism will be welcome

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Only if that's the only human right.

It's impossible to run any kind of social safety net if an unlimited number of people can come in and bankrupt the social support.

Democracy also becomes impossible because if the native population gets uppity elites can bring in immigrants to dilute their votes. Mass immigration like this has, in the past, led to the end of large civilizations such as Rome.

Finally uncontrolled immigration economically crushes the native population by suppressing wages and causing asset and property price inflation. It's great for GDP over the short term though.

There's also the cultural and racial dilution thing but that's a controversial idea to say the least.

EDIT: I can't respond to you because my posts are throttled, but how does this work with your children? You have the same vote dilution problem in the new country but now it also opens up the opportunity to do the reverse if they're allowed to vote in the old country. Your "very long term" is likely multiple generations away. Should we be crushing the lives of multiple generations of our populations just take the best workers from these other countries and delay their development?

I do wonder if the conflicts are truly fundamental, or whether they could largely be engineered around at a practical level (without abolishing any existing states).

Put another way, is it a philosophical or a practical problem?

Seems a lot of the problems can be reduced in severity if citizenship (your primary link to national sovereignty and its corresponding benefits and obligations) and country of residence are separable concepts.

It seems like the Schengen Agreement is a (limited) example of a system that allows freedom of movement while retaining national sovereignty.

It's not the whole world though, and I don't really know how the issues you raised are being addressed. After a brief bit of research (I am NOT an expert) it looks like:

> It's impossible to run any kind of social safety net

Welfare remains complicated (as it always seems to be everywhere at all times...); by default you'd be covered by your home country which will probably not pay you unemployment if you move overseas. However, there might be bi-lateral agreements in place between countries to "cover" each other's citizens. Seems fair.

> Democracy becomes impossible ...

You vote in your home country, unless you go through the citizenship process of your host country.

> Finally uncontrolled immigration economically crushes the native population by suppressing wages

Probably, yeah. Very long term, hopefully we'd see more similar development levels world-wide and this could become less of a problem.

You could also phase it in over a few decades, and/or have a growing "free movement" zones between areas.

> There's also the cultural and racial dilution thing

Yeah not sure about that one.

> EDIT: I can't respond to you because my posts are throttled, but how does this work with your children?

Well, first of all the can is kicked down the road by 20 years, which is beyond most politician's threshold of patience and avoids the worst immediate abuses ;)

But I can speak to this directly because this is actually my situation! My family is resident in Australia. But I am a New Zealander, I can live and work here but I can't vote or claim welfare and am not a citizen. My kids (who were born here) are actually New Zealanders until age 10 at which point they can apply to become Australian citizens.

From my perspective, my kids are Australians! They're not any different than anyone else born here, they grew up in the culture, reflect local values, and are the product of a similar level of educational investment as other Australians.

I admit that I'm biased, but I don't see that it causes a lot of problems.

In general it seems possible to retain the concept that countries decide who gets to be a citizen - it might not be automatic by birth, and parents would need to weigh up the rules when choosing a host country.

No, migration programmes worldwide currently lack logic. They often make no economic sense.

Unions across the EU historically opposed free movement of labour for a very simple reason: it is used by employers to create surplus labour and drive down the cost of wages. This is not actually a bad reason to oppose it. But that aside, almost every other reason is bad, regressive, and grounded in culture, racism, or fear.

Angela Merkel, who I abhor politically otherwise, was very sensible when she accepted 1.5m migrants. Germany needed them, because the birthrate in the developed economies has been shrinking. They need them for labour replacement not for wage dilution. It is why Germany needed turkish labour post ww2.

Britain needs labour. The opposition to EU free movement was based in little englander nightmares, the reality is that having closed the door to europe, Britain is opening the door to other economies like India. There will be no end of migration to the UK, simply migration "on their terms"

If you want somewhere with open door migration policy, Uruguay isn't bad. Its a local IT hub for the region of south america, it's an interesting place. It is very insular, high italian migration and medium-to-low levels of english competency and it has a lot of poverty, but its a long way from its nightmare of the 1980s.

Ireland isn't open door but its a nice place. As is estonia, the digital passport isn't citizenship but they have roads to citizenship. It's a bit close to mother Russia if you ask me!

Vietnam is a cool place for westerners who are prepared to accept the planned economy. It has remarkably good infrastructure in the cities. Less outside of the city, but not bad overall. I don't think they have open door citizenship.

Germany is well worth committing to, but has high barriers to entry. That said, free tertiary education.

Starting off by calling yourself "highly intellectual" (with the strong implication that you are superior to your countrymen) is not a great position from which to win people over

I really don't think it should. Human rights should be available in all countries, but the world isn't free real estate at the mercy of enterprising individuals. End of story.

The tribalism you're mentioning is just anthropology. With a good dose of rule of law it works well enough, and it does so at scale. If it doesn't work for you, well, tough luck.

One thing that should be mentioned is that rights can only practically exist within confines that allow for their protection and execution. Something like a State or a culture, with defined boundaries...

Leaving your country should be a human right. Entering another one without their consent should not. Unfortunately there aren't any real unclaimed areas on the planet, so we are stuck with the current system.

Renounce your citizenship and sail to Antarctica!

There are many far-flung unpopulated islands that are basically not governed by the country which has formal jurisdiction over the islands as well. But we know people are not looking for that --they are looking for a place where the scaffolding has already been built by someone else and they just have to graft on.

> And I am forced to pay taxes destined for projects that do not benefit me and that are built on ideas that I do not even share.

That's not all your taxes cover though. And you'll use infrastructure/services that other people don't benefit from but still pay taxes for.

It's how every nation works.

Yup, he is also paying back the taxes that he benefited from growing up (school and infrastructure at the very least).

> Shouldn't free migration be a human right?

Free emigration should be a human right (you should have the right to leave), for most of the reasons of not being forced to associate that you raise.

OTOH, the same right argues against unrestricted freedom of immigration.

I am not highly intellectual like you, but I think the main reason you'd be drawn to a country that "has a better culture", is their economical success, so there will always be this issue of countries successful economically being the "better culture".

In the example of tribe a/b, tribe a is weak, you wanna be with tribe b, tribe b require you to be strong before you join. Strength today is in term of labor output, if you are highly qualified (not only highly intellectual sadly) you will be invited by tribe b.

Also why would a country invite on the basis of you agreeing with them, they are full of people agreeing with them, they want people who are useful to them.

Also if someone who lives in a "better" country, yes it was given to them by their fathers and grandfathers, that's a privilege that they got without doing any work (it take some work to maintain tho), but they have no obligation to give it to you, or share it with you, you can't argue for it with "but I am sad cuz I don't have it too :(". If it is basic needs yeah, but arguing for luxuries I am not with you.

On an individual level, you do not hand people around you that are less fortunate than you in your society some of the privilege you were born with to the point that you made them your equal (economically).

This is a good time to start considering what it means to be homo sapiens ... not tribal beings but a species of brothers and sisters. In the DNA. Unless we suddenly realize it, we're heading for a time when millions of people displaced by nature will be knocking at all the doors. If we aren't preparing for that great migration, we're head in sand.

A revolution is on its way. If I understand what you're saying, then Rousseau (Origin of Inequality) spoke on the behalf of every human ever displaced by colonialism when he wrote:

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

The book "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber and Wengrow touches on this: the anthropological record suggests that even people from very long times ago (even before we observe the first "big" civilizations) have moved and migrated all the time. The system we have now where nation states guarding their borders by tracking their citizen's movements is, regarding the entirety of human history, a strange and absurd anomaly.

The book suggests that humanity has always relied on three substansive aspects of freedom which we've lost over the years in place of formal freedoms imposed by liberalism:

- The freedom to move away or relocate from one's surroundings

- The freedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by others

- The freedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.

I highly recommend reading the book if you have any interest on this.

Seems questionable. Those nomadic tribes of yore may have found the next ecosystem over was already inhabited. Aggression and territorialism has also been around a very long time.

And... population densities in pre-antiquity was very low in great areas allowing this free roaming, as you said, if there was already and established population and a new one tried squeezing in, it very likely would end up in confrontation, if they were unrelated.

But people keep on romanticizing pastoralism and nomadic life.

Many of the people who are fleeing to find a better life (whether it be prehistoric or modern) aren't doing it because of "romantic pastoralism", a lot of it is to flee from existing oppressive relationships and create new better ones (war, conflict, drought, abusive families). Don't you think that core tenet of freedom isn't worth pursuing?

The book is definitely not romanticizing nomadic life, it says that the movement of persons have been one of the defining aspects of human life (given a plethora of anthropological records) that we have gradually lost due to the rise of modern states, the tracking of individual citizens and their movements, and strict management of borders.

People didn't move as individuals without group protection. Historically you typically moved with the group/tribe. Historically one did not leave the group to escape things that have modern definitions but did not historically. Historically there was outcasting, banishing, exiling etc., which was a punishment knowing those people would be in a precarious position to survive outside the tribe.

Humans have been moving around since forever. Peaceful coexistence with the people who were there before? Not so much, the archeological record generals tends more to the "pile of smashed skulls" end of the scale

Simplify the interpretation. One has the right to leave their own abode, house, etc. at any time, for any reason. One does not have the right to enter another’s house without an explicit invite. The other’s house is maintained and paid for by that individual. Immigration is no different. One may leave their own country. Whether any other country will allow their entry is another question. The US and Western Europe are violating the rights of their own citizens by allowing mass immigration. It ends as it always has with the destruction of the host country. And sadly for many, that is exactly the goal.

Have the right to leave, but not the right to enter? It is the same as not having the right to leave if you cannot enter any place.

The analogy of the house does not fit very well (countries do not invite foreigners, they simply accept or reject their entry), it seems to me better to take it as a "party", at a party you are going to accept well-behaved guests and you are going to to turn away guests who misbehave.

The guest will pay the same taxes as the citizens, so the house is also paid by him.

Again, I did not find any arguments from the philosophy behind the current migration system

Agreed, the analogy isn’t perfect but sufficient. I suppose one could extend Nozick’s arguments as justification for the current immigration system. Though I think doing so is a misreading, i.e., his position on the minimum state to protect the rights of individuals and that individuals should be to able to transact with anyone isn’t, at least in my view, a justification for mass immigration. Mass immigration is a collective action by governments not a transaction between individuals. Thus the government is larger than necessary and explicitly violating the rights of individual citizens.

>>Mass immigration is a collective action by governments not a transaction between individuals. Thus the government is larger than necessary and explicitly violating the rights of individual citizens.

This isn't good reasoning. Each immigrant still has own motives and his own thoughts. A large number doesn't render these individual immigrants as a part of collective formless blob or a de facto invading army.

Consider that not all immigrants leave their home countries because of their governments. Many leave because of religious/cultural persecution from one's local community (e.g. homosexuals) or unacknowledged rights (e.g. abortion) in an otherwise secular and ostensibly stable country.

I think you're misreading Nozick. Nozick would suggest open borders, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding. The argument for closed borders would imply that any authority over a country's or state's territorial holdings would belong to the nation's government rather than its people.

You’re looking at the situation from the immigrants perspective. Who is the individual in the host country initiating the transaction. Nozick, to my knowledge, never explicitly addresses the immigration issue in his writings. Most, such as yourself, would interpret him as pro-open borders, as most libertarian philosophers are. I would suggest that creates an unreconcilable conflict within libertarian philosophy.

Where does the European invasion of America go in your analogy with homes?

I assume you are asking about this line:

> The US and Western Europe are violating the rights of their own citizens by allowing mass immigration.

I don't think GP was talking about Europeans invading America. Instead I think he was talking about two examples of immigration crises:

1. Immigrants crossing the US's southern border arriving in the United States

2. Immigrants from Eastern Europe arriving into Western Europe.

I believe GP is implying that immigrants don't pay their fair share for the house.

Yeah, that invasion was pretty terrible for the native Americans. So the wise choice is to avoid repeating that history

Hyperbole? What is being 'destroyed' by immigration? Sounds like sewing FUD.

Sometimes I think of a world without borders. But after more thought, it would probably require a world government...

"Should be" doesn't apply to human rights. Either it is a human right, in which case it always has been and always will be, or it is not, in which case it never has been and never will be. "Human right" by definition means that it applies to all humans ever automatically.

By this definition, there is no such thing as human rights.

This is the only way human rights work. They’re rights of the individual because they are a human. They can’t be bestowed or removed by oneself, another individual, or society. You exist and therefore inherently have these rights.

Yes there is. Freedom of thought is the most absolute right of all, it's completely impossible to restrict. Freedom of expression, freedom of worship, right to remain silent, right to a free and fair trial are rights that you possess by virtue of being human, which an unjust government can attempt to take away from you (but with at most partial success).

>Freedom of thought is the most absolute right of all, it's completely impossible to restrict.

We used to lobotomize people. Never put it past any government to restrict anything they can.

> "Human right" by definition means that it applies to all humans

Correct

> ever automatically.

Eh, since human rights are a (very valuable) legal construct, this statement isn't really rigorous enough to parse. Do human rights as defined by 2022 EU law apply to ancient Egypt? What would it mean if they did, or did not? IMHO, not even a question worth attempting to define.

Human rights are great, but you won't find them in the laws of physics, only in the laws of people.

I’m not sure you’re going to find any nation where you only pay taxes for things you want.

But let’s say the next country allows for everyone getting what they want (somehow) and that includes letting nobody else in…

Who gets their way? Them or you?

Immigration laws aren't very good in almost all countries. Governments do want to plan better and have good-sense policies that let in people who can integrate and contribute. But they are held back by a basic human instinct: xenophobia. The average person is OK with seeing one stranger in town, but start feeling creeped out when they see handfuls, and get downright paranoid when exposed to large numbers of foreigners. Inevitably, this instinct becomes a tool for a subset of politicians, who then play power games with immigration policies.

I'm not sure exactly why, but there are also some systemic habits that make immigration much worse than it should be. For example, it's nearly universal that countries will put tight global restrictions in place because they want to reduce immigrants from a single place. E.g. looking at Central / South America right now, a lot are tightening up policies against all nationalities because they don't want immigrants from Venezuela. This is really baked in -- look at how intense the outcry was when the Trump administration put restrictions on specific, named countries at the beginning of the pandemic. That's generally just not done.

So in short, you may be correct that there's a theoretical human right, but the world just isn't going to realign in that direction anytime soon. In the same way that it's sort of a human right to have pleasant, non-hostile interactions with other people, but that would also be impossible to effect; there are simply too many assholes in the mix.

One thing I've often pondered is that there should be some sort of non-governmental group that you can join or qualify for, which evaluates and vouches for its members and guarantees their good conduct in any country they visit. Basically, the same thing a passport does. But it's a pipe dream in a world where almost everything is based on accidents of geography.

As a side note, there is a new sort of route to immigrating for people in your situation, these days: instead of going to another country first, instead work remotely, build up cash, and use that to immigrate. (Because, as others have pointed out, money is one pathway to immigration.)

Your "average person" doesn't reflect my view of an average person's feelings. Even leaving alone the assumption that it's possible to distinguish a foreigner by appearance, a feeling of being "creeped out" by seeing handfuls of them seems very extreme.

Perhaps it's a matter of experience? For instance, I've lived in Sydney, New York, and Berlin, and in each case, during my daily commute there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people of different ethnic appearances, but it's far from creepy, let alone paranoia-inducing.

I thought of adding the caveat that the "creeped out" feeling doesn't really apply in major cities but I'm making an effort to be less long-winded.

Anyway, that's what I'd say in response. In a big city, nobody blinks if they, say, see a group of Sikhs wander by with turbans and beards. But in the small/mid-sized town I grew up in there will be a lot of whispered comments and an undercurrent of fear. For other groups the fear might be replaced with other reactions (disgust, discomfort, anger, or even just a mildly hostile bemusement). Those towns far outnumber the big, metropolitan cities.

And the normalization of otherness doesn't even apply to all major cities. For instance I've seen serious, in-your-face racism in Tokyo, which is one of the largest in the world. I've seen it in Manila, which is considered one of the friendliest cities (depends on your skin color!). And I've seen it in tier 2 cities in Austria (which I'd assume is pretty similar to Germany), too. Berlin isn't a very good example.

It's an extension of property rights. I have the right to the security of my house, my yard, my estate, etc, up to my country that I've agreed with my fellow citizens to have represent my interests. You can agree or disagree, but fundamentally, letting anyone (in the sense of not enforcing agreed entry requirements) into a country infringes on the collective property rights of that country's citizens.

Why do you assume that all foreigners are criminals? Criminals should be punished regardless of their country of origin, I agree that mass migration can be dangerous and migration should be a slow and safe process with investigation behind it.

I don’t see anything in the posters comment that implies they think “all foreigners are criminals.”

@dang is this a troll?

You asked for a philosophical argument. Why do you think I assume all foreigners are criminals. Can I come sleep at your house indefinitely?

Why would the income of immigrants affect your safety or property? Because are you assuming that foreigners are a danger, when a person is dangerous? when he is delinquent or for many other reasons, but that went the first reason that goes to my mind.

I don't understand. You asked about the rationale behind immigration, and I explained that it's an extension of property rights. I'm not making the decisions, or justifying them. I'm just saying that a "country" is really a political structure that represents the views of its inhabitants, and that most of the citizens of these countries have collectively decided that they want a say in who they share their property with.

People in developed country have a great deal of fear, mostly unjustified, that immigrants are going to bleed resources from the welfare state.

The opposite is true, if only because most countries (not Israel) are highly selective of who they let in.

Far right parties thrive because people in countries like the US struggle to comprehend what the "value" of their citizenship is (e.g. paying taxes, military service and such are real costs of citizenship) Mostly we've had the welfare state shrunk on the argument that we can't afford it, which leaves people asking questions like "Why should I be proud to be an American?" and one way people can sell it to themselves is believe that the nation is threatened by all the people who want to come in from the Mexican border.

People in developed countries have numerous reasons to be resentful. For instance students in the US often take on terrible debt to get educated, if people could come in from India without restriction it would unfair to Americans that we can import people who don't suffer from our cost disease.

(I picture some world where the top 5% of US citizens can afford to educate their kids in the US, the bottom 95% take only blue collar jobs, and most of the jobs that require an education are filled by immigrants. Maybe I oughta shut up before Jordan Peterson tries test marketing this kind of thinking to his followers...)

Look at how Silicon Valley has an unbalanced economy in which few people could afford to raise kids. It doesn't have to raise kids because it can import them and it's probably not so bad for a region of a country to not be raising kids but if a country as a whole is not raising kids it won't be reproducing it's culture.

>I have the citizenship of a country with which I do not share its politics, I do not share its culture, I do not share its economic structure, I do not even have things in common with the people who live in my country (being someone highly intellectual in a country where the incentive to science is almost nil).

There are a ton of countries which pretty much accept anyone who wants to migrate there. Virtually all people who move to a new country tend to be rich. A rural farmer in china's north west doesn't know how to move to Canada.

There's a brain value and potential for population decline in places. Germany for example is going to have a terrible 2030s. They pretty much will let anyone in because they simply need brains. They are tremendously wealthy and can pay for integration costs.

UAE is another, they are oil rich and can afford to bring anyone in. They will invest in anything. They have what 50 trade zones? This basically just completed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_Maritime_City

Very smart of them to do this as well. there's a finite amount of oil, but brain power is infinite money.

>having the culture of tribe "b",

You never explained what this is. It's possible you have a culture that is hostile to immigration?

For example socialism is quite hostile. USSR didn't trust border guards. That was the job of KGB to make sure nobody is crossing their borders. The only people who ever got into the USSR were top brains. Much of their actions were quite related to orchestrating brain drain. They also made big effort into education. It's difficult to offer social programs or welfare net and also be bringing in the unwashed as it were.

The thing as well. Even in countries where immigration isn't open. If you talk to an embassy and make the case for how you might contribute to their country. They will just let you in.

>The thing as well. Even in countries where immigration isn't open. If you talk to an embassy and make the case for how you might contribute to their country. They will just let you in.

This information is very interesting, I have research in computer theory, mathematics, philosophy and other sciences... Would a country like the US open its doors to me if I can show that I can contribute to their country?

Oh for sure, H1B visas are all about bringing in good brains. No country ever wants to hold back on brains. All you need is basically any university degree.

If a person is so self-centered and willing to turn his back on his fellow countrymen I wonder if he'll do the same for us when we fail to give him 100% of what he wants 100%, when he sees that citizenship here has some responsibilities as well as right.

(e.g. what if an American thought he didn't share in the economic structure because he doesn't want to live in a country that burns fossil fuels, thought the space program was a big waste of money, doesn't want to fund pensions because they don't benefit him now, thinks his vote won't make a difference.)

I didn't exactly choose my country or citizenship. These rights and responsibilities are just something I was just born in to and didn't choose. Somehow I need to be "loyal" to a place and countrymen I have no love for? I never declared my loyalty or allegiance to the country I was born in, but I'm kind of stuck with it. I'd rather choose a different place that would fit me better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH3ruuml-R4

Yeah that's a fine sentiment, but I don't feel like I'm getting any love back, so...

I'm always amazed at the notion of loyalty to some arbitrary geographical region: why would I feel that? And why would it stop or start at some line on a map?

Humans are endlessly fascinatingly weird.

Because that arbitrary region is your home, it and the people in it provide the resources and structures you need to survive. Human "weirdness" is the end product of millennia of natural selection, it's the result of optimizing for survival and success. Think on that before you rush to tear down Chesterton's Fence

Ok, but the people on the other side of the line are equally able to contribute to the resources and structures needed to survive (and vice versa).

I understand regional cooperation, but demarcation at a national level seems weird to me.

Are they? Humans aren't interchangeable atomic GDP-increasing machines, people from different places have different values, languages, and culture. So someone from "over there" might not fit neatly into the structures we have "over here," and vice versa.

"My country right or wrong" is like "my mother drunk or sober" --G.K. Chesterton

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