You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term).
No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster.
Platitudes only work on paper.
Are all of these unorganized, mass migrations disasters? Or are they in response to disasters?
Most organized mass migrations have been disasters. Forced relocations aren’t fun.
But unorganized mass migrations, where people say “let’s get out of this place and go somewhere better” tend to mitigate pre-existing disasters.
But what about states in the United States? They were explicitly formed as a set of states - nations - that cooperate under a federation. Free migration wasn’t always the case in the original states but was required in the constitution.
What about the EU? People can move about freely today when in the past they weren’t able to.
Or are you saying there’s something superior about Americans and Europeans and we need to keep everyone else in their prisons?
You quote 12,000 years ago as some sort of transition. Realistically migration was relatively unimpeded until the 1900’s. Citizenship isn’t the same as migration, and in many cultures citizens and denizens were two classes with the denizens migrating relatively unimpeded. Some cultures like ancient China had travel papers but that was reserved for nobles or elites - normal people were too beneath notice to require documentation to travel.
Also, you're incorrectly conflating mass migration with open borders. You can have open borders without causing a mass migration and vice versa.
Criminals move between states, but it's not a huge problem. The states can share information and allow joint action. It may require more effort to set up between nations, but it's a common thing today.
Taxes work fine. If you're a resident of a state, you pay income tax to that state. So we obviously know how to find out residency.
>Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster.
If borders were to become easily crossable (not necessarily non-existent, but just a checkpoint to count incoming/outgoing and stop smugglers) in a day, then the next day would see mass migration in so many directions. But after that first wave calmed, I wouldn't expect mass migrations except those following humanitarian disasters. Three had migrations we see today are caused by disasters. Even when the emigrants experience terrible conditions in the receiving country, I imagine it's because their previous life was shattered and they had to quickly flee. It's not a fair comparison to people who would migrate if immigration controls were removed.
> Consider something like 1/3 of Americans have a criminal history.
Here is a discussion: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuo...
https://news.uga.edu/total-us-population-with-felony-convict...
See form I-485 for PR:
24. Have you EVER been arrested, cited, charged, or detained for any reason by any law enforcement officer (including but not limited to any U.S. immigration official or any official of the U.S. armed forces or U.S. Coast Guard)?
What programs like Operation Streamline do is take advantage of the fact that immigrants dont understand the legal system and, under the guise of a speedier procedure, effectively coerce immigrants to acquiesce to a criminal conviction. This actually does prevent them from coming legally at a later date once deported.
What makes the US a better place? What keeps other countries from being a better place?
The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. It’s no fault of the people who live here or there today for the situation we are in. If George Washington had accepted a crown when offered we would be just as screwed up.
I think this strongly discounts the agency of individuals. In our time these are certainly blessings, but they had to be fought for by their contemporaries.
Up until recently ( relatively ) a person could pretty much move to other country without much fuzz.
Even moving to a new tribe in Native peoples in North America required proving a blood relation, having someone vouch for you, or being skilled enough they would accept you in.
Watching the children in Ethiopia starving to death, I couldn’t help but wonder how we felt forcing people to live in an emergent desert to death by starvation was better if we just wrote a song about it - “We are the world.” If that were true, why couldn’t they just leave?
Had we grown at their pace, we'd also be experiencing famines.
As for why they couldn't leave - you can ask their neighbors. The West is not the only destination.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983–1985_famine_in_Ethiopia
I didn’t assert the west should unilaterally open their borders. I stated that borders are inhuman - as humans are naturally migratory. Taking that to the real world, that would mean their neighbors should open borders as well - not just to Ethiopians, but to everyone.
Paraguay up until recently required a ~5k deposit but they dropped even that. In Argentina "technically" you're supposed to follow a bunch of rather restrictive resident visa pathways but few do that and you can file for citizenship immediately upon landing and until your case is finished cannot be deported. The requirements are basically live there for 2 years and show you had some income, but by judge shopping some allow black market income lol.
Others of note: Bolivia and Somaliland only require a token payment for a 1 year resident visa (think in Bolivia you only need do that 2 or 3 times to become PR or citizen). If you have a bit more cash several places like honduras / nicoragua / ecuador only require ~30k "investment" which is basically accessible (eventually) to anyone middle class+ with enough determination. When I went to Rojava they also accept basically anyone as they are a "people without a nation" who happen to have sort of a nation.
And then there's weev, who posts here on occasion. I think he got a Transnistria passport, which is obtainable after only a year of residence. It's my understanding residency is as easy as going to a hotel and asking to talk to the right people about getting a resident permit, and paying some moderate fees.
If you're not too discriminating pretty much anyone can emigrate from the US forever with very little capital.
Now we have people everywhere (that doesn't suck; and even some places that do). We have social programs and expensive infrastructure. The world is very different now than even 100 years ago.
Maybe if the entire world reaches a broadly similar level of human development, including comparable levels of infrastructure and social support, migration can be opened up quite a bit.
But right now it would simply mean that developed nations would see a flood of people immigrating just to get those great services, and it would crush their system. So we need controls to keep the change manageable and ensure that the tax base scales appropriately to maintain the expected levels of service.
Never mind migration. Even travel gets worse. We've had relatively frictionless travel between first world countries. Now it it only 3 month instead of 6 and online visas like ESTA. So it does not seem to get any better and does not correlate so "comparable levels".