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Comment by nhchris | Hacker News Reader

Because this was so rare that the destination countries didn't see it as a problem. And when it did happen en masse, it was usually war.

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That’s not true at all, there were often famines and other natural disasters that made it impossible to live in a region and people just migrated. It happened constantly.

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?

Ethiopia is an interesting example, but not of scarcity. While my country's population grew by a mere 40% since 1950 (and has been stagnant the last few decades), Ethiopia's grew by 534%, and shows no signs of slowing: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ethiopia-popu...

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.

At the time I’m talking about the cause of the famine was an extreme drought, and all sorts of other problems as you allude to. More than population growth was war and instability - all great reasons to migrate if you could, but the lack of food is an even more common and compelling reason to migrate throughout human history regardless of the reason.

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.

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