Call for a global Immigration Reform | Hacker News Reader

Call for a global Immigration Reform

lostinjit.blogspot.com

27 pointsmarcog141 comments

Immigration controls are not designed for us -- they exist to appease people's irrational fear of migrants ("stealing our jobs", "the country's full", etc.). That's why here in the UK we reject the idea of detention without charge for terrorism suspects, but are perfectly happy to lock up asylum seekers for years at a time. It's outrageous.

here in the UK we reject the idea of detention without charge for terrorism suspects

That's not always been the case. Internment without trial was practiced in the UK for terrorism. It tends to be counter-productive, and increases violence. (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius )

You're right. Just to be clear, I wasn't arguing in favour detention without trial for terrorism suspects or anyone else. I just wanted to illustrate how people's irrational fear of migrants appears to exceed even their irrational fear of terrorism.

Schengen Agreement, at least kind of sorted this problem for the lucky ones to be a citizen of a member state. For the rest of us, we'll continue to be dogged by this for a long time to come. Immigration laws world wide run on the premise that once we hit our 30's, we want to settle and have a career, a degree and/or a family. Nomads are not majority. Tax laws are also equally as draconian, in reality.

I've found starting a business in my "home" country, and moving between countries with favorable working holiday schemes and long duration tourist permits is the most effective but won't be sustainable past 30 unless I set up another business in a country friendly towards foreign investment (I'm looking at you, Singapore).

Not just Schengen, but the EU. Countries in the EU but not schengen can go to another EU country without needing a visa.

What changes after you turn 30?

Most Working Holiday visa programs are age restricted to people 18-30 years old, in addition to a lot of other immigration laws change.

How on earth does showing you're an open source Python programmer prove you're not planning to seek random low paid employment of the type immigration controls generally seek to stop?

Typically you have enough credibility to go and find a better job. Also, if you're a person living out of open source, it's relatively easy to check your credibility and how easy it is for you to find a job. "I wrote an obscure clock in python" is different than "I wrote python". The latter person is certainly employable at a large set of companies.

but how would an immigration officer know how to check a Bitbucket account for credible references? Those people are government workers and not software engineers

Since people can lie, Enforcing the "can you work here" problem at the border is not the correct way to handle this situation. It should be enforced at the moment of employment.

I think what the author is calling for is somewhat impractical (if, say, Thailand issues such a stamp, why should Canada or the USA have to respect it)?

On the other hand, I don't really understand why countries like the US, Canada, and Japan don't enter into agreements with EU/EEA countries to allow for visa-free travel, work, and residence agreements.

So by just being a digital nomad that makes money online you get access to a country that spent billions and maybe trillions of dollars building its infrastructure?

My opinion is that you are going to benefit from that, so here is what I think is a fair deal for digital nomads seeking to browse the USA:

Duration: 0.5-2 years. renewable after 5 years.

Cost: $5,000 for the visa + $600/month.

Work: No. But you can do consulting for accredited companies.

For that cost, I get access to a great infrastructure, culture, people, universities... I don't have to pay taxes, I just pay a monthly fee which is the equivalent of what I get.

Once I finish my tour, I just leave the country.

If I were to visit a country, stay there for a few weeks or months, and write programs, I would be paying rent to a local landlord (which goes into the landlord's property tax), sales tax whenever I purchase anything, gas tax whenever I drive, and even income tax if I did consulting for a local firm. That's almost exactly the same as what ordinary citizens of my host country pay, and unlike them, I don't even get to vote (taxation without representation?) and I'm OK with that.

Now, why do I need to pay extra just because I hold a passport with a different color? Like everyone else in your country, I'm paying for my use of your infrastructure. Nobody's getting a free ride there.

And because you won the genetic lottery, you get to exclude access to a country that spent billions and maybe trillions of dollars building its infrastructure?

Doing off-shore contracting work while traveling can only ever be a net positive for a country. Money is repatriated from overseas and pumped into the local economy and no jobs are expatriated.

> no jobs are expatriated

Yes, but good luck convincing politicians and voters that one person doing paid work != another person whose job is now gone. As if the number of jobs was a zero-sum game.

I think you missed the point. The job will be performed whether the person is on the soil or not. It's next to completely irrelevant whether you accept someone or not - he'll do the job anyway with modern IT infrastructure.

That's obviously blatantly false, because we're still connecting to other people in real life, however it's a point where we're increasingly heading.

Well ok, I was just trying to provide some food for politicians

I think you missed the point. I'm clearly in agreement with both @samfoo and you.

and you gonna pay $5000 * number of countries that you visit? That's plain insane. Have you noticed how many countries are out there?

I'm fine with "pay taxes wherever you are" also given that you actually spend money on local economy by buying stuff there.

"Work: No." and "you can do consulting for accredited companies." are inconsistant.

Yes, hence the word 'but' between those two statements

I'm sorry to write that, but I think that you're being a little bit douchy. You have a way of thinking parallel to these celebrities demanding exclusive access to shops and shit.

I am a genius Ukulele player, and if you ever read Ukulele Monthly you would know me and that I have no problem with attendance at my super-expensive concerts. But I don't expect border officers to read Ukulele Monthly, or even to know what Ukulele is.

Maybe it is a little douchy, but open source is definitely much more crucial to the worlds infrastructure than ukulele. It's one of the key aspects of why building your own business in the IT world i cheaper than ever. However, I'm not arguing it's just open source, but open source is special enough to be mentioned.

The funny thing is, if that were true, you'd have no problems getting an O-1 visa to the US for example.

Even Google has never heard of a magazine called "Ukulele Monthly", so I can understand why border officers might be unaware of its existence.

TBH I wasn't even sure what Ukulele is, and had to check on Google Images if it's possible to use the word "play" when referring to it.

It's a small stringed guitar-like instrument exclusively designed for singing chirpy songs about the many wonderful things that can be observed while cleaning windows.

Borders are imaginary lines. But unfortunately border control officers are not and usually have little time for philosophy on the nature of socially constructed boundaries.

Perhaps you could just tell them that you decided to retire early and go on a continuous global tour while you were still young enough to enjoy it.

Border: In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other. (The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce, 1911)

I love Ambrose Bierce :)

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Imaginary suggests they don't actually exist, but you can actually see a several borders from space. Perhaps you where thinking arbitrary?

You can see rivers, mountain ranges, coasts, valleys and walls. But you can't see national borders, although you can sometimes see things that indicate their approximate currently agreed location, especially where the border has stayed fixed for long enough.

But the border can always change tomorrow, or even be in two or more places at once as neighbours do not always agree on such things.

>But the border can always change tomorrow, or even be in two or more places at once as neighbours do not always agree on such things.

That's true about borders and about many other things in life. Things change in life. We get older every day and thus change. If I took your stance on borders and applied it to a life, I could say, life is uncertain because we are in constant change. Yet, we exist and we plan and so on because we expect there to be some dependability (on things continuing as we know them, for the time being).

Just because border lines on maps are the abstract representation of actual boders doesn't mean they do not exist or there is ambiguity about them. With satellite technology and telemetry, borders are pretty exact --with some disputed exceptions.

Numbers also don't "exist" in real form, but we know they "exist" and are quite real in other ways.

The real numbers might be said to exist in real form.

My point with borders is that most of their existence is imaginary, this doesn't mean that they don't exist, but rather that they only exist through social agreement and are largely metaphorical in nature.

> You can see rivers, mountain ranges, coasts, valleys and walls. But you can't see national borders,

Actually, sometimes you can http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/fragileoasis/posts/post_131543... (definitely worth a read)

I'd say that he is seeing the physical representation of a border, the border itself being, of necessity, infinitely thin, and therefore very difficult to observe even when fairly close.

"Imaginary" lines that people fight and die over. Are you really this deluded? Nations exist. People bound together by the land and cultural and genetic heritage is a real thing.

Unsurprisingly many people with strong ties to their nation don't see the net benefit of making it especially easy for rootless cosmopolitans to crash in. After all, you can't count on them in a tight spot. They have no loyalty.

A lot of people who call themselves "citizens" have no loyalty, either.

Cultural and genetic heritage exists, but its boundaries are in a mutual feedback relationship with political borders. Culture and genetics might cause political borders to be where they are, but they are also caused and reinforced by where political borders happen to be. (The law makes it difficult for you to travel to America => You're unlikely to be immersed in American culture or marry an American => Your culture and genetics remain very distinct from American culture and genetics => People see no need to facilitate travel to America => Repeat cycle.)

So if borders and border control policies changed, the boundaries of cultural and genetic heritage will follow suit, and vice versa. This means you can't just appeal to existing cultural boundaries to argue for some sort of nationalism that perpetuates said boundaries. So although I agree with you that borders aren't completely "imaginary", they're not completely real and static, either.

People fight and die over a lot of imaginary things. Nations are concepts that exist through a shared belief in the existence of nations. People can be bound together by land and heritage without having had the idea of nations or national borders.

Also, while the walls that are put along the imaginary lines may have a reality to themselves, the lines are much more fluid and are unbound to the physical items that represent them. Hadrian's wall is still marking the northern extent of the old Roman Empire, however the current border between England and Scotland is much further north and is represented by nothing other than the occasional sign and line of paint and for the vast majority of the length of this line has no indication on the ground of its actual whereabouts.

[edit] And as far as loyalty goes, loyalty is independent of patriotism and is perfectly capable of transcending geography.

"Hadrian's wall is still marking the northern extent of the old Roman Empire"

There is another further North - the Antonine wall:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonine_Wall

There is quite a lot of Roman infrastructure North of Hadrian's Wall - indeed I had a wander along part of Dere Street last weekend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dere_Street

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