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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

It would be impossible to do without taking breaks, as explained in the article:

> Due to visa limits, Bushby has had to break up his walk. In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days before leaving for 90, so he flies to Mexico to rest and then returns to resume the route.

Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order to avoid Russia and Iran because of legal issues, nevermind bring imprisoned in Russia due to what sounded like bureaucratic BS, it's more impressive than I first thought.

View on HN

From Wiki:

> They were detained by Russian border troop officers while they were crossing the Russian border near the Chukotkan village of Uelen, for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry.

Illegal border crossing is absolutely not bureaucratic BS in any country.

That depends on your values. I think it's bureaucratic BS in every country. The world hasn't been like this forever, and still isn't like this for other animals.

That would be amazing if some country tried to enforce visa rules on animals.

They do actually, for example with swine in Denmark. They've built fences for that purpose specifically.

Do they have passports? Like how do they know if the pig is danish or German?

I think many are tagged, but otherwise they have a lot of surveillance and fences. They probably track them after breeches as well. The point is to control disease.

If you enter a bear's den, especially if it has cubs, the bear will likely attack you.

If you enter the territory of a swan, especially during nesting season, the swan might attack you.

If a foreign object enters some animal's body, the immune system may attack that object.[0] Allergy might be related to the immune system misidentifying allergens.

Squirrels can be surprisingly territorial.

Ants have wars. [1]

This is not surprising, since the consequences of territory being compromised can be severe. For instance, in this case [2], the territory was compromised through deception, like pretending to be one of them, and it led to the severe weakening or death of the whole colony through the mass devouring of their offspring.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_body_reaction

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_ants

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/123ke...

So you’re saying we are no better than animals, and shouldn’t aspire to be?

We are animals, we shouldn't try to avoid that as if its a bad thing.

We should be, then, at least equal to animals in our behavior, and should also aspire to improve on them.

It was clearly a response to the grandparent's "... isn't like this for other animals". It's a fine thing to aspire to be better, but we just shouldn't be claiming that human behavior is any way less natural than that of all other animals.

Please define "better" in this context.

One definition of "better" could be to seek to avoid the extinction of the human species and of civilization. With that definition, in the current situation, taking measures to help avoid nuclear weapon usage, could be considered in depth and genuinely "better".

You can also consider the subject in terms of IT. Firewalls can be argued to delimit territory, as can login systems. Sandboxes are probably the reverse, in terms of keeping something in instead of keeping it out.

Some cells have cell walls, and viruses as I understand it have to penetrate that wall.

Nuts and fruit sometimes have protective shells.

An argument could be made that borders and territory are fundamental.

For an agent that seeks to defeat border control mechanisms, it can potentially be effective to convince the target parties that border control mechanisms generally or specifically are harmful, are useless, or have drawbacks. This is not always completely false in all cases, for instance regarding immune systems misidentifying harmless allergens as harmful, causing potentially significant harm as allergy. However, if an agent uses such approaches, they have to be careful not to buy into that idea themselves, lest matters may become strange and weird. And, in the modern day, if an agent is especially successful and competent with defeating border control mechanisms, considering the extreme power that the human species holds these days, such as with nuclear weapons, it puts an extreme responsibility on such successful agents, at least in the current systems. Otherwise, the consequences might be extremely detrimental to the human species as a whole.

What an interesting set of increasingly bad metaphors.

IT defenses are just an existing human cognitive bias carried forward into a new realm… a bad idea carried forward is still a bad idea.

The cell wall of the vascular plants doesn’t exist to keep viruses (or anything) out, it exists to provide structural rigidity and keep water pressure in… in fact any plant without a sufficiently permeable cell wall dies as a consequence.

The virus in turn isn’t an agent at all, it just passively exploits the permeability of cell walls and membranes in order to replicate. In doing so it helps drive the cell’s evolution, by both acting as a pressure and a mutagen. Life, again, depends on information transfer across permeable membranes.

Nuts and other fruits, by the way, are the sexual apparatus of the plant… they don’t even begin to develop until a migration has occurred, and once they’ve developed their primary purpose is, again, to keep energy and water in more than they’re to keep anything out… in fact they universally fail to function if they’re too good at keeping the outside out.

I agree, and one of their great concerns is keeping foreign spies from getting in. Even though Russia isn't in good graces with the world currently, I think it's I'll advised to go off-script with any nation's border checkpoints.

Just this morning I watched a video someone shared on LinkedIn. A lion cub was being nursed by a ewe!

There are cases of pet dogs, having great relationships with their owners, eating the corpses of their owners after the owners died of some unrelated reasons. Possibly due to starvation in some cases.

In that video, was the ewe and lion cub pets or wild animals?

Right, so birds protrcting their nests means they shouldn't be allowed to migrate thousands of miles every year. Makes sense. ;)

We must ban the squirrels from ever leaving the tree they grew up in! Let no bear seek a new cave lest she be punished with a swift death.

Humans and animals enforce their borders since millennia.

The idea that borders are unimportant is very very recent. That is to say, its commie gobbledygook.

I am not convinced that the idea is recent, or rather, related ideas are not recent, going back thousands of years. It can be extremely complex, to put it very mildly. How well people that put their trust in some of those ideas fare, can likewise be an extremely complex topic, and can also be political. In some cases in some ways some of them might have fared well, in some other cases in some ways, maybe less so.

A group of men crossing the border into another country was (usually) automatically considered invaders if its size exceeded a certain number.

Eg Iberian Peninsula (Reconquista and later): Foreign parties >10 armed men could not cross without permission between christians and muslims.

Chinese frontier zones, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks etc all had similar rules. If you want to go back further, then Assyria, Egypt, Hittites, Greece had such limits.

You are correct that there are many examples of border control mechanisms, in different levels and ways. Maybe even usually the vast majority for many levels and ways.

Some nations, countries or groups, or other levels, did play with some of those mentioned ideas of less border control mechanisms in some ways or levels, also going back thousands of years.

Countries that were not successful with border control mechanisms, sometimes ceased to exist.

But there are many different levels and ways, and the whole topic is, to put it very mildly, extremely complex.

Right, well we know which side of the enclosure of the commons you for some unaccountable reason assume you’d have born in.

Why do you think it's a communist thing? Communist countries (both historically and current) tend to protect their borders fervently.

I'd say no-border cosmopolitanism is more of a classic liberalism thing.

One must distinguish between "classical" communism (Stalinism, which is dead except in North Korea) and the modern variety, which is alive and well and I think is what you mean.

There are many that think themselves "cosmopolitan", when it is a delusion and coping mechanism about being a parochial hicklib. A chip on their shoulder that makes them especially fervent acolytes of liberalism (as in: Obama flavoured, not the other kind), hoping it offsets their humble origins after moving to the big city, so folks won't get the idea that they are flyover country chuds that vote the wrong way.

A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.

The core tenet that makes this communism-adjacent is the denial of differences: everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc pp. Ignorance of history and the nature of man is a must to take this position.

> parochial hicklib [...] offsets their humble origins [...] flyover country chuds

Tell us how you really feel, good grief.

> everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc

This but unironically.

> Tell us how you really feel, good grief.

This is not "how I feel" or my actual opinion of liberals in general. It is a certain archetype that I unfortunately know all too well.

> This but unironically.

You can just say you're a communist, you know. The core tenet will always be some appeal to equality, no matter how you like to describe yourself ("socialist", "liberal", "a decent heckin' human being" in Reddit speech or what have you).

I'm a Third Way Neo-corporate Georgist.

Georgism is interesting, „Third Way“ just means social democrat with extra steps. Not sure what neo-corporatism is?

> A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.

This is the most incredible No-True-Scotsman fallacy I've ever read.

Thanks, I was thinking about alluding to it even more obviously.

In practice, communist countries have always put a lot of effort into keeping their citizens in.

Borders of Westphalian nation-states being relevant is recent, unlike personal and tribal territories.

"Borders didn't exist before the treaty of Westphalia" is a hell of a take. If you want to stretch the State Sovereignty / Non-Interference aspect of it to that definition you're going to have to make your case properly, because I don't see how such a position could be defensible.

> enforce their borders since millennia.

In English it's "have enforced their borders for millennia"; the phrase "since [length of time]" is almost always grammatically incorrect and a giveaway that someone's not a native English speaker.

It is not my native language, and I wouldn't have made this mistake if I wasn't in a hurry and on my phone. Unfortunately I cannot edit it anymore.

> The world hasn't been like this forever

People didn't receive handouts from governments in centuries past for just showing up and performing no contributory function. Kill all entitlements and let's open em' back up!

> still isn't like this for other animals

What reality are you living in where countless animal species aren't territorial? This is common sense.

This might be a little broad for most, but I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired. Who cares? We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

I'm saying this as someone who enlisted in the defense of said nations once. Most of the structures that make up a country these days are for the birds - let a guy hike for chrissake. I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense. We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Plenty of people care, for all sorts of reasons, many of which I would say, are good!

That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern).

Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us.

But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport.

But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.

Passport equivalents go back to 1350BC

You could travel across the North American countries without a passport until quite recently. That only stopped being a thing after 9/11.

What are those reasons?

The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.

And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.

What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers?

Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example.

Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking.

I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.

If you're talking about "the freedom to escape one's surroundings and move away", the book has been widely criticized for that assertion, as Graeber is extremely ideologically motivated.

If you left your tribe without being accepted into another (whether through marriage or some kinds of previous personal alliances you'd made), life would be pretty rough if you survived at all.

Sure tribes would split sometimes when they got too big or disagreements split them. But that's not about the individual level. That's akin to nation-state secession today.

There's no evidence that people were just regularly packing things up and going off and joining whatever neighboring tribe they wanted to, whenever they wanted to. And this is the type of thing where the book has come under such heavy criticism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything#Methodo...

Been awhile since I've listened to the book (all cards on the table), so I can't be specific. Nor am I an expert in anyway. My takeaway is that the pre-historical Americas had many diverse ways of organizing people that doesn't quite match up to the implied-risk-game of territory that I was responding too.

In starting to read through some of the criticism's of the book just now, I was reminded of the seasonal hunting parties where many smaller groups would band together for better kills. That's what I mean with "tribal fluidity".

And by freedom of movement, the impression that I had coming away from the listen was that there were many ways in which someone could find themselves in a role where the could migrate through several communities and still live. looking at things again presently, I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopewell_tradition, which I think illustrates what I was trying to convey. "Border sovereignty" doesn't make much sense to me as a concept in that world... i think things were much more fluid. There weren't border checkpoints throughout prehistory.

There are definitely a lot of diverse ways of organizing people within a tribe.

And you're absolutely right that tribes could join forces to accomplish objectives. And the Hopewell tradition is mainly about trade and cultural dissemination -- of course trade involves traveling with goods to other tribes.

But none of that changes my point. Even if tribes allied for a purposes, they still had their distinct geographic areas. If if people traveled to other tribes to exchange goods, they were just visitors traveling through.

"Border sovereignty" was absolutely real, just as it is in primates. There weren't literal manned border "checkpoints", but you can be sure that as soon as a tribe got wind of a stranger approaching, they'd immediately investigate and either allow them in (if e.g. someone friendly temporarily traveling through) or send them back in the opposite direction with force if necessary. The idea that the norm was that some stranger could just waltz in with their family and they'd be welcomed to stay and share the land is not supported by evidence.

(Even though that's definitely the anarchist ideology that Graeber was trying to push in his book, because that's exactly where he gets criticized for ignoring most of the evidence and cherry-picking examples.)

I don't think we will agree here. The statement that "The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history" is not something I can get down with unless its better supported. The territory you are describing is not all the same thing as national territory to my mind, and your arguments are not convincing.

> they'd immediately investigate and either allow them in (if e.g. someone friendly temporarily traveling through) or send them back in the opposite direction with force if necessary.

Was there never the case that they investigated, saw that the strangers were floating down a river on the border of "their territory" and simply let them pass through unmolested? That doesn't happen today, and my intuition is that was simply so much space in the americas before recorded history that it happened often then.

I was refuting the refutation by tomrod.

I didn't say that the nationalism and border sovereignty that exist in 2025 are exactly what prehistoric humans practiced. That would obviously be absurd.

What I said was:

> Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation

In other words, we have the same instincts operating whether it's with a group of 300 people or 300,000,000. People occupy a geographic area and call it theirs and control who can live there. Many primates do the same.

And is your case of someone traveling down a river trying to contradict me? My example was of that being allowed if they weren't threatening. And the modern equivalent would be something like like a transit visa or connecting international airports.

I really don't know what you're arguing. We're not talking about people traveling anyways, the subject is whether tribes would just let random people come in and share their land. They didn't. They had a concept of group sovereignty, the same idea as national sovereignty, and of land they occupied.

If you want to insist that modern national sovereignty and borders drawn on maps are completely and utterly unrelated to tribal sovereignty and tribal borders -- if you don't see the obvious similarity, the same human group instinct and human territorial instinct -- then I really don't know what to tell you.

All academic work is critiqued. It doesn't make it wrong though. Your notion of fluidity is specifically what original poster missed entirely.

I honestly have no idea what on earth the "fluidity" of groups banding together on hunting expeditions has to do with the notion of tribes occupying recognized geographic areas that they don't allow strangers to invade? I don't see any connection at all between the two.

No, really. You could make a city be defended but there was no great way to make a nation state before gunpowder without natural barriers in place.

Further, trade goods are found over large distances, which doesn't work over large distances and many alleged single-tribe-lands unless the good is extremely valuable and defensible from theft.

Your claim that great powers style organization is specifically refuted.

Who said anything about nation-states or "great powers organization"? You're changing the subject entirely.

The original comment was about nationalism and borders, not nation-states and great powers.

I explained that the same concepts are found at the tribal level and even in primates. To occupy and defend your territory, and territory is defined by borders, even if they're just a river or the edge of a forest. And gunpowder has nothing to do with anything.

And I don't have the slightest idea what you're trying to say with trade goods.

So no, nothing I said is refuted. It would be helpful if you stuck to the subject at hand, however, without going off track entirely to modern nation-states. Nations are not the same thing as nation-states.

The US (where “open borders” are often characterized as national “suicide” by right-wing figures) had open borders well within living memory.

By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’

We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.

> The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history,

Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately.

Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.

It's not just a human thing; people who study wolves find they maintain surprisingly strict borders between different packs, and this behavior continues though a lot of other mammals and even some smaller animals like certain birds and insects.

> Who cares?

The vast majority of people care.

> We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

Reasoning from pre-agrarian living patterns is, quite frankly, hippy nonsense. And no, we didn't settle in cities because of "the designs of the empowered few", but because agriculture leads to more permanent, prosperous settlements, which attract raiders, and settling close together allowed for common defense. In other words, as soon as people earned a living by their own planning and sustained effort, (as opposed to merely collecting the bounty of the earth) they settled down and drew borders to protect what they had built from people who wanted to just show up and reap the rewards of their effort, at their expense!

> I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense.

We can't have borders because you could see Tijuana from your back yard?

> We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

> Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

Fundamentally, everything in your post down to this ending boils down to whether or not you think that immigrants coming into the country is a good thing or not. People will try to split hairs over "doing it the right way," when until the 1900s doing it the right way was basically just having enough financial stability to make it here - many states had nothing beyond 'means testing' that would easily be passed if you could afford to make it to America rather than stowing away, and many states had less than that. For most of American history, immigrating properly was literally just showing up.

For the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, the only difference between them and the legal immigrant is the amount of paperwork on file. And many of us arguing that that paperwork matters are beneficiaries of a time where that paperwork wasn't necessary.

It's very explicitly a case of "Fuck you, got mine."

You can be butthurt all you want, we don't owe foreigners access to our country.

You know, ideological differences aside, there are some brass-tacks reasons that this particular brand of rhetoric does you no good, and actually hurts you.

Bought groceries lately? Kind of expensive, no? A significant portion of that is due to the central valley labor shortage. Which is a direct result of ICE enforcement. Same goes for price increases in restaurants across the country. Those increases in prices at the grocery store also translate to inflationary pressure across the board. People have to spend more to eat, so they demand bigger salaries, so their companies raise prices. Not rocket science.

Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here? Are you directly benefitting from this or is it just a balm for some vague jingoist need to feel superior? I'm genuinely curious. The common arguments like 'they're importing rapists' is... well I don't even know where to start with that one it's just preposterous and demonstrably false. Immigrants aren't taking your job, are they? Like what is it?

Deportations aren't causing the cost of food to rise:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

> Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here?

I want to leave my country to my children and theirs. Whatever America would be after the endless waves of third world immigrants (most of whom are grasping collectivists who value none of the things that have made America worth preserving, and would happily neuter the bill of rights and tax every dollar out of my pocket) it would not be my country. Bored cat ladies and wishcasting liberals are apparently happy to roll the dice with the futures of our children on the line, but I'm not. Let Canada or the UK or whoever carry the experiment to its conclusion, and if it works, then by golly let's jump in with both feet. But a blind gamble? Hard pass.

Perhaps it would be different if I thought we had good faith partners on the other side, but I don't. Biden tried to bum-rush millions of illegals into the country with the full stated intent to amnesty them, enfranchise them, and use them to control the congress, admit new states (DC/PR), and cement permanent demographic-guaranteed progressive/collectivist majority. The democrats attempted most of these steps during his tenure, but were 1 vote short in the senate.

I was hesitant to even support deportations before the Biden regime jumped the shark. (Remember when they said we needed to pass a new law to "seal" the border--and explicit lie--when the law actually codified mass, unvetted illegal immigration at ~10X historical levels? I doubt it.) Knowing now that the left (the leadership, if not the rank and file) clearly intended to weaponize demographic change for their political benefit, of course I oppose them.

Again, the entire commentary you have here is all more FYGM.

If the Native Americans had this attitude (and Europe didn't just go to war) we wouldn't be here at all. If earlier European-descendant Americans had this attitude, a huge chunk of us wouldn't be here.

People said all of the same things here that you're saying about Irish, Italian, Chinese, and many other immigrant classes over the years. None of your rhetoric is new or unique.

> Again, the entire commentary you have here is all more FYGM.

Typical progressive inversion of reality. If you think it's selfish for Americans to expect the American government to put them first, I'd hate to hear what you have to think about the foreigners who demand the same!

> If the Native Americans had this attitude (and Europe didn't just go to war) we wouldn't be here at all.

The Native Americans did have this attitude, which is why they consistently resisted the colonization of their territory.

> If earlier European-descendant Americans had this attitude, a huge chunk of us wouldn't be here.

Earlier European descendant Americans brought in immigrants to further their own goal of colonizing the North American continent. It wasn't a welfare policy for the benefit of foreigners, it was a policy enacted by Americans for the benefit of Americans. They also drastically cut immigration when it suited them, as with the Immigration Act of 1924.

> People said all of the same things here that you're saying about Irish, Italian, Chinese, and many other immigrant classes over the years. None of your rhetoric is new or unique.

Are you suggesting that earlier European-descendant Americans did, in fact, share my attitude? Pick a lane.

> Typical progressive inversion of reality. If you think it's selfish for Americans to expect the American government to put them first, I'd hate to hear what you have to think about the foreigners who demand the same!

Because I don't think it's actually beneficial for Americans to do what you're suggesting we do. America became what it was through accepting immigrants from all over the world.

> The Native Americans did have this attitude, which is why they consistently resisted the colonization of their territory.

Did you ignore the part of the message that literally covered that? Or is your stance that might makes right? Alright Mr. Redbeard

> Earlier European descendant Americans brought in immigrants to further their own goal of colonizing the North American continent. It wasn't a welfare policy for the benefit of foreigners, it was a policy enacted by Americans for the benefit of Americans. They also drastically cut immigration when it suited them, as with the Immigration Act of 1924. > Are you suggesting that earlier European-descendant Americans did, in fact, share my attitude? Pick a lane.

Are you suggesting that I believe that Americans are monolithic in thought? I believe it is quite obvious that I am speaking to the overall attitude of the country on the broader level - obviously there are groups that have held a wide variety of views. But for the majority of our history - as you pointed out, only the last 100 years or so have had particularly strict immigration laws - the prevailing view as evidenced by the actual laws of the country was obviously not a country that felt that restricting immigration was the right thing to do for her citizens, despite the fact that many people obviously had the same sentiments then that you do today.

if you look at that chart, there's a price spike between jan-march of '25, precisely when ICE started cracking down in CA.

Biden also famously did not do what you are saying he did. He continued the work on the border wall, much to the chagrin of everyone who sees immigration differently than you do. The idea that immigration was "10x historical levels" is not backed up by the data - see, I found a chart too [0]. True that we now have a greater percent of the population than any time in history [1] - around 16%. If that's "they're taking over the country" then I'd say you're just being dramatic. Since it also looks like we're talking about legal immigrants here, let's take a look at what they provide because you did mention taxes.

So we've already identified that 16% of our population is immigrants, more than ever before, sure. In 2023 we made about $2.2T from individual income taxes [2]. Of that, immigrants paid $651B [3]. So despite being 16% of the population, they paid nearly 30% of our total individual tax revenue. I'd say that's a pretty good deal!

0 -https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...

2 - https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59730

3 - https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/nationa...

If the people in the country had that sort of mentality when your ancestors came here, there's a decent chance you wouldn't be here.

"I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired."

Well, it looks we'll have some kind of global government within a couple of decades. It won't be better than what we have now, in fact it will be even less accountable.

"not entering Russia at a correct port of entry"

I'm laughing at the lack of nuance in laws in general. Some guy crossed the Bering Straight on foot as part of a 27 year quest to walk around the world and the law makes no exception.

I remember as a teen being hauled into a police station because a friend and I had been exploring the storm drains ("sewers") with a home-made flame thrower (okay, so the movie "Alien" had recently come out… Yeah, we left the flamethrower behind in the sewer when we popped our heads out and saw police).

Someone in the neighborhood had called the police because she had seen us going down the manhole opening. (The police said the report came through that some kids had "fallen" into the sewers.)

So I'm sitting in the police station with good cop and bad cop sitting there musing over my case. "How about 'Failure to use a sidewalk when a sidewalk was available'," bad cop said as he read from a book he was paging through. That got a laugh all around…

They let me off after an hour or so of this.

To be completely fair, Russia did decide to make an exception in this case, although it took a couple of months (during which Bushby was detained) to get there.

I am a little bit torn in this case. From our vantage point it's obvious that Bushby wasn't running an elaborate long scam to get into Russia. In the moment... I don't know, former UK special forces guy? Long history of espionage between UK and Russia? Two months seems too long; it's also not as easy as your case of a teenager in the sewer.

I saw that. Six months (if I recall) is kind of a long time…

Fair enough, but I interpreted "for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry" as he had a visa to enter the country, but he just didn't land at a recognized "port of entry", which given he walked/swam across the Being Strait, is unsurprising. But I don't know the full details of the situation.

Yeah, although it used to be that if you were legal to enter the US you actually could do it anywhere, just report to the local officials as soon as practical. That's still how ships work, you have to enter a country's territorial waters before you can speak to an official.

Neither the US nor Canada does that now, effectively slicing the Pacific Coast Trail at the border. And now we have the scumbags for no good reason blocking off access to the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail. That fence isn't going to stop someone trying to sneak into the country!

In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days

that doesn't make any sense for two reasons. first, he only entered the EU in september this year, so either the 90 days are not up yet or he should be in mexico now. is he? but why would he fly to mexico when he could just go to the UK?

but more importantly, he is a british citizen. getting a visa to walk through europe, especially now that he already has a track record of walking for so long should really not be an issue.

There is no Europe wide long stay non-working visa for UK citizens. 90 in 180 days is the Schengen visitor option, no?

90 days within any period of 180 days visa free. Everything else is bureaucracy …

https://uk.diplo.de/uk-en/02/visa-information-2441822

have you tried? I'm a South African living in Europe and visas are a nightmare.

Many europeans have never had to apply for a real visa in their life (I don't mean the online ones, or the apply on arrival ones, I mean the ones where you submit a 20 page form of personal details and hotel bookings and letters from friends you'll be staying with and bank statements and a full travel history) and they assume that I'm just making life difficult for myself by not doing some simpler option that they assume must exist.

I don't know about what visa options UK citizens have for the EU since brexit, but I'd be surprised it was as simple as "I feel like spending more than the 90 days I get".

I'd be surprised it was as simple as "I feel like spending more than the 90 days I get"

why? that's exactly what i think he should be able to do. it's not like he spent 27 years walking across the planet in order to then misrepresent what he wants to do in the EU.

UK is not part of EU anymore.

if it was, he would not need a visa to stay more than 90 days.

for the third time: i am talking about how easy it should be for a UK citizen with his track record, to get a visa that allows him to walk through the EU for longer than 90 days.

"Should be", "I think". Shouldn't you check the official rules first before writing opinions of how ought to be organized in your opinion?

The facts are:

1. The only EU-wide visa is 90/180. Citizens of UK don't need to apply for a separate visa.

2. Past the duration of 90 days, the matter goes to the national level. EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

3. So the long stays require one country as your base. Long STAYS, not TRAVELS. Meaning that you get your official EU country of residence. Yes, you can travel to other EU countries, but outside travel still remain capped at 90/180, which is not useful in case of traveling through more than 2 countries.

you are right, i should have checked. however i still believe that it is possible to get a special visa for exceptional circumstances. that's not going to be documented anywhere but you'll need to talk people at various embassies.

some EU countries offer extended tourist visas and there is the digital nomad visa, for which while tied to a country, it doesn't even make sense that it would only allow to stay in one country. the point of being a digital nomad is after all to be nomadic.

so yeah, it's going to take some research. but i don't think it's impossible.

EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

this being done purposefully suggests you have read that somewhere. got a reference?

It's you claiming that he must have the ability to get an extraordinary visa, so do you have a reference for your claims?

> that's not going to be documented anywhere but you'll need to talk people at various embassies.

This is absolutely not how bureaucracy works. In cases when there are special visas (like USA's talent visas), they are well documented. There are no special under-table visas that are given to people who a clerk at the Embassy likes.

> there is the digital nomad visa, for which while tied to a country, it doesn't even make sense that it would only allow to stay in one country.

Once again, we are talking about reality, about how things are, instead of how things ought to be in your mind...

E.g. check Portugal D7 / digital-nomad visas: https://www.portugalist.com/d7-vs-d8/

> The term “Digital Nomad Visa” can create a lot of confusion as many other countries offer digital nomad visas that are temporary, and do not offer a path to permanent residency or citizenship. Some also don’t require you to pay taxes. Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visa is aimed at those that want to live in Portugal more or less full-time and make Portugal their home. In return for downsides like physical stay requirements and being taxed on your worldwide income, you do get access to the public healthcare system and you can later qualify for permanent residency and Portuguese citizenship.

> this being done purposefully suggests you have read that somewhere. got a reference?

Can't really provide you with the proof of something (work to unify EU visas) that doesn't exist. You can just check how the system works and how purposefully visas are left to be decided on the National level.

Even with the EU-level status of long-term residents ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U... ), the details depend on the individual country. And even then, this is how it goes e.g. in Finland ( https://migri.fi/en/permanent-residence-permits ):

> If your stay in another Schengen country takes more than 90 days, you must apply for a national residence permit of that country.

> Your P-EU permit granted by Finland will expire if another EU Member State grants you a long-term resident's EU residence permit for third-country nationals (a P-EU permit).

So it's the same limit again.

There are no special under-table visas that are given to people who a clerk at the Embassy likes.

that's not what i meant. only that, if an exception is possible, then the embassies are the first point of contact. the second point of contact are the foreign ministries of each EU country. there are special visas for artistic or sports activities, so i believe that a special visa for this trip is possible, and that there is an institution that has the authority to grant an exception to the 90 rule. some countries do for example allow an extension, so that would expand the time possible to 180 days, and that's not even very special. longer visas can also be granted for medical or other reasons.

for example this trip could be defined as an EU wide sports activity that takes a year. i didn't see anything in the regulations that would prohibit that.

the problem with getting such a visa is less rules that would prohibit it, but that getting any exceptions requires the trust and goodwill of the involved institutions and that may be harder than it looks.

Portugal’s Digital Nomad Visa is aimed at those that want to live in Portugal more or less full-time

ok, well, but that kind of misses the point of a digital nomad visa. as a digital nomad i am not at all interested in staying in one place full-time, much less in permanent residency or citizenship. but that's not the point of this discussion, just a comment.

Can't really provide you with the proof

i wasn't looking for proof, just that saying that it was purposefully designed implies intention, and that intention ought to be documented somewhere. my question is rather: are you basing that intention on something or do you just assume that the intention is to not allow long term travel? i am not trying to imply anything here, i am just curious if you came across something that would support that idea.

i appreciate your detailed response. i did some searches but i could not find anything that specific.

> for example this trip could be defined as an EU wide sports activity that takes a year. i didn't see anything in the regulations that would prohibit that.

What is prohibiting it is the fact that longer term things are decided on the national level (EU is not a nation). Some countries may (or may not) have whatever exceptions (Presidential, humanitarian), but they would only apply inside that country.

1. Short stays (<90 days). Schengen sports visa or standard visa exemption. Only for competition/training travel.

2. Long stays (>90 days):

- National sport or work/residence visas/permits specific to the country where you will base training and competitions.

- Once you hold a national residence permit, you can travel in other Schengen states, but long stays elsewhere are still restricted by Schengen rules (90/180 days).

> that kind of misses the point of a digital nomad visa.

Often what one wants or imagines is not what it is in reality. You can freely check what other nomad/IT options other EU and non-EU countries have and you will be surprised. Afaik Portugal's rules are a norm, not an exception.

> that intention ought to be documented somewhere. my question is rather: are you basing that intention on something or do you just assume that the intention is to not allow long term travel?

I base it on:

1. Understanding that EU was created from bottom-up. EU has only the powers that countries agreed and allowed to be given. EU is not "created on top and then decided to downstream some of the decision power to lower levels".

2. Following the political discussions, polls, etc. This is so far fetched, to put all the visa decisions on the EU level, that there is not even a discussion about it. There is no opposition to the idea, because the idea itself is so outside of Overton window that it is not funny. This is akin to asking for evidence of American individual states being against making all the taxes Federal.

3. For more info, research the discussion and opposition to EU level of refugee agreements (be it Libya, Syria or Ukraine). It's a mess, all the countries want to decide for themselves.

> i did some searches but i could not find anything that specific

I hate to be that guy, but please use AI instead of Google. AI is really good at searching and explaining these types of questions.

please use AI

if i ask AI i get this:

Yes, an EU embassy can issue special visas in exceptional cases, even if they do not fit the standard types of visas. These may be granted based on specific circumstances or urgent needs, but they are not commonly available.

which is what i have been saying all along, but i could not verify even that answer. the reference links didn't contain any text that would confirm this. so i didn't bring it up here.

asking further i get that a long-stay visa should be possible as long as he spend less than 90 days in each specific country, and maybe he has to travel back and forth between the chosen long-stay country and the countries he wants to walk through, but in practice, without checks, or without explicit registration every time he crosses an inner-EU border, how would anyone know? i guess 3 months could be enough for each EU country he passes through, so maybe that could work.

that too, i already concluded from the basic search i did before and from your comments. given that the AI answer here only confirms what i already understood, combined with the unreliability of AI in general, i don't find AI helpful enough to be worth it.

>Yes, an EU embassy can issue special visas in exceptional cases

This is garbage from the very beginning, since the EU does not have embassies. All the embassies belong to individual EU countries, further demonstrating that visa arrangements are done on national level.

> a long-stay visa should be possible as long as he spend less than 90 days in each specific country, and maybe he has to travel back and forth between the chosen long-stay country and the countries he wants to walk through

This is exactly what I told you. So basically it is exactly how he has it today (can travel 90 days out of 180), except:

1. The non-travel days he can spend at his base in Mexico, instead of unfamiliar country.

2. Doesn't have to do bureucracy in order to get a long-stay visa. You are severely underestimating how difficult this process is. Imho he wouldn't even be able to get it, at least I don't see compelling reasons to give him a visa by any of the EU countries.

> in practice, without checks, or without explicit registration every time he crosses an inner-EU border, how would anyone know?

Because he is famous enough (and certainly will be after he finishes his trip) for the officials to pay attention. He doesn't want to get an EU-wide ban, especially before completing his journey.

i understood the long stay visa differently: since you can spend the whole year in the EU there is no limit on traveling except he can't spend more than 90 days in any single EU country (besides the one he got the visa for), but even if that is wrong, if he gets the visa for the largest country to traverse, which i think is france, then he could: enter france, travel to another eu country, walk 90 days, go back to france, walk 90 days in france, travel to another EU country walk 90 days, go back to france, finish walking. if he still has a leg left at that point, wait until the 90 days are full, then finish the remaining leg. i don't know how much time he really needs, but i think the whole EU needs less than a year. 180days outside of france could be enough.

with "how would anyone know?" i meant the reverse. if there are no stamps that document the travel within the EU, how can he prove that he did not violate the rules?

all in all, these visa rules are way to complicated. it sounds like that without the EU existing, he would have had 90 days in each european country mostly visa free. so that is in effect a regression. as a EU citizen i am not happy about that.

i traveled across europe before the schengen area was created, and there was no problem entering any country and stay there other than some countries charging a lot for the visa at the border. anyone with a british or US or similar "powerful" passport would have been able to do the same.

That's not the way it works.

I live in Norway, have residence and stuff. I can travel freely through most of europe without much hassle - but I can only travel 90 days out of 180 days - then you gotta go out of the area (or back to your home country if it is inside), stay out or home for 90 days, and then start anew. The closest border to me - one to Sweden - has no real security. A customs office because there is border shopping in the area and I know they very occasionally stop folks. A crossing an slightly inconvenient distance north just has signs.

Anything outside of this requires paperwork.

the paperwork is exactly what i am talking about. with his track record getting a visa should not be an issue.

> but why would he fly to mexico when he could just go to the UK?

Because of one of the original 2 rules he set up from the beginning.

He crossed the border illegally and was carrying a firearm with him. Maybe it's ok in the USA to cross the border illegally carrying a firearm with you, but I assure you it's not legal in all the other countries in the world and penalty would be very severe.

> Maybe it's ok in the USA to cross the border illegally carrying a firearm

By definition anything illegal is illegal, and no, you cannot bring a firearm across the border into the USA without a paperwork process.

He said "it's okay" not that it's not illegal.

Of course it's illegal. But it used to be open season on the US border was the point. There were so many crossings, this dude would have gone unnoticed. Carrying or not. Nowadays not so much.

I crossed the border from Mexico into the USA towing a large trailer a few weeks ago and was waived right across with no questions or inspections. All that has changed recently is an uptick in racial profiling at the border.

You crossed legally. You didn't swim or walk through the desert. They have xray scanners, dogs, and many other methods to inspect vehicles. You may not have even noticed you were inspected.

Nothing racial about it, many races from many nations crossed illegally. It's about legality, not race.

No, the scanners and imaging equipment do not fit large trailers like I was towing, so I had to bypass all of the equipment to a manual inspection area, but then they waived me through.

Racial profiling - as well as other types of profiling - are absolutely a major factor in US border enforcement, and are currently done openly and legally. Your odds of being extensively searched are astronomically higher if you are crossing legally but have an accent or darker skin tone. ICE and border patrol openly use racial profiling, and recently won a supreme court case Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo allowing them to continue doing so. They wouldn't fight all the way to the supreme court and win for the right to racially profile people if they didn't even do it!

Moreover, the job of a border agent, especially under the current administration actively seeks out and recruits employees that are attracted to the idea of a career that allows and encourages xenophobia, bullying, and racism. Sadistic people like Greg Bovino, who revels in fascist imagery and illegal brutality rise to top leadership positions. The recruitment materials for these jobs use white nationalist and white supremacists imagery and slogans- often using images stolen verbatim from white supremacist websites and forums.

Wait, he was carrying what?

Did it not occur to him that this might be a bad idea?

> Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order

Why didn't he take the ferry there?

I guess it didn't fit with the goal of 'walking' around the world, probably wanted to avoid motorised transport

> At the start of his quest, Bushby made two rules for himself, neither of which he has broken.

> “I can’t use transport to advance, and I can’t go home until I arrive on foot,” Bushby said. “If I get stuck somewhere, I have to figure it out.”

The only ferry in the Caspian I know goes to Turkmenistan, which is North Korea-level strict with issuing visas.

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