10 ms·

The New Passport-Poor

59 points by Thevet 8y ago

schoen 8y ago
See also https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-need-passports-or-visas-64847 https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-s... (which was posted on HN two years ago). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909
- J-dawg 8y ago
  Thanks for posting this, I must have read it at the time because it feels very familiar! Particularly the thread started by this comment from ChicagoBoy11 [0]. I've often wondered what a world without borders would really be like. As ChicagoBoy11 said, it would be very difficult to oppress people if they were simply able to get up and go somewhere else. Eventually I think the world would be a better place. But in the short term, developed countries would be absolutely swamped. They'd have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work, welfare and housing. Maps like this make you realise how "small" the developed/western parts of the world are [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327 [1] http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-zones-of-equal-population http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-zones-...
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >They'd have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work, welfare and housing. Here's my cynical take on what would happen: the well-to-do would benefit massively as the poor moved in to reduce unskilled and low-skill labor prices. Welfare would be stopped because society wouldn't be able to afford it. Housing would be worked out automatically by the free market, except in SF and other legally restricted jurisdictions. In the end, national inequality would rise to match global inequality, because all that's happening is that individuals are moving. Ironically, the old Republican conservatopia vision of society (no welfare, free market, not too much emphasis on the interests of the poor) would be able to handle mass migration better than almost any other that the west has considered. If there's no social safety net at all, there's almost no cost to having somebody new move in. (Police, sure, but you can tax the work of the new people.)
rayiner 8y ago
The article’s premise is wrong. Freedom and rights are subject to the reciprocal freedom and rights of others. “Your rights end where my nose begins.” One of the fundamental collective rights of a nation state is to have a border and control who goes through it. Requiring passports is not an impingement on anyone’s freedom; it is the exercise of a country’s freedom to control who trespasses within its borders. The whole angle about passports being a recent phenomenon is a red herring. Routine international travel is also a new phenomenon, enabled by relatively new technology (airplanes). That passports were not common in the 19th century does not suggest that people back then believed that controlling their borders was unimportant.
- uxp100 8y ago
  > Requiring passports is not an impingement on anyone’s freedom; it is the exercise of a country’s freedom to control who trespasses within its borders. This seems like a narrow definition of freedom, something like, freedom is whatever rights are granted by the nations I like. I would think it is possible for something to be an impingement on one person's freedom, while being the exercise of another's.
  - psyc 8y ago
    I agree that it’s an over-opinionated definition. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it doublespeak, but it’s like 1.5x speak.
    - krisdol 8y ago
      I would. It's freedom in the sense of "freedom to deny others' freedom". That's pretty directly analogous to 1984's "freedom is slavery".
      - rayiner 8y ago
        That’s like saying that property rights are the “freedom to deny others’ freedom.” Banding together and controlling territory is one of the most basic functions of human societies. There is no “right” to go onto territory another group has developed, cultivated, and controls.
latte 8y ago
It's important to note that it's not just bureaucrats or dictators who insist on enforcing passport and visa control. For better or worse, a lot of regular citizens of country A would be against citizens of country B staying in, or just entering country A's borders.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Replace “lot” with “almost all.” I’m from the subcontinent. Do you think people from Bangladesh/India/Pakistan want people from the other countries freely wandering across their borders? Nobody wants that. It’s Western conceit that they’ve somehow evolved this particular mode of tribalism (what most people in the world would instead call ordinary national sovereignty).
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
An open borders argument... the single biggest truth about this is the author would be horrified if their ideals were actually put in place.
- jowiar 8y ago
  To me, discrimination based on where one was born is fundamentally immoral. There are legitimate logistical difficulties with open borders, but we need to identify solutions, rather than use them as excuses.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    The solution is to enable everyone to improve their quality of life where there are, as it's going to be impossible to come up with a system that is "fair" to everyone who wants to emigrate/immigrant. You can't craft immigration policy without a comprehensive understanding of how it relates to your country's economic and cultural foundation (are you allowing large amounts of unskilled labor in that is going to depress wages? allowing large amounts of immigrants in who might not want to integrate into your society and adopt your values? you're gonna have a bad time). First world countries want the best of the best, not unskilled immigrants who they'll have to support. Developing countries aren't going to want to allow non-tourist immigration unless you have investment to offer. So we end up with this byzantine system of quotas and quid pro quo which treats people like pawns. Unpleasant and unsustainable for all involved.
morley 8y ago
> Chinese citizens generally are evaluated for visas, mortgages, schools, and employment by social credit scores. I only learned about social credit scores last month. Have they actually been around for much longer? That seems unlikely, given that Wikipedia says it's still proposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System It seems disingenuous to claim that a proposed system is in general use.
- greedo 8y ago
  It is in general use, just not fully implemented: https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-passengers-flying-ban-social-credit-score-system-bad-behaviour https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-passe...
pjc50 8y ago
Related: https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2018/05/22/immigration-children-separate-families-lost-kirstjen-nielson/631627002/ https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2018... There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal", just like there is in the War On Drugs. In this case thousands of children have been deliberately separated from their parents and then ... lost?
- ng12 8y ago
  > There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal" Who's declaring this? Nobody's declaring a human's existence to be illegal. They're humans who have broken laws -- that is done something illegal. It feels like a willful attempt to control a narrative by warping semantics.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    It's not unusual for people to refer to "illegals".
    - ng12 8y ago
      And when they do so they're obviously referring to the crime committed, not their personhood. It's akin to calling someone a jaywalker.
tribeofone 8y ago
I thought we agreed to keep this kind of drivel off HN.
smnrchrds 8y ago
> In China, a country that still requires documents for internal travel ... I did not know about this. Can someone shed some light on limits to internal travel in China?
- schoen 8y ago
  I think people usually point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

59 points by Thevet 8y ago

See also https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-need-passports-or-visas-64847 https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-s... (which was posted on HN two years ago). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909

J-dawg 8y ago
Thanks for posting this, I must have read it at the time because it feels very familiar! Particularly the thread started by this comment from ChicagoBoy11 [0]. I've often wondered what a world without borders would really be like. As ChicagoBoy11 said, it would be very difficult to oppress people if they were simply able to get up and go somewhere else. Eventually I think the world would be a better place. But in the short term, developed countries would be absolutely swamped. They'd have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work, welfare and housing. Maps like this make you realise how "small" the developed/western parts of the world are [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327 [1] http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-zones-of-equal-population http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-zones-...
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >They'd have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work, welfare and housing. Here's my cynical take on what would happen: the well-to-do would benefit massively as the poor moved in to reduce unskilled and low-skill labor prices. Welfare would be stopped because society wouldn't be able to afford it. Housing would be worked out automatically by the free market, except in SF and other legally restricted jurisdictions. In the end, national inequality would rise to match global inequality, because all that's happening is that individuals are moving. Ironically, the old Republican conservatopia vision of society (no welfare, free market, not too much emphasis on the interests of the poor) would be able to handle mass migration better than almost any other that the west has considered. If there's no social safety net at all, there's almost no cost to having somebody new move in. (Police, sure, but you can tax the work of the new people.)

rayiner 8y ago

The article’s premise is wrong. Freedom and rights are subject to the reciprocal freedom and rights of others. “Your rights end where my nose begins.” One of the fundamental collective rights of a nation state is to have a border and control who goes through it. Requiring passports is not an impingement on anyone’s freedom; it is the exercise of a country’s freedom to control who trespasses within its borders. The whole angle about passports being a recent phenomenon is a red herring. Routine international travel is also a new phenomenon, enabled by relatively new technology (airplanes). That passports were not common in the 19th century does not suggest that people back then believed that controlling their borders was unimportant.

uxp100 8y ago
> Requiring passports is not an impingement on anyone’s freedom; it is the exercise of a country’s freedom to control who trespasses within its borders. This seems like a narrow definition of freedom, something like, freedom is whatever rights are granted by the nations I like. I would think it is possible for something to be an impingement on one person's freedom, while being the exercise of another's.
- psyc 8y ago
  I agree that it’s an over-opinionated definition. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it doublespeak, but it’s like 1.5x speak.
  - krisdol 8y ago
    I would. It's freedom in the sense of "freedom to deny others' freedom". That's pretty directly analogous to 1984's "freedom is slavery".
    - rayiner 8y ago
      That’s like saying that property rights are the “freedom to deny others’ freedom.” Banding together and controlling territory is one of the most basic functions of human societies. There is no “right” to go onto territory another group has developed, cultivated, and controls.

latte 8y ago

It's important to note that it's not just bureaucrats or dictators who insist on enforcing passport and visa control. For better or worse, a lot of regular citizens of country A would be against citizens of country B staying in, or just entering country A's borders.

rayiner 8y ago
Replace “lot” with “almost all.” I’m from the subcontinent. Do you think people from Bangladesh/India/Pakistan want people from the other countries freely wandering across their borders? Nobody wants that. It’s Western conceit that they’ve somehow evolved this particular mode of tribalism (what most people in the world would instead call ordinary national sovereignty).

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

An open borders argument... the single biggest truth about this is the author would be horrified if their ideals were actually put in place.

jowiar 8y ago
To me, discrimination based on where one was born is fundamentally immoral. There are legitimate logistical difficulties with open borders, but we need to identify solutions, rather than use them as excuses.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  The solution is to enable everyone to improve their quality of life where there are, as it's going to be impossible to come up with a system that is "fair" to everyone who wants to emigrate/immigrant. You can't craft immigration policy without a comprehensive understanding of how it relates to your country's economic and cultural foundation (are you allowing large amounts of unskilled labor in that is going to depress wages? allowing large amounts of immigrants in who might not want to integrate into your society and adopt your values? you're gonna have a bad time). First world countries want the best of the best, not unskilled immigrants who they'll have to support. Developing countries aren't going to want to allow non-tourist immigration unless you have investment to offer. So we end up with this byzantine system of quotas and quid pro quo which treats people like pawns. Unpleasant and unsustainable for all involved.

morley 8y ago

> Chinese citizens generally are evaluated for visas, mortgages, schools, and employment by social credit scores. I only learned about social credit scores last month. Have they actually been around for much longer? That seems unlikely, given that Wikipedia says it's still proposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System It seems disingenuous to claim that a proposed system is in general use.

greedo 8y ago
It is in general use, just not fully implemented: https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-passengers-flying-ban-social-credit-score-system-bad-behaviour https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-passe...

pjc50 8y ago

Related: https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2018/05/22/immigration-children-separate-families-lost-kirstjen-nielson/631627002/ https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2018... There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal", just like there is in the War On Drugs. In this case thousands of children have been deliberately separated from their parents and then ... lost?

ng12 8y ago
> There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal" Who's declaring this? Nobody's declaring a human's existence to be illegal. They're humans who have broken laws -- that is done something illegal. It feels like a willful attempt to control a narrative by warping semantics.
- pjc50 8y ago
  It's not unusual for people to refer to "illegals".
  - ng12 8y ago
    And when they do so they're obviously referring to the crime committed, not their personhood. It's akin to calling someone a jaywalker.

tribeofone 8y ago

I thought we agreed to keep this kind of drivel off HN.

smnrchrds 8y ago

> In China, a country that still requires documents for internal travel ... I did not know about this. Can someone shed some light on limits to internal travel in China?

schoen 8y ago
I think people usually point to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system