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Nonsense, you are completely ignoring country size, and even in absolute numbers every country in the Schengen Area allows every citizen of other Schengen Area
by TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Nonsense, you are completely ignoring country size, and even in absolute numbers every country in the Schengen Area allows every citizen of other Schengen Area countries complete freedom of movement. For any given country in the Schengen Area, that is more foreigners who are allowed complete freedom of movement than the entire population of the US, much less just the foreign born population of the US. Just because most of those people don't choose to exercise that ability, doesn't mean they don't have it.
- leereeves 8y agoThe Schengen area is more like the US itself. A federal system of once independent states uniting to eventually form a single nation. The freedom to move from France to Germany, or from California to New York, has nothing to do with the freedom of movement of people born outside those systems.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoLOL, you are basically saying that by entering into an agreement like the Schengen Agreement and becoming less like nations, the overall group becomes more nationalistic. That seems like absurd circular reasoning. The constituent countries in the EU are still sovereign countries. Unlike US states, they are free to leave at any time.
- leereeves 8y agoBy your definition of nationalism, Europe is simply replacing French/German/etc nationalism with EU nationalism. The EU already has a parliament, "federal" laws, and a single currency. They're building an EU army and discussing federal taxes. At what point do you call them a nation?
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoYou are engaging in absurd double-think. Loosening restrictions on movement is not tightening restrictions on movement no matter how many mental hoops you try to jump through.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- leereeves 8y agoThis discussion is becoming too hostile for Hacker News. I'll make one more attempt to explain my point of view, then I'm out: Loosening restrictions on select people is not loosening restrictions on everyone. Vatican City, with their tightly controlled migration policy, is not the country with the most freedom of movement simply because they allow freedom of movement to carefully chosen people. In the Vatican, for example, a given person either has a 100% chance of migration or a 0% chance. Israel has similar numbers. In the Schengen area, it's either a 100% chance or a very small chance. Update: Perhaps this will be clearer. Every free country grants total freedom of movement to some group of people. In Israel, this is Jewish people. In the United States, US citizens. In the Schengen area, citizens of the Schengen area. What does that have to do with nationalism? Nationalism is a distinction between the treatment of in-group people and out-group people. In the Schengen area, people from the Schengen area are the in-group.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoThis line of argument is absurd. You cannot become more restrictive by becoming less restrictive.
- leereeves 8y agoNationalism isn't standalone, it's tied to a particular nation. Changing loyalty to a larger nation isn't the same as becoming less nationalistic.
- TheCoelacanth 8y agoThe Schengen Area is not in any sense a nation. Look at the definition of the word nation: "a large aggregate of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory". The Schengen Area checks off people and territory but nothing else. It doesn't even have a shared government to try to make it fit if you are trying to use "nation" as a synonym for "country". Most of the countries are part of the EU, but Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are part of the Schengen Area but not the EU.