11 ms·

This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the b

This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. A border exists often for workers only, but is mostly a legal fiction that corporations can easily navigate. The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) while allowing the auto manufacturing companies to treat all of North America as one market. Toyota can move their plants around the region somewhat freely; can someone in Mexico freely move to the midwest?

indymike 4y ago
> central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Every deceased Emperor, Chief, King, Earl, Duke, Lord and other ruler of lands and holder of fiefdoms would disagree with this.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
For a migratory species it is literally inhuman to erect a border. Borders should be jurisdictional boundaries but should be permeable like the states in the US. The rest of the tribalism BS is just that.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago. You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term). No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. Platitudes only work on paper.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    All of that already happens without open borders, it just costs us more money to maintain.
    - gameman144 4y ago
      The rates are vastly different though,no? If I have a leaky faucet, it seems strange to say "This faucet is useless: the water is getting through anyway, and this way I'm having to pay for new gaskets!"
      - candiddevmike 4y ago
        I don't think your example is valid because we're not talking about water, we're talking about humans who are choosing to leave their country for a better place. Pursuit of happiness and all that jazz. I guess my opinion is being born in a place like the US shouldn't be some kind of privilege, and instead we should strive for the US to be a bastion for human dignity.
        vorpalhex 4y ago
        So then work on making other countries as good as the US, not by cramming every person into the US.
        gameman144 4y ago
        > we're talking about humans who are choosing to leave their country for a better place. What makes the US a better place? What keeps other countries from being a better place?
        fnordpiglet 4y ago
        The constitution and bill of rights and the effective government the founding fathers created that ensures the continuation of those law bodies. The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. It’s no fault of the people who live here or there today for the situation we are in. If George Washington had accepted a crown when offered we would be just as screwed up.
        gameman144 4y ago
        > The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. I think this strongly discounts the agency of individuals. In our time these are certainly blessings, but they had to be fought for by their contemporaries.
  - vharuck 4y ago
    I don't think your points hold up against the example of state borders. Criminals move between states, but it's not a huge problem. The states can share information and allow joint action. It may require more effort to set up between nations, but it's a common thing today. Taxes work fine. If you're a resident of a state, you pay income tax to that state. So we obviously know how to find out residency. >Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. If borders were to become easily crossable (not necessarily non-existent, but just a checkpoint to count incoming/outgoing and stop smugglers) in a day, then the next day would see mass migration in so many directions. But after that first wave calmed, I wouldn't expect mass migrations except those following humanitarian disasters. Three had migrations we see today are caused by disasters. Even when the emigrants experience terrible conditions in the receiving country, I imagine it's because their previous life was shattered and they had to quickly flee. It's not a fair comparison to people who would migrate if immigration controls were removed.
    - notch898a 4y ago
      Consider something like 1/3 of Americans have a criminal history. Maybe 1 of 30 of those are incapable of living in society. Keeping out fugitives makes sense but I totally disagree with keeping out criminals, particularly when in much of the world criminal often just means you did something the government didn't like.
      - andrekandre 4y ago
        > Consider something like 1/3 of Americans have a criminal history. really? not as in traffic tickets, but actual conviction of a crime?
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        No. Not sure sure exactly where it started, but it gets attributed to Andrew Cuomo often enough, citing the 1 in 3 number. That comes from FBI statistics, which define a criminal record to include arrests. Here is a discussion: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuomo/yes-one-three-us-adults-have-criminal-record/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuo...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago" Up until recently ( relatively ) a person could pretty much move to other country without much fuzz.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      That is ahistorical. Rome, Greece and so on generally required you to file paperwork, pay money and usually join the military if you wanted to be able to move in their borders and have rights. Even moving to a new tribe in Native peoples in North America required proving a blood relation, having someone vouch for you, or being skilled enough they would accept you in.
    - nhchris 4y ago
      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.
      - fnordpiglet 4y ago
        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?
        nhchris 4y ago
        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-population/ 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.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    > Every time there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster Are all of these unorganized, mass migrations disasters? Or are they in response to disasters? Most organized mass migrations have been disasters. Forced relocations aren’t fun. But unorganized mass migrations, where people say “let’s get out of this place and go somewhere better” tend to mitigate pre-existing disasters.
  - mind-blight 4y ago
    Lots of countries maintain open borders. The entire Schengen zone is an open borders agreement. Also, you're incorrectly conflating mass migration with open borders. You can have open borders without causing a mass migration and vice versa.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Countries are equivalent to prisons in your example? I agree, they act that way now. But what about states in the United States? They were explicitly formed as a set of states - nations - that cooperate under a federation. Free migration wasn’t always the case in the original states but was required in the constitution. What about the EU? People can move about freely today when in the past they weren’t able to. Or are you saying there’s something superior about Americans and Europeans and we need to keep everyone else in their prisons? You quote 12,000 years ago as some sort of transition. Realistically migration was relatively unimpeded until the 1900’s. Citizenship isn’t the same as migration, and in many cultures citizens and denizens were two classes with the denizens migrating relatively unimpeded. Some cultures like ancient China had travel papers but that was reserved for nobles or elites - normal people were too beneath notice to require documentation to travel.
    - tracker1 4y ago
      It's possible for any adjacent nation/country/region to join the US or EU... so it's perfectly possible for free travel, if you agree to the rules of the higher federation. You can only impact jurisdictions you have jurisdictional control over.
      - fnordpiglet 4y ago
        I for one welcome our one world order overlords!
- Eumenes 4y ago
  TIL humans are birds
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Behold! I've brought you a man
- gameman144 4y ago
  I'm interested here, as I'm inclined to disagree pretty strongly. How would you prevent the erosion of rights or culture by a group with a bigger population? For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? Or a few hundred thousand mainland Chinese citizens move to Taiwan and do the same? While it's definitely nice to keep migration smooth and easy, it seems like there are lots of issues wherein free and unlimited migration could cause relatively predictable problems.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    > For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? That would be a great thing for Cuba. Cubans have been fleeing their failed state by the thousands, risking their lives and dying to get a shot at reaching America. Starvation, medicine shortage, brutal LGBT purges are sadly common place under the Castro regime. Pretty sure these Americans would be welcomed with open arms!
    - pastage 4y ago
      Miguel Díaz-Canel is president now.
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      Most shortages seem to be due to economic sanctions and trade embargoes. I wonder how much fleeing rates would dwindle if they were lifted.
      - 908B64B197 4y ago
        > Most shortages seem to be due to economic sanctions and trade embargoes. Not really. Cuba is free to trade with any country that's not the USA (and is even free to trade with the USA except for certain entities or commodities). Decades of corruption, incompetence, brain drain and failed government made the local economy unable to compete.
        4y ago
- tracker1 4y ago
  You can only influence the rights/freedoms/liberties of those jurisdictional boundaries.
celeritascelery 4y ago
> The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) I don’t understand how Supply side wage competition would be alleviated by allowing workers to move freely between countries. It seems like it could potentially make it worse for higher wage regions of the world?
- fallingknife 4y ago
  It would do exactly that. We run 2 separate immigration systems in the US. One very restrictive system for high paying jobs and one very permissive for low paying jobs. The latter is technically illegal but tolerated. It can't be legal, because then there would be nothing stopping those immigrants from eventually getting the high paying jobs. This dual system protects the upper class from wage competition while allowing it for the lower classes, ensuring that the upper class benefits both from this protection and also the lowered living expenses provided by cheap labor from the lower classes. All arguments that somehow economic laws don't apply and immigration doesn't lower wages come from members of the upper class who want to preserve this system that benefits them.
nhchris 4y ago
> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. This is backwards, and I'm having trouble understanding how a more diverse, more transient population would find it easier to find common interests and unite. Suppose a factory unionizes - without borders, the owner will find it easier to import non-union workers. While moving a factory is challenging regardless of borders - it's a big, heavy thing, tied into local infrastructure and supply chains. It's even reflected in the rhetoric - "immigrants will do the jobs Americans won't". It's also reflected empirically: Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks - https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionization-risk-with-heat-map-2020-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat... (unpaywalled: http://archive.is/1khJw http://archive.is/1khJw) And in the strong Danish unions as far back as 1981 (https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/ https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...) when Denmark had only 3.02% of immigrants and their descendants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark#Modern_minorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark#Modern...)
- nerdponx 4y ago
  > easier to find common interests and unite I think the idea is that there are common interests to be found, but borders artificially keep people apart, by segmenting up legal jurisdictions. For example, why Starbucks employees in Jersey City aren't all that different from Starbucks employees in New York City right across the river. > Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks To what extent is this correlated with the economic security of their employees? Employees in wealthier areas (statistically correlated with whiter) might be more educated on average (which could be correlated with desire to unionize) and/or more likely to have a higher-income partner or family member (which means lower financial risk due to failure or being fired).
  - nhchris 4y ago
    > borders artificially keep people apart GPS data shows how wolf packs carve out territory - https://bigthink.com/hard-science/wolf-gps/ https://bigthink.com/hard-science/wolf-gps/
vorpalhex 4y ago
It is literally easier to move a person than an entire company across national borders. The process for both is at it's core the same - identify, verify and pay your taxes. Yes people can and do move from Mexico to the Midwest all the time. Why do you think Mexican laborers should get paid less for building your car then someone in Detroit? Part of the goal of NAFTA is to help stabilize the economy of Mexico and help longterm reduce the severe violence in parts of the country.
- wishysgb 4y ago
  Legally it is very hard for a Mexican to move to the Midwest. As in almost impossible requiring almost 20years. I am not Mexican but it toke my family 14 years to be able to move to the US from Palestine, although my grandparents and uncles have been here since the 80s. It really isn't hard. A company doesn't need to move everything, they can just literally build a new factory or rent one else where, not only that they would even get tax breaks as incentives for moving. Borders enforce the huge discrimination in pay between TJ and San Diego. Even though the same companies work on both sides of the border.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    I'm honestly astonished people even do it the legal way. It's not even a crime to overstay. One could easily set up shop in California, get an AB 60 driver license, live in a sanctuary area and have at it.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    For professional jobs, it is very easy for a Mexican or Canadian to move to the US and work. > The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created special economic and trade relationships for the United States, Canada and Mexico. The TN nonimmigrant classification permits qualified Canadian and Mexican citizens to seek temporary entry into the United States to engage in business activities at a professional level. > Among the types of professionals who are eligible to seek admission as TN nonimmigrants are accountants, engineers, lawyers, pharmacists, scientists, and teachers. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/tn-nafta-professionals https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...
boh 4y ago
It's really bizarre that state sovereignty is just considered a business practice. No it's not a "modern invention" to "enact" borders. Nor does labor organizing have anything to do with its enforcement. Corporate-centric culture doesn't do well in explaining the world. I'd suggest a less narrow viewpoint.
- vkou 4y ago
  It's a modern (a 'temporary measure' enacted in WW1) invention to enact a passport-controlled system of travel and residency across the entire world. Border control prior to it was more focused on customs taxes, and in some countries, keeping undesirable races/religions out. We have decided the latter is wrong, so instead of directly banning, say, Chinese or Jewish immigration, we replaced it with quotas on country of birth/origin.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    We can go one step further and also say that the entire system of social welfare is a post-WW2 invention. Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves. Now the state just fucks everyone.
    - zamfi 4y ago
      > Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves Not...really? Unless by "state" you are broadly including the church and other philanthropy.
    - vkou 4y ago
      > Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves. Through much of human history, the state largely 'helped' the aristocracy maintain a monopoly on wealth and power, through frequent applications of violence against their political enemies. In fact, in ~all non-democratic, and in many democratic societies, the state and the aristocracy - and thus, their interests, are often indistinguishable. But either way, what does any of that have to do with passport controls?
  - 4y ago
908B64B197 4y ago
> The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) And Canada, who's planning to give amnesty and permanent residency to half a million illegal migrants in the coming year. [0] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/immigration-ministry-regularization-program-1.6609144 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/immigration-ministry...
Forestessential 4y ago
You are wrong. Mexico-United States Border keeps Mexican labor and business from being more ferocious than American businesses in America. Borders have been protecting cultural states for a very long time in fact. 3200BC and before countries existed. It has and still does have alot to do with cultural tastes, and unlike how you expressed it, 'protecting the economy' from being formed against the wishes of the countries leaders. Borders come about for different reasons surely, but to reduce a border to an economic zone is just commie-aide.
remarkEon 4y ago
> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming from? It sounds not only wrong but inverted to me. Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people, and thus its own power. Is the idea that, without the “legal fiction” of borders, we’d have some kind of global autoworkers Union or something?
- nradov 4y ago
  Indeed there is nothing stopping workers from organizing across borders, even if individual workers are only legally authorized to work in one country. Many labor unions have local chapters in multiple countries and can coordinate labor actions. For example, see the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which operates in the USA and Canada.
  - pyuser583 4y ago
    It’s tricky. American unions avoid coordinating with their American counterparts because of corruption. Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Huh? There is certainly corruption in some labor unions but that doesn't prevent them from coordinating with their counterparts in other unions. Even the most corrupt unions frequently back each other up in order to maximize negotiating power versus management.
      - pyuser583 4y ago
        I’m really sorry. I wanted to say American unions avoid coordinating with their Mexican counterparts. I was listening to an interviewer with a labor organizer on the US Mexican border who worked with new arrivals. He said the workers were used to unions from back in Mexico, but he had to spend lots of time educating folks about how things work in America. Mexican unions have a level of corruption unheard of in even the most corrupt US unions.
subsubzero 4y ago
This line of thinking trends very recently. Corporations are not everything despite what they and the media have you believe. Countries are defined by territory either hard won from conflict(war) or based on shared cultural leanings. Having citizenship is a privilege for many and in some countries it requires mandatory enlistment in the armed forces(Israel, South Korea).
- someguydave 4y ago
  That way of thinking collides with the idea that trade and immigration should be unfettered, especially if the benefits accrue to foreigners.
- golemiprague 4y ago
  [dead]
pjc50 4y ago
It's true that hard borders are a modernish (start of c20th) invention, but they're just as often something that labour asks for in order to prevent labour competition. "Taking our jobs" and all that. They're also products of both the information-state (being able to know who's in the country through identity document systems) and the jet age. Before the steamship the only real border enforcement was on trade at ports. The British Empire had "freedom of movement" that effectively lasted only as long as people weren't using it in significant numbers. People could move from the colonies to the centre, and indeed after WW2 the government actively solicited Jamaicans to do so (Empire Windrush), but resistance from the public has increased since then.
mtoner23 4y ago
Idk, i think borders exist to exclude other groups of peoples. this is why european countries kept splitting up on various racial groups (check and slovaks, all of yugoslavia) Businesses on the other hand would prefer to have access to all peoples. and to have access to cheaper or better labor wherever it is, giving us the success of the european union.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > Idk, i think borders exist to exclude other groups of peoples. To exclude them from what? That's the question. You give one of the answers here: sometimes people would want to exclude them because they lower wages. But in reality, people who are alarmed by lower wages are rarely in the position to say anything about what happens at the border. The people who get a say about that are the people who are alarmed by higher wages.
- nradov 4y ago
  The differences between groups in the former Yugoslavia have little to do with race (as most Americans would understand the term). It's tough to tell the difference between a Croat and a Serb just by looking at them. Conflicts were based more on culture, religion, language, and perhaps something akin to "tribal" identity (not literally tribes but I don't know how else to describe it). Some of these conflicts date back to the 14th century. The only significant group in the region which some might identify as a distinct "race" are the Roma. That minority lives in all of the countries and they didn't cause countries to split up.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Albanians?
stronglikedan 4y ago
Maybe, but that's not the only reason. Borders are also enforced because you can't have open borders and social welfare programs.
- andrekandre 4y ago
  > you can't have open borders and social welfare programs this may sound simplistic/naive but cant you just tax those additional people to pay for those welfare? i guess the assumption is those people wouldnt be working?
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    It is more of a "long term experience" than mere "assumption". At least in Europe, a sizeable amount of illegal migrants has only very rudimentary education, and the # of job openings for unqualified people is very limited. Some literally cannot read even in their own language. As a result, immigrants from Africa and the Middle East are, on average, significantly overrepresented among welfare collectors and significantly underrepresented among taxpayers. Of course, as long as the numbers involved are tiny, you can try to educate at least their kids, but once a fairly low threshold is crossed, parallel societies develop in full. Having classrooms where 90 per cent of the kids don't even speak the official language of the country is quite an intractable problem. And that threshold beyond which the schooling system basically gives up has been crossed in many regions of many countries such as Sweden or France. TL;DR: You cannot maintain a modern welfare state with premodern population.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
> ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders […:] so that labor cannot effectively organise. You’re going to have to show up with some evidence for this claim. You’re not asserting that the outcome is a byproduct of borders, a happy accident useful to businesses. You’re asserting that the driving reason for the concept of a border is for businesses to disrupt organized labor.
somewhereoutth 4y ago
Which is why the EU single market has free movement of workers as one of its 4 central pillars. A major sticking point with Brexit - the UK wanted to be in the market without worker free movement (because immigrants)
MithrilTuxedo 4y ago
The United States is probably a more common example for Americans. The US Constitution makes the whole country a free trade zone between states. Borders between states are easily navigated by corporations, by design. Workers in Washington compete with workers in South Carolina. Manufacturers can freely move their plants around the US.
quacked 4y ago
Most of these types of articles take a "consumer" model of civilization: humans exist to consume, and the primary question is what they're going to consume and where they're going to do it. Labor exists as a phenomenon that enables future consumption, and QoL is measured by GDP per capita. "Countries" are an irrelevant social construct that inhibit free trade between interested, cooperative parties. This is a very limiting, privileged point of view of humanity. In reality Civilization is a mysterious art that requires cult-like adhesion to certain practices in order to "work". These economics-heavy libertarian open borders guys have absolutely no idea what to do when the power goes out for more than a week, or if they're personally wronged by a neighbor and the government won't get involved. It's a childish, first-world view of Man and Man's culture to assume that the only thing needed for Prosperity and Peace is economic competition administered and monitored by first-world-style democratic governments.
paradox242 4y ago
I am confused about your use of the word 'borders' in this context. As long as there have been states there has been a concept of sovereign territory and so there have been borders, even if it was somewhat fuzzy where exactly that line was in real space. Large companies are able to navigate the border issues because they are able to make deals with a government and can (at least promise) to bring in a lot of investment and wealth that the government might be able to realize in taxes, either directly from the company's revenues, or indirectly through other businesses and property that grows along with the company's investment. That company's can do this more effectively than individuals is less a function of some kind of cynical conspiracy to cut out of the worker (though that might be a side benefit that both sides appreciate), than it is a simple pragmatic response to the fact that it is much easier to deal with a small number of people about a large sum of money than it is with a large number of people about small sums of money. This is similar to why the U.S. government is so amenable to working so often with dictatorships to secure it's international interests. They can work with (or influence or bribe) a single person or small group to make large deals quickly and without having to worry about the messy politics and oversight associated with a democratic government that has to approve major policy decisions.
inglor_cz 4y ago
"a rather modern invention" Congestion charge is a rather modern invention as well, because the amount of cars in some city centers exceeded the tolerance of the locals and the capacity of the roads. Borders can be soft/open as long as a modest amount of people crosses them. In a world of 8 billion people and relatively cheap travel, open borders would result in massive flows of people into several desirable locations - whose citizens aren't happy about such prospects.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
>This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Would you be kind and provide some scholarly proof for the rather modern invention? It might not have been called "border" and have the gate with digital IDs to pass by but well defined (for their time) territories existed for thousands of years as evidenced by territory disputes between bordering sovereign groups in all lived-on continents.
- mikem170 4y ago
  Not the parent you replied to, but the modern passport as we know it goes back only about 100 years. > Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience. But World War I brought harsh restrictions on freedom of movement. [0] > The concept of a worldwide passport standard is relatively new, created in the aftermath of the First World War. ...the United States at the turn of the last century emerges: a near constant rush of immigrants, most destined to pass through Ellis Island. There they were given a cursory disease check, questioned, and in most cases, allowed to proceed on their journeys inward. This was easy enough to do without a global standard for identifying documents. [1] > On the outbreak of the First World War, countries imposed border controls to block the entry of subversives and the exit of men with skills useful to the war effort. Passports were issued to allow travellers access through these restrictions. When peace came in 1918 most countries retained both border controls and passports. [2] There used to be more restrictions on commerce than on people. Now it is the opposite. Money can move freely across international borders, and labor has become something to arbitrage. [0] https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/ https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas... [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-history-of-the-passport https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-history-... [2] https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/when-passports-first-introduced/ https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/when-passports-...
  - colonCapitalDee 4y ago
    I'm not convinced. Passports might be a modern invention (and really that isn't surprising, a global identification system requires sophisticated bureaucracy and cheap, accessible transportation), but that doesn't mean that people used to be able to move freely across borders. Modern technology makes immigration accessible to the masses in a way that simply wasn't the case in the pre-modern world. A few things you would have to consider before immigrating in the pre-modern world: - Where are you going? There's no internet, books are rare, and maps are inaccurate (and often plain wrong) - How will you get there? Transportation is expensive and unreliable - How will you preserve wealth? A global financial system accessible to normal folks does not exist yet - What will you do to support yourself? Pre-modern communication infrastructure makes scoping out foreign labor markets difficult - How will you learn the language? You'll have to find someone to teach it to you, instructional material will be limited - Who will you leave behind? Any family members that don't come with you will likely never be seen or heard from again - What if people decide you're not welcome? Well-enforced protections against discrimination do not exist yet People did immigrate, so obviously immigration was not impossible. Not all of these questions apply to every situation (people migrating to an adjacent country would not have to deal with many of these concerns). But immigration was far harder than it is today, and fraught with risk. Pre-modern borders were, by virtue of being pre-modern, effectively closed.

indymike 4y ago

> central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Every deceased Emperor, Chief, King, Earl, Duke, Lord and other ruler of lands and holder of fiefdoms would disagree with this.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

For a migratory species it is literally inhuman to erect a border. Borders should be jurisdictional boundaries but should be permeable like the states in the US. The rest of the tribalism BS is just that.

vorpalhex 4y ago
Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago. You probably don't want criminals to freely move into your country. You probably want a country that gets funded by taxes (both short term and long term). No country in the world maintains open borders. Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. Platitudes only work on paper.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  All of that already happens without open borders, it just costs us more money to maintain.
  - gameman144 4y ago
    The rates are vastly different though,no? If I have a leaky faucet, it seems strange to say "This faucet is useless: the water is getting through anyway, and this way I'm having to pay for new gaskets!"
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      I don't think your example is valid because we're not talking about water, we're talking about humans who are choosing to leave their country for a better place. Pursuit of happiness and all that jazz. I guess my opinion is being born in a place like the US shouldn't be some kind of privilege, and instead we should strive for the US to be a bastion for human dignity.
      - vorpalhex 4y ago
        So then work on making other countries as good as the US, not by cramming every person into the US.
      - gameman144 4y ago
        > we're talking about humans who are choosing to leave their country for a better place. What makes the US a better place? What keeps other countries from being a better place?
        fnordpiglet 4y ago
        The constitution and bill of rights and the effective government the founding fathers created that ensures the continuation of those law bodies. The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. It’s no fault of the people who live here or there today for the situation we are in. If George Washington had accepted a crown when offered we would be just as screwed up.
        gameman144 4y ago
        > The lack of those blessings from the past is what prevents others. I think this strongly discounts the agency of individuals. In our time these are certainly blessings, but they had to be fought for by their contemporaries.
- vharuck 4y ago
  I don't think your points hold up against the example of state borders. Criminals move between states, but it's not a huge problem. The states can share information and allow joint action. It may require more effort to set up between nations, but it's a common thing today. Taxes work fine. If you're a resident of a state, you pay income tax to that state. So we obviously know how to find out residency. >Everytime there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster. If borders were to become easily crossable (not necessarily non-existent, but just a checkpoint to count incoming/outgoing and stop smugglers) in a day, then the next day would see mass migration in so many directions. But after that first wave calmed, I wouldn't expect mass migrations except those following humanitarian disasters. Three had migrations we see today are caused by disasters. Even when the emigrants experience terrible conditions in the receiving country, I imagine it's because their previous life was shattered and they had to quickly flee. It's not a fair comparison to people who would migrate if immigration controls were removed.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    Consider something like 1/3 of Americans have a criminal history. Maybe 1 of 30 of those are incapable of living in society. Keeping out fugitives makes sense but I totally disagree with keeping out criminals, particularly when in much of the world criminal often just means you did something the government didn't like.
    - andrekandre 4y ago
      > Consider something like 1/3 of Americans have a criminal history. really? not as in traffic tickets, but actual conviction of a crime?
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        No. Not sure sure exactly where it started, but it gets attributed to Andrew Cuomo often enough, citing the 1 in 3 number. That comes from FBI statistics, which define a criminal record to include arrests. Here is a discussion: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuomo/yes-one-three-us-adults-have-criminal-record/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/aug/18/andrew-cuo...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago" Up until recently ( relatively ) a person could pretty much move to other country without much fuzz.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    That is ahistorical. Rome, Greece and so on generally required you to file paperwork, pay money and usually join the military if you wanted to be able to move in their borders and have rights. Even moving to a new tribe in Native peoples in North America required proving a blood relation, having someone vouch for you, or being skilled enough they would accept you in.
  - nhchris 4y ago
    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.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      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?
      - nhchris 4y ago
        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-population/ 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.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  > Every time there has been mass unorganized migration it has been a humanitarian disaster Are all of these unorganized, mass migrations disasters? Or are they in response to disasters? Most organized mass migrations have been disasters. Forced relocations aren’t fun. But unorganized mass migrations, where people say “let’s get out of this place and go somewhere better” tend to mitigate pre-existing disasters.
- mind-blight 4y ago
  Lots of countries maintain open borders. The entire Schengen zone is an open borders agreement. Also, you're incorrectly conflating mass migration with open borders. You can have open borders without causing a mass migration and vice versa.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  Countries are equivalent to prisons in your example? I agree, they act that way now. But what about states in the United States? They were explicitly formed as a set of states - nations - that cooperate under a federation. Free migration wasn’t always the case in the original states but was required in the constitution. What about the EU? People can move about freely today when in the past they weren’t able to. Or are you saying there’s something superior about Americans and Europeans and we need to keep everyone else in their prisons? You quote 12,000 years ago as some sort of transition. Realistically migration was relatively unimpeded until the 1900’s. Citizenship isn’t the same as migration, and in many cultures citizens and denizens were two classes with the denizens migrating relatively unimpeded. Some cultures like ancient China had travel papers but that was reserved for nobles or elites - normal people were too beneath notice to require documentation to travel.
  - tracker1 4y ago
    It's possible for any adjacent nation/country/region to join the US or EU... so it's perfectly possible for free travel, if you agree to the rules of the higher federation. You can only impact jurisdictions you have jurisdictional control over.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      I for one welcome our one world order overlords!
Eumenes 4y ago
TIL humans are birds
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Behold! I've brought you a man
gameman144 4y ago
I'm interested here, as I'm inclined to disagree pretty strongly. How would you prevent the erosion of rights or culture by a group with a bigger population? For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? Or a few hundred thousand mainland Chinese citizens move to Taiwan and do the same? While it's definitely nice to keep migration smooth and easy, it seems like there are lots of issues wherein free and unlimited migration could cause relatively predictable problems.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  > For instance, have a few hundred thousand Americans move to Cuba and vote to have Cuba secede to the US? That would be a great thing for Cuba. Cubans have been fleeing their failed state by the thousands, risking their lives and dying to get a shot at reaching America. Starvation, medicine shortage, brutal LGBT purges are sadly common place under the Castro regime. Pretty sure these Americans would be welcomed with open arms!
  - pastage 4y ago
    Miguel Díaz-Canel is president now.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    Most shortages seem to be due to economic sanctions and trade embargoes. I wonder how much fleeing rates would dwindle if they were lifted.
    - 908B64B197 4y ago
      > Most shortages seem to be due to economic sanctions and trade embargoes. Not really. Cuba is free to trade with any country that's not the USA (and is even free to trade with the USA except for certain entities or commodities). Decades of corruption, incompetence, brain drain and failed government made the local economy unable to compete.
      - 4y ago
tracker1 4y ago
You can only influence the rights/freedoms/liberties of those jurisdictional boundaries.

celeritascelery 4y ago

> The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) I don’t understand how Supply side wage competition would be alleviated by allowing workers to move freely between countries. It seems like it could potentially make it worse for higher wage regions of the world?

fallingknife 4y ago
It would do exactly that. We run 2 separate immigration systems in the US. One very restrictive system for high paying jobs and one very permissive for low paying jobs. The latter is technically illegal but tolerated. It can't be legal, because then there would be nothing stopping those immigrants from eventually getting the high paying jobs. This dual system protects the upper class from wage competition while allowing it for the lower classes, ensuring that the upper class benefits both from this protection and also the lowered living expenses provided by cheap labor from the lower classes. All arguments that somehow economic laws don't apply and immigration doesn't lower wages come from members of the upper class who want to preserve this system that benefits them.

nhchris 4y ago

> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. This is backwards, and I'm having trouble understanding how a more diverse, more transient population would find it easier to find common interests and unite. Suppose a factory unionizes - without borders, the owner will find it easier to import non-union workers. While moving a factory is challenging regardless of borders - it's a big, heavy thing, tied into local infrastructure and supply chains. It's even reflected in the rhetoric - "immigrants will do the jobs Americans won't". It's also reflected empirically: Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks - https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionization-risk-with-heat-map-2020-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/whole-foods-tracks-unionizat... (unpaywalled: http://archive.is/1khJw http://archive.is/1khJw) And in the strong Danish unions as far back as 1981 (https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-denmark/ https://mattbruenig.com/2021/09/20/when-mcdonalds-came-to-de...) when Denmark had only 3.02% of immigrants and their descendants (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark#Modern_minorities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Denmark#Modern...)

nerdponx 4y ago
> easier to find common interests and unite I think the idea is that there are common interests to be found, but borders artificially keep people apart, by segmenting up legal jurisdictions. For example, why Starbucks employees in Jersey City aren't all that different from Starbucks employees in New York City right across the river. > Whole Foods' heat map says lower rates of racial diversity increase unionization risks To what extent is this correlated with the economic security of their employees? Employees in wealthier areas (statistically correlated with whiter) might be more educated on average (which could be correlated with desire to unionize) and/or more likely to have a higher-income partner or family member (which means lower financial risk due to failure or being fired).
- nhchris 4y ago
  > borders artificially keep people apart GPS data shows how wolf packs carve out territory - https://bigthink.com/hard-science/wolf-gps/ https://bigthink.com/hard-science/wolf-gps/

vorpalhex 4y ago

It is literally easier to move a person than an entire company across national borders. The process for both is at it's core the same - identify, verify and pay your taxes. Yes people can and do move from Mexico to the Midwest all the time. Why do you think Mexican laborers should get paid less for building your car then someone in Detroit? Part of the goal of NAFTA is to help stabilize the economy of Mexico and help longterm reduce the severe violence in parts of the country.

wishysgb 4y ago
Legally it is very hard for a Mexican to move to the Midwest. As in almost impossible requiring almost 20years. I am not Mexican but it toke my family 14 years to be able to move to the US from Palestine, although my grandparents and uncles have been here since the 80s. It really isn't hard. A company doesn't need to move everything, they can just literally build a new factory or rent one else where, not only that they would even get tax breaks as incentives for moving. Borders enforce the huge discrimination in pay between TJ and San Diego. Even though the same companies work on both sides of the border.
- notch898a 4y ago
  I'm honestly astonished people even do it the legal way. It's not even a crime to overstay. One could easily set up shop in California, get an AB 60 driver license, live in a sanctuary area and have at it.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  For professional jobs, it is very easy for a Mexican or Canadian to move to the US and work. > The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) created special economic and trade relationships for the United States, Canada and Mexico. The TN nonimmigrant classification permits qualified Canadian and Mexican citizens to seek temporary entry into the United States to engage in business activities at a professional level. > Among the types of professionals who are eligible to seek admission as TN nonimmigrants are accountants, engineers, lawyers, pharmacists, scientists, and teachers. https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/tn-nafta-professionals https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary...

boh 4y ago

It's really bizarre that state sovereignty is just considered a business practice. No it's not a "modern invention" to "enact" borders. Nor does labor organizing have anything to do with its enforcement. Corporate-centric culture doesn't do well in explaining the world. I'd suggest a less narrow viewpoint.

vkou 4y ago
It's a modern (a 'temporary measure' enacted in WW1) invention to enact a passport-controlled system of travel and residency across the entire world. Border control prior to it was more focused on customs taxes, and in some countries, keeping undesirable races/religions out. We have decided the latter is wrong, so instead of directly banning, say, Chinese or Jewish immigration, we replaced it with quotas on country of birth/origin.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  We can go one step further and also say that the entire system of social welfare is a post-WW2 invention. Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves. Now the state just fucks everyone.
  - zamfi 4y ago
    > Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves Not...really? Unless by "state" you are broadly including the church and other philanthropy.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > Before WW2 the state only helped those who couldn’t help themselves. Through much of human history, the state largely 'helped' the aristocracy maintain a monopoly on wealth and power, through frequent applications of violence against their political enemies. In fact, in ~all non-democratic, and in many democratic societies, the state and the aristocracy - and thus, their interests, are often indistinguishable. But either way, what does any of that have to do with passport controls?
- 4y ago

908B64B197 4y ago

> The most common example for the Americans reading this is NAFTA, which makes workers in Detroit compete with workers in Mexico (suppressing wages in both location) And Canada, who's planning to give amnesty and permanent residency to half a million illegal migrants in the coming year. [0] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/immigration-ministry-regularization-program-1.6609144 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/immigration-ministry...

Forestessential 4y ago

You are wrong. Mexico-United States Border keeps Mexican labor and business from being more ferocious than American businesses in America. Borders have been protecting cultural states for a very long time in fact. 3200BC and before countries existed. It has and still does have alot to do with cultural tastes, and unlike how you expressed it, 'protecting the economy' from being formed against the wishes of the countries leaders. Borders come about for different reasons surely, but to reduce a border to an economic zone is just commie-aide.

remarkEon 4y ago

> Governments (at the behest of businesses) enforce borders so that labor cannot effectively organise. I have never heard this explanation. Where is it coming from? It sounds not only wrong but inverted to me. Governments enforce borders to effectively secure their territory and people, and thus its own power. Is the idea that, without the “legal fiction” of borders, we’d have some kind of global autoworkers Union or something?

nradov 4y ago
Indeed there is nothing stopping workers from organizing across borders, even if individual workers are only legally authorized to work in one country. Many labor unions have local chapters in multiple countries and can coordinate labor actions. For example, see the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which operates in the USA and Canada.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  It’s tricky. American unions avoid coordinating with their American counterparts because of corruption. Unions have a very specific set of rules to play by, and these rules are different for each country.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Huh? There is certainly corruption in some labor unions but that doesn't prevent them from coordinating with their counterparts in other unions. Even the most corrupt unions frequently back each other up in order to maximize negotiating power versus management.
    - pyuser583 4y ago
      I’m really sorry. I wanted to say American unions avoid coordinating with their Mexican counterparts. I was listening to an interviewer with a labor organizer on the US Mexican border who worked with new arrivals. He said the workers were used to unions from back in Mexico, but he had to spend lots of time educating folks about how things work in America. Mexican unions have a level of corruption unheard of in even the most corrupt US unions.

subsubzero 4y ago

This line of thinking trends very recently. Corporations are not everything despite what they and the media have you believe. Countries are defined by territory either hard won from conflict(war) or based on shared cultural leanings. Having citizenship is a privilege for many and in some countries it requires mandatory enlistment in the armed forces(Israel, South Korea).

someguydave 4y ago
That way of thinking collides with the idea that trade and immigration should be unfettered, especially if the benefits accrue to foreigners.
golemiprague 4y ago
[dead]

pjc50 4y ago

It's true that hard borders are a modernish (start of c20th) invention, but they're just as often something that labour asks for in order to prevent labour competition. "Taking our jobs" and all that. They're also products of both the information-state (being able to know who's in the country through identity document systems) and the jet age. Before the steamship the only real border enforcement was on trade at ports. The British Empire had "freedom of movement" that effectively lasted only as long as people weren't using it in significant numbers. People could move from the colonies to the centre, and indeed after WW2 the government actively solicited Jamaicans to do so (Empire Windrush), but resistance from the public has increased since then.

mtoner23 4y ago

Idk, i think borders exist to exclude other groups of peoples. this is why european countries kept splitting up on various racial groups (check and slovaks, all of yugoslavia) Businesses on the other hand would prefer to have access to all peoples. and to have access to cheaper or better labor wherever it is, giving us the success of the european union.

pessimizer 4y ago
> Idk, i think borders exist to exclude other groups of peoples. To exclude them from what? That's the question. You give one of the answers here: sometimes people would want to exclude them because they lower wages. But in reality, people who are alarmed by lower wages are rarely in the position to say anything about what happens at the border. The people who get a say about that are the people who are alarmed by higher wages.
nradov 4y ago
The differences between groups in the former Yugoslavia have little to do with race (as most Americans would understand the term). It's tough to tell the difference between a Croat and a Serb just by looking at them. Conflicts were based more on culture, religion, language, and perhaps something akin to "tribal" identity (not literally tribes but I don't know how else to describe it). Some of these conflicts date back to the 14th century. The only significant group in the region which some might identify as a distinct "race" are the Roma. That minority lives in all of the countries and they didn't cause countries to split up.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Albanians?

stronglikedan 4y ago

Maybe, but that's not the only reason. Borders are also enforced because you can't have open borders and social welfare programs.

andrekandre 4y ago
> you can't have open borders and social welfare programs this may sound simplistic/naive but cant you just tax those additional people to pay for those welfare? i guess the assumption is those people wouldnt be working?
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  It is more of a "long term experience" than mere "assumption". At least in Europe, a sizeable amount of illegal migrants has only very rudimentary education, and the # of job openings for unqualified people is very limited. Some literally cannot read even in their own language. As a result, immigrants from Africa and the Middle East are, on average, significantly overrepresented among welfare collectors and significantly underrepresented among taxpayers. Of course, as long as the numbers involved are tiny, you can try to educate at least their kids, but once a fairly low threshold is crossed, parallel societies develop in full. Having classrooms where 90 per cent of the kids don't even speak the official language of the country is quite an intractable problem. And that threshold beyond which the schooling system basically gives up has been crossed in many regions of many countries such as Sweden or France. TL;DR: You cannot maintain a modern welfare state with premodern population.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

> ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders […:] so that labor cannot effectively organise. You’re going to have to show up with some evidence for this claim. You’re not asserting that the outcome is a byproduct of borders, a happy accident useful to businesses. You’re asserting that the driving reason for the concept of a border is for businesses to disrupt organized labor.

somewhereoutth 4y ago

Which is why the EU single market has free movement of workers as one of its 4 central pillars. A major sticking point with Brexit - the UK wanted to be in the market without worker free movement (because immigrants)

MithrilTuxedo 4y ago

The United States is probably a more common example for Americans. The US Constitution makes the whole country a free trade zone between states. Borders between states are easily navigated by corporations, by design. Workers in Washington compete with workers in South Carolina. Manufacturers can freely move their plants around the US.

quacked 4y ago

Most of these types of articles take a "consumer" model of civilization: humans exist to consume, and the primary question is what they're going to consume and where they're going to do it. Labor exists as a phenomenon that enables future consumption, and QoL is measured by GDP per capita. "Countries" are an irrelevant social construct that inhibit free trade between interested, cooperative parties. This is a very limiting, privileged point of view of humanity. In reality Civilization is a mysterious art that requires cult-like adhesion to certain practices in order to "work". These economics-heavy libertarian open borders guys have absolutely no idea what to do when the power goes out for more than a week, or if they're personally wronged by a neighbor and the government won't get involved. It's a childish, first-world view of Man and Man's culture to assume that the only thing needed for Prosperity and Peace is economic competition administered and monitored by first-world-style democratic governments.

paradox242 4y ago

I am confused about your use of the word 'borders' in this context. As long as there have been states there has been a concept of sovereign territory and so there have been borders, even if it was somewhat fuzzy where exactly that line was in real space. Large companies are able to navigate the border issues because they are able to make deals with a government and can (at least promise) to bring in a lot of investment and wealth that the government might be able to realize in taxes, either directly from the company's revenues, or indirectly through other businesses and property that grows along with the company's investment. That company's can do this more effectively than individuals is less a function of some kind of cynical conspiracy to cut out of the worker (though that might be a side benefit that both sides appreciate), than it is a simple pragmatic response to the fact that it is much easier to deal with a small number of people about a large sum of money than it is with a large number of people about small sums of money. This is similar to why the U.S. government is so amenable to working so often with dictatorships to secure it's international interests. They can work with (or influence or bribe) a single person or small group to make large deals quickly and without having to worry about the messy politics and oversight associated with a democratic government that has to approve major policy decisions.

inglor_cz 4y ago

"a rather modern invention" Congestion charge is a rather modern invention as well, because the amount of cars in some city centers exceeded the tolerance of the locals and the capacity of the roads. Borders can be soft/open as long as a modest amount of people crosses them. In a world of 8 billion people and relatively cheap travel, open borders would result in massive flows of people into several desirable locations - whose citizens aren't happy about such prospects.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

>This line of thinking comes up often on HN but it ignores the central reason for governments to enact borders, a rather modern invention. Would you be kind and provide some scholarly proof for the rather modern invention? It might not have been called "border" and have the gate with digital IDs to pass by but well defined (for their time) territories existed for thousands of years as evidenced by territory disputes between bordering sovereign groups in all lived-on continents.

mikem170 4y ago
Not the parent you replied to, but the modern passport as we know it goes back only about 100 years. > Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience. But World War I brought harsh restrictions on freedom of movement. [0] > The concept of a worldwide passport standard is relatively new, created in the aftermath of the First World War. ...the United States at the turn of the last century emerges: a near constant rush of immigrants, most destined to pass through Ellis Island. There they were given a cursory disease check, questioned, and in most cases, allowed to proceed on their journeys inward. This was easy enough to do without a global standard for identifying documents. [1] > On the outbreak of the First World War, countries imposed border controls to block the entry of subversives and the exit of men with skills useful to the war effort. Passports were issued to allow travellers access through these restrictions. When peace came in 1918 most countries retained both border controls and passports. [2] There used to be more restrictions on commerce than on people. Now it is the opposite. Money can move freely across international borders, and labor has become something to arbitrage. [0] https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/ https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-meas... [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-history-of-the-passport https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/a-history-... [2] https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/when-passports-first-introduced/ https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/when-passports-...
- colonCapitalDee 4y ago
  I'm not convinced. Passports might be a modern invention (and really that isn't surprising, a global identification system requires sophisticated bureaucracy and cheap, accessible transportation), but that doesn't mean that people used to be able to move freely across borders. Modern technology makes immigration accessible to the masses in a way that simply wasn't the case in the pre-modern world. A few things you would have to consider before immigrating in the pre-modern world: - Where are you going? There's no internet, books are rare, and maps are inaccurate (and often plain wrong) - How will you get there? Transportation is expensive and unreliable - How will you preserve wealth? A global financial system accessible to normal folks does not exist yet - What will you do to support yourself? Pre-modern communication infrastructure makes scoping out foreign labor markets difficult - How will you learn the language? You'll have to find someone to teach it to you, instructional material will be limited - Who will you leave behind? Any family members that don't come with you will likely never be seen or heard from again - What if people decide you're not welcome? Well-enforced protections against discrimination do not exist yet People did immigrate, so obviously immigration was not impossible. Not all of these questions apply to every situation (people migrating to an adjacent country would not have to deal with many of these concerns). But immigration was far harder than it is today, and fraught with risk. Pre-modern borders were, by virtue of being pre-modern, effectively closed.