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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 get

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.
        fnordpiglet 4y ago
        It’s true, but the platform and framework of that fight is what has kept it stable over time. That is what we inherited. It’s also very fragile, and that’s where the contemporary fight happens to preserve it. But without the framework, the fight is a unstable and degenerates quickly into a pretty gnarly state. That’s why the founders struggled so hard - their writings at the time on these very subjects are profound and helpful in framing how lucky we are, but also how typical our problems are in history.
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!

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.
        fnordpiglet 4y ago
        It’s true, but the platform and framework of that fight is what has kept it stable over time. That is what we inherited. It’s also very fragile, and that’s where the contemporary fight happens to preserve it. But without the framework, the fight is a unstable and degenerates quickly into a pretty gnarly state. That’s why the founders struggled so hard - their writings at the time on these very subjects are profound and helpful in framing how lucky we are, but also how typical our problems are in history.

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!