4 ms·

I think unrestricted travel on the planet should be a basic human right. There is something seriously wrong with someone telling another person he/she must not

• webwanderings 14y ago
  Amen.
• rb2k_ 14y ago
  At least in Germany, one of the considerations is that we provide a good amount of financial benefits. So while people moving over here probably wouldn't be that big of a problem, extending those benefits to people that never paid in would. On the other hand we also can't NOT pay them seeing as our constitutions first article is about the state protecting human dignity. This includes not living on the street or starving. That being said, the EU introduced the free movement of labor, so it's going at least in the right direction :)
  • Nux 14y ago
    Yes, state organisation seems to be conflicting with the idea of free travel as a basic human right. The free movement of labour, too, is not quite there yet, either, but as you said, at least the direction seems ok.
• dougk16 14y ago
  The thing that surprised me when I recently renewed my password was reading some fine print that said you can't even legally leave the U.S without a passport. Like I'm a prisoner here unless I have that piece of paper. I can understand requiring a passport before getting on an international flight or something, just as a practical matter, but the legal speak there somehow rubs me wrong. Unless there's more fine print to amend that fine print.
  • bcoates 14y ago
    I think the fine print is that short of a small list of exceptions US nationals are legally entitled to a passport. It's all symbolic anyway, given the broad economic dependence on the ability to anonymously cross US borders.
  • lurker14 14y ago
    If you want to hop in a boat and motor away, no one will stop you. But if you leave this country, you probably want to go into another country (the world is about out of wilderness), and what are you going to do when you get there, without a passport?
    • dougk16 14y ago
      But the fine print seems to say that they would stop you in principle, that is, if they knew about it and had enough resources to actually care. I'm not saying that they would...it's the principle itself that rubs me the wrong way. As a practical matter, I actually prefer that they check my passport before an international flight, just as a last reminder. Certainly wouldn't want to fly all the way to Japan thinking that I had my passport, then, whoops!
• foobar2k 14y ago
  The EU does a pretty good job of freedom of movemove, enshrined as one of the "Four Freedoms" of the EU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(European_Union) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(European_Union)
• lurker14 14y ago
  Free movement across borders is fundamentally incompatible with the other civic guarantees like anonymity and social welfare insurance. It's like the CAP theorem for humanity.
  • jessaustin 14y ago
    Well this hypothesized theorem is bunk, but in what sense do we have anonymity in the USA anyway?
• smsm42 14y ago
  Travel and green card are different things. The issue is that welfare state is fundamentally incompatible with free immigration (you can't tax American rich enough to keep 7 billion people on American standards of living, and even if you could, it wouldn't work politically). So travel, beyond terrorism concerns and so on, is not much of a problem. My passport, for example, allows me to travel all Europe and most of the Americas without ever asking any visas. Immigration though is a different matter.
  • jessaustin 14y ago
    Working immigrants, documented or not, pay far more in taxes than they extract in benefits. They all live somewhere, so their landlords pay property tax from their rent. They all buy things in stores, so they pay sales tax. Those who have fake Social Security numbers pay payroll taxes, but like all of us under 45 will never see a dime in return. I'm sure you can find some oddball exception like Obama's undocumented Auntie Z who lives high on the hog in some palatial public housing unit in Boston, but these indict stupid entitlement programs more than lax immigration. I'm not claiming that limiting entitlements to immigrants is in any way unfair. If they don't like the deal they can move back home. I do object to this topic as a specious support for the "War on Immigration".
    • smsm42 14y ago
      Working immigrants - yes. But if we allow free immigration with full access to welfare state benefits, it would create great incentive for people that can not or do not want to work to move into the US. Let's say you like to live in Elbonia, but you got sick and Elbonian healthcare sucks. So you move to America and sign up for health insurance (remember, we now prohibit insurance companies from charging high premiums an discriminating on the basis of existing conditions?) or get a free Medicare benefits. Or maybe, Elbonian government, being smart, even buys you a ticket - so you would not burden Elbonian welfare system but would burden American one. For how long such model would be sustainable for America? >>>> but these indict stupid entitlement programs more than lax immigration. That's my whole point - entitlement programs and free immigration can not coexist. We will have to choose one or the other. Most welfare states choose the former. >>>> I do object to this topic as a specious support for the "War on Immigration". There's no such thing. Thousands of people legally immigrate to US each year, and there's no serious politician that opposes immigration as such.