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Really Bad Ideas, Part 7: Open Borders

Now that we’re all free to speak our minds (maybe we should we call this the “post-political-caution world”) a lot of previously discredited ideas have re-emerged and are being tossed into the debate – apparently without much thought to, for instance, their horrendous unintended consequences.

One such idea that’s, ahem, gaining a lot of currency lately is Modern Monetary Theory (previously known as currency debasement). Another, which seems even easier to dismantle, is open borders. But the emergent democratic socialist movement apparently takes it seriously. Here’s an excerpt from a representative article:

Progressives Should Support Open Borders — With No Apology

(Foreign Policy In Focus) – Supporting freedom of movement isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s a political winner for the left.

A genuine call for open borders is virtually absent from the debate between the White House and Capitol Hill, where the question has been not whether to militarize the border, but merely how many billions of dollars should be devoted to “border security,” or what specific physical infrastructure it should buy.

But open borders is more than an epithet for the right to attack its opponents with. It is a legitimate position, and the left should take it up as the only humane one.

Catching up with capital
For decades, critics of globalization have pointed out that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization—institutions that are shaped and dominated by the United States—have helped create a world where capital moves freely, while human beings are stuck at borders. Numerous “free trade” agreements have accelerated this trend.

As asylum seekers at the border confront metal barriers, surveillance drones and armed guards barring their entry, trucks, trains and boats bring a high volume of shipping containers into the United States each day. Ports of entry have perfected clearing these goods through customs efficiently, and policy makers have regulated (and deregulated) international commerce to make the process as easy as possible.

If only the people migrating from Central America and elsewhere were commodities instead of human beings, they would enter the United States painlessly, be handled with care by workers who are experts at transferring goods quickly and carefully, and then transported overnight to all corners of the country through extensive commercial distribution networks.

Commercial goods aren’t the only things that move freely across borders. The U.S. military carries out operations all over the world with such regularity that it’s not even considered newsworthy in the United States.

It’s bitterly ironic that Trump constantly describes migrants in the Central American Exodus as an “invasion,” when the United States has carried out so many actual invasions of that region — operations which bear great responsibility for destabilizing those societies and pushing so many people to come north in the first place.

The right to movement
Systems and governments that invest tremendously in perfecting the movement of commerce and violence across borders, while investing at similar scale to stop the movement of people, aren’t being simply hypocritical. They’re also violating a fundamental human right.

People have the right to move freely. Human migration, and migration particular to the Americas, predates the United States or its borders. Indeed, many of the people coming north from Central America are Indigenous, belonging to groups of people whose histories stretch far before that of the U.S. nation-state.

The right to freedom of movement becomes only more important as growing numbers of people become uprooted and displaced. Conflicts over control of the planet’s resources, economic policies that devastate people the world over, and climate change — which creates more disasters and makes parts of the world uninhabitable for everyday life—are all increasing.

With those dynamics, the responsibility of governments to honor people’s freedom to move only grows, too—as does that of ordinary people to defend that right.

New political possibilities
We are living in a time, not only of darkness and repression, but also political possibility.

Medicare for All, previously a marginalized demand in the United States (though existing in practice throughout much of the world) is now a central demand of mainstream liberal politics.

The slogan “Abolish ICE” — first raised by grassroots migrant justice activists and lifted up by the Democratic Socialists of America — has been brought into official U.S. politics and even carried onto Capitol Hill by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The slogan has become so potent that the president and vice president have had to go out of their way to denounce it—something Trump did again in the most recent State of the Union.

Meanwhile, the majority of people in the United States oppose Trump’s wall. And three-quarters of Americans recently told pollsters they think immigration is “a good thing.”

These facts — evidence of a complicated political terrain, but one that has much promise for progressives and the left — show why supporting “border security” rather than centering the rights of migrants in the conversation about migration is not only wrong. It’s also out of step with the progressive trend in U.S. politics.

While demanding open borders may seem like a marginal position in U.S. politics now, keep in mind that “build the wall” was on the fringe until recently.

Let’s consider some of the above:

Is there actually a “fundamental human right of movement”? Or is this one of those “it would be nice if” kinds of things that conflict with other “it would be nice” things to present us with trade-offs involving difficult choices. Specifically, giving people from places without social safety nets the “right” to move unimpeded to places with social safety nets could (actually will without doubt) result in massive increases in demand for, and cost of, education, housing and health care for host country taxpayers.

Given their high cost and unpredictable timing, are open borders really “a political winner for the left”? This takes us back to our newly wide-open political debate in which everyone’s fever dreams now get equal time. In any large society there are people who believe that invading and subjugating every country that steps out of line is a great idea, that printing unlimited amounts of paper currency increases national wealth, that secret government spying programs make us “more free,” that workers produce all the value inherent in a given product while capital adds zero value (therefore if we just nationalize all the big companies and fire the capitalists…). It goes on and on, because the fringes of society host a near-infinite number of reasonable-sounding but ultimately crazy ideas.

A decade ago, most such policies were only discussed seriously in Marxism seminars and militia compounds, for good reason: The average non-ideologue can spot their fatal flaws pretty quickly.

But now these ideas’ fans only have to preface them with “in the world’s richest country we ought to be able to…” and the glow of unlimited spendable cash turns ideological sow’s ear into mainstream political silk purse.

So open borders could indeed, for a little while, attract some votes. But not for long because the fatal flaw – millions of immigrants swamping public services – will be both easy to explain and hard to defend in debates.

And if it open borders somehow survive electoral scrutiny and end up being enacted, the resulting chaos will give the policy a very short lifespan – much shorter than, say, Prohibition.

But wait, don’t a lot of libertarians also favor open borders? They do indeed, but with the explicit (maybe even gleeful) understanding that free movement of people from developing to developed world will swamp – and thus end – the latter’s social safety nets, an outcome libertarians like because welfare, Medicaid etc., are not legitimate functions of government. So in this case progressives and libertarians are natural allies only for the first phase of open borders.

The other posts in the Really Bad Ideas series are here.

 

Emigrate While You Still Can

8 thoughts on "Really Bad Ideas, Part 7: Open Borders"

  1. Would a company hire anyone that snuck into their building?
    That’s what America has been doing as a country for decades.

    I flew back from California this evening. That state is rich on paper only. Everything is old and run down. As we drove over a seemingly endless stream of potholes my Uber driver told me that most working people need 2 jobs to pay rent. The apartments are small and shabby. He thinks about leaving the state every day.

  2. So what’s up with the news black out about the amnesty the President just signed? We can suppose the media just doesn’t know what to do with that story? How about the 72 million immigrants legalized in America since 1980, or aren’t we suppose to know, or think about that either? OBTW: the newest caravan is at the border lining up 2/21/19 for (1) a child and (2) amnesty based on proximity to said child. Thanks again Mr.President for not securing the border.

    In perspective, the question we need to be asking is whether or not the purpose of Trump’s presidency is to make America great again for billionaires to do business as usual. Or was it Trump’s purpose to put America First for Wall Street’s planned redistribution of America to third world immigrants in general and Central American pond scum in particular?

    And don’t bother to blame Congress, Pelosi, Republicans, or Democrats.Trump is President and he is commander in chief of the Armed Forces. If he ever intended to secure the border he would have sealed it using the military and began negotiations from there.
    The American people are being played while the country continues to slip away. I can barely read and write and even I can see that much.

    ===============

    The President just signed a trick bill, which no one bothered to read, or so we are told. It is amnesty that is now on solid, legal ground & not any emergency declaration that we need to concern ourselves with. The wall has been rendered moot. The Trump Administration
    has once again shot itself in the foot, managed to further imperil the nation, if not finally destroy it. This time it is all the result of a simple lack of due diligence. Was it just a rookie mistake, or more insider treachery and still another betrayal?

    Of course, there remains a sure fire way out, one last chance to save America, but it would involve truly committed leadership willing to take bold & decisive action. Unfortunately, the President doesn’t appear capable of functioning in such a manner. He doesn’t appear to understand the nature of the struggle. He is seemingly incapable of acting in meaningful ways when it comes to defending our borders, or dealing with illegal immigration. Conjecture might suggest the President suffers from weak bowel syndrome, which would explain why his pants are always down around his ankles when we get to the border.

    Despite whatever laudable qualities, talents & intentions he may have, the country continues to slip from our grasp. We are losing. Steve Miller, an Administration hard liner devastated Chris Wallace’s arguments, phony assertions & falsely premised statements
    on Sunday TV, but neither Miller’s understandings brilliantly delivered, nor the President’s tweets and rallies are enough. Tactical maneuvers in & of themselves while necessary, are insufficient. If the President truly intends to save America, he would do that, which must be done with incisive tenacity & determination.

    America’s survival, as an independent, sovereign & culturally whole, historic entity is the issue. Should the President prove unable to protect and preserve the nation’s territorial integrity, his entire Presidency becomes just some personal, vanity, retirement project and a tune up for the nation’s financial masters.

    America’s struggle is existential, to be, or not to be. Make no mistake. The globalist plan consists in large part of a giant redistribution of America’s middle class assets. That’s our country & our assets, our jobs, wealth, standard of living, values & Christian belief systems that these globalists intend to redistribute to third world immigrants. If I can tell you what how to stop it, then real question becomes: why can’t the President?

  3. Sierra Club supports the Democratic Party which supports unrestricted immigration. Unrestricted immigration means damage to the environment. They also support abortion because less people means less impact on the environment. How can the left reconcile the two?

    The left supports free Medical Care and free College Education, free Housing, free food to all. They also support open borders. That means that the left supports free Medical Care and free College Education (and all other free stuff) to all in the Western Hemisphere and the whole World who want to come here. Since billionaires are ALWAYS those who make the laws (with loopholes for themselves), that means the middle class will support all these expenses. In other words, they vote themselves into poverty – will have few billionaire overlords and everyone else EQUALLY poor (like in Mexico).

    The ubber rich (0.001%) also support these, because they want more slaves on their plantation. They know very well that they are not going to pay for it; a clear example is Bezos from Amazon (no taxes paid). There will be free market and competition for the poor wages and socialism for the cronies well connected to the FED.

  4. The progressives’ open-borders philosophy is in direct conflict with its global warming hysteria. People living in Central America have low standards of living; their consumption is correspondingly meager, and so are their carbon footprints. When Central Americans (or others from poor countries) move to the United States, they increase their standard of living — as well as their carbon footprints. If millions of migrants make this move, they will make it more difficult for the U.S. to reduce carbon consumption.

    One would expect to see some cognitive dissonance on the Left. Brains should be exploding as they try to reconcile these two core elements of dogma. But there’s nothing….

    1. Look, “liberalism is a mental disorder” (Michal Savage). Liberals
      themselves, besides being intellectually bankrupt, live with “cognitive
      dissonance” (aka hypocrisy) every day.

      Also, remember there are two camps on every liberal issue: those who actually believe in such-and-such and those who use those sheep for their own advantages. I guarantee you that the sheep will never make the connection you do (increased immigration to the US increases carbon use), and those who know better will simply use the increase in carbon generation as evidence and an excuse for more taxes and regulation, which effectively increases their power.

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    2. This is about globalism for the globalist, corporate, one world, business plan & as far as the left is concerned it is just another way to be anti American.

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