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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That includes arrest records, not just convictions. About 3% of the population has served any time in prison, and about 8% of the population have been convicted of a felony.
Are you familiar with the US immigration system? That is exactly what they consider in criminal history. What they examine includes arrests, not just convictions, so it's precisely the stat we want.
See form I-485 for PR:
24. Have you EVER been arrested, cited, charged, or detained for any reason by any law enforcement officer (including but not limited to any U.S. immigration official or any official of the U.S. armed forces or U.S. Coast Guard)?
I'm not sure what we're talking about if you're excluding non-convicted arrests, but it aint immigration.
Illegal crossing is generally a civil offense (I.e., misdemeanor). Generally, deportation is not an offense that prohibits you from entering again legally.
What programs like Operation Streamline do is take advantage of the fact that immigrants dont understand the legal system and, under the guise of a speedier procedure, effectively coerce immigrants to acquiesce to a criminal conviction. This actually does prevent them from coming legally at a later date once deported.
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.
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!"
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Paraguay up until recently required a ~5k deposit but they dropped even that. In Argentina "technically" you're supposed to follow a bunch of rather restrictive resident visa pathways but few do that and you can file for citizenship immediately upon landing and until your case is finished cannot be deported. The requirements are basically live there for 2 years and show you had some income, but by judge shopping some allow black market income lol.
Others of note: Bolivia and Somaliland only require a token payment for a 1 year resident visa (think in Bolivia you only need do that 2 or 3 times to become PR or citizen). If you have a bit more cash several places like honduras / nicoragua / ecuador only require ~30k "investment" which is basically accessible (eventually) to anyone middle class+ with enough determination. When I went to Rojava they also accept basically anyone as they are a "people without a nation" who happen to have sort of a nation.
And then there's weev, who posts here on occasion. I think he got a Transnistria passport, which is obtainable after only a year of residence. It's my understanding residency is as easy as going to a hotel and asking to talk to the right people about getting a resident permit, and paying some moderate fees.
If you're not too discriminating pretty much anyone can emigrate from the US forever with very little capital.
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.
In the last 70 years alone we've added over 5 billion people. In the 1800s there were vast swaths of temperate, fertile land that were basically unclaimed. Moving around was no big deal at that scale.
Now we have people everywhere (that doesn't suck; and even some places that do). We have social programs and expensive infrastructure. The world is very different now than even 100 years ago.
What is the end result? Something like you are to reside in this town an we'll let you out twice a year for vacation and XMas? Want to move to other city - there is a waiting list 10 years long.
Maybe if the entire world reaches a broadly similar level of human development, including comparable levels of infrastructure and social support, migration can be opened up quite a bit.
But right now it would simply mean that developed nations would see a flood of people immigrating just to get those great services, and it would crush their system. So we need controls to keep the change manageable and ensure that the tax base scales appropriately to maintain the expected levels of service.
>"Controlled migration for the foreseeable future."
Never mind migration. Even travel gets worse. We've had relatively frictionless travel between first world countries. Now it it only 3 month instead of 6 and online visas like ESTA. So it does not seem to get any better and does not correlate so "comparable levels".
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?
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-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.
At the time I’m talking about the cause of the famine was an extreme drought, and all sorts of other problems as you allude to. More than population growth was war and instability - all great reasons to migrate if you could, but the lack of food is an even more common and compelling reason to migrate throughout human history regardless of the reason.
I didn’t assert the west should unilaterally open their borders. I stated that borders are inhuman - as humans are naturally migratory. Taking that to the real world, that would mean their neighbors should open borders as well - not just to Ethiopians, but to everyone.
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.
The same way you would with a bigger population for any reason. There’s an added bonus that if rights erode, people can simply leave to somewhere less oppressive. People can’t leave oppressive places due to borders. Less oppressive places may become oppressive but that would drive people elsewhere.
I’d use the US as an example. In a real sense the US is a collection of small countries with a federal system and free right of migration. For this discussion the federal system is irrelevant. How does California or New York or other high populace states ensure erosion of rights? I’d posit part of the very reason they’re so attractive is they tend to hold rights very high on their list of priorities. More oppressive states, likewise lose populace to migration because unless you’re in the in group you don’t belong there.
Cultural erosion is IMO nativism and bias. Time is change, no culture is static, and even our oldest cultures are young compared to humanity and look nothing like they did 100 years ago. Changing populace doesn’t change a culture any more than time does, it’s just easier to blame someone that doesn’t look or talk like you for it.
Your examples of mainland Chinese citizens or Americans moving around are only relevant because the issue of borders to begin with. If there were permeable borders we would be in a steady state and you wouldn’t see behaviors like that. Maybe in the beginning you would see artifacts of history manifest weird transient behaviors, as you do in any suddenly changed dynamical system. But in steady state your scenarios would be as likely as all democrats moving to Georgia to change the election. It sounds good but in practice didn’t happen.
Are you implying that non natives are inherently better than natives?
One of the hallmarks of declining empires is importing people - not to say those people are better or worse, but mixing diverse peoples together is extremely hard. It has to be done slowly and carefully.
> Changing populace doesn’t change a culture any more than time does
I don’t see how you can look at the history of anyone anywhere and believe this.
No, that’s a false dichotomy. You are implying by that false dichotomy that one is greater than the other. Until very recently in human history one would be the same as the other. That is what I am saying. Being born in a location has nothing to do with being better or worse. It’s just a random occurrence. What makes a person better than another is how they live their life, not the circumstances of their birth.
While I don’t disagree mixing of diverse people can be hard, I would simply point to American history as an example of how the empire you seem to laud was built by mixing peoples relentlessly. In fact immigrants tend to be the drivers of American growth, while the native born… not so much.
I find it fascinating you think culture doesn’t change with time, but with the mixing of different people into a culture only. What culture has been unchanged with time? Language itself mutates constantly, how can a culture be static with time? How does it stay static? The people in the culture change with every birth and every death, the memory of the culture is wiped out every 100 years. Written histories are a poor tool of continuity for something as complex as a culture. Human beings themselves change radically over the course of their lives. All things are impermanent, but human culture isn’t just impermanent, it’s an illusion.
I guess it’s safe to assume you think genetics has no impact on life outcomes and/or there aren’t significant genetic differences between geographically (by ancestor) populations?
> What makes a person better than another is how they live their life, not the circumstances of their birth.
Their genetics dictate how they live their life. Environment can have an affect, but genes dictate how you react to your environment (unless you believe in God etc).
> I would simply point to American history as an example of how the empire you seem to laud was built by mixing peoples relentlessly.
Compared to the last 50 years or so these immigrants were all very similar both in history and genetics. And even then it’s been a rough ride! I agree immigrants can be great as long as they are carefully selected for.
> I find it fascinating you think culture doesn’t change with time, but with the mixing of different people into a culture only.
Cultures absolutely change over time but the rate of change is much slower than if you introduce a new people from vastly different cultures. It’s the shearing force applied by the differences that’s the issue. If it’s too powerful something has to give.
No, I don’t believe in racial superiority. I also don’t believe genetics plays a great role in overall outcomes in life, otherwise known as eugenics. I think that in a population genetic attributes are fairly regular with small specific variances that aren’t enough to make one fitter in any dimension. On an individual level genetics can contribute towards specific traits, including to some degree intelligence and anxiety of mental illness. However the magic of the plasticity of the human brain is that it can, with effort, overcome virtually any impediment. I’d also point out that the more homogeneous the genetic population the worse overall outcomes tend to be. “Hybrid vigor” is a real thing and only comes from broad mixing of the genetic pools. So, yes, I think science is total against the idea of racial superiority not just out of its repugnant but just false and furthermore given the homogeneity issue impossible.
I never claimed one race was superior to the other - just different (and these differences make cultural cohesion difficult).
> However the magic of the plasticity of the human brain is that it can, with effort, overcome virtually any impediment
That’s quite the claim depending on how you define impediment, but as is this statement is too vague to argue with.
> I’d also point out that the more homogeneous the genetic population the worse overall outcomes tend to be.
Again this is a very vague statement where the degree of variation matters. Hybrid vigor is poorly understood and when the differences are too great result in genetically worse offspring on some axis (mules are a perfect example of this).
> So, yes, I think science is total against the idea of racial superiority not just out of its repugnant but just false and furthermore given the homogeneity issue impossible.
I’ve made no claims of superiority and you’re taking a holier than though stance against the straw man you made up. Please leave the emotional appeals out.
I didn’t say you did. I said I didn’t, and it was led to by this:
> I guess it’s safe to assume you think genetics has no impact on life outcomes and/or there aren’t significant genetic differences between geographically (by ancestor) populations?
This idea that genetics impacts life out comes at a population level is racial superiority, assuming you give some outcome as being qualitatively better. I don’t know how you can cut it any differently.
I definitely don’t think that genetics has any influence though on cultural adaptation. That’s entirely environmental. See adopted children from international cultures raised in a foreign culture from birth. They culturally identical while racially different.
On plasticity, I mean even granting some genetic difference that impacts some degree of adaption to some cultural normal, the brains ability to adapt even given such major structural issues like brain damage make small things like cultural adaption simple. In fact I expect given how much migration happened throughout history it’s an evolutionary necessity to be able to adapt culturally.
How is it different than the EU? I mean the alliance is stronger, and the EU is closer to the original Articles of Confederation the US was bound under. But aren't Germany and France separate nations... that we call different US states, and EU nations it's a very similar alliance.
> 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!
> 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.
~$300 per capita would be nothing in Switzerland ($92,434) or in America ($75,180). But it's a lot in Cuba ($9,500) simply because the government did mess up the economy so bad.
