
When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas - infodroid
http://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-need-passports-or-visas-64847
======
wtbob
I'm reminded of this famous piece by A.J.P. Taylor:

'Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life
and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the
policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official
number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever
without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his
money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods
from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home.
For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without
permit and without informing the police.'

It's hard to believe how much we've given up.

~~~
anovikov
It's simply a replacement of informal barriers with formal ones, plus
compensation of the lowering of travel and communication costs due to
technology: someone who traveled abroad in the XIXth century was either well-
off so he would pass any currently existing barriers easily, or really really
needed it so he would do it, too. With international air ticket worth less
than a good meal, some other barrier had to be constructed or all modern
nations would be quickly razed by influx of billions destitute immigrants.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _With international air ticket worth less than a good meal_

Jesus Christ, where are you getting your lunch from?

~~~
frobozz
Ryanair, I guess. Verona to Brussels is 8 Euros. A "meal deal" on the plane is
10.

~~~
chrischen
Why doesn't the US have such fares?

~~~
Symbiote
These fares do require decent flexibility -- for tourist destinations, you
won't be leaving on a Friday and returning on Sunday. The £4.49 flight between
London and Romania is on a Wednesday, on a Friday it's £60-70.

Ryanair use the low fares for marketing, pretty successfully. They probably
expect many people to add luggage (£10-40, depending on route), or buy food on
the plane (£10+) or be disorganized and end up paying more.

In Western/Northern Europe they use out-of-the-way airports -- London Stansted
is 47 minutes by the fastest train from London, or over an hour by car. They
have a reputation for reducing the fees they pay the airport by threatening to
move to alternative airports, unless they're given a very good deal. People
walk to the plane, they don't use jet bridges. The whole plane is economy
class, and the seats plasticy-fake-leather, which must speed up cleaning. At
airports, they'll usually use the worst (farthest) gates. All the planes are
the same, so maintenance is simplified and pilots easily moved around.

As to why the US doesn't have them -- I don't know. Norwegian is a budget
airline, and has fares like New York to Paris for $175 one way (Tuesday, no
luggage, no food!).

~~~
United857
Spirit and Allegiant are probably the closest US equivalents. Totally no
frills, and you pay for everything including hand luggage and water.

------
ChicagoBoy11
I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider
themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these
restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place
with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying
restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the
single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is absolutely
inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and
total freedom of movement. I think this is the one thing that I believe in
most strongly in all of my life -- I am confident that in the future --
perhaps many, many centuries from now -- we will look at these things with the
same eyes with which we look at slavery in the past.

~~~
CalRobert
I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about
unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of
course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is
one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or
pensions, that made sense.

HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country,
maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic
income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an
incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive
to enjoy those benefits? Do you:

* Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens?

* Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes?

* Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers?

Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with
substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the
original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can
understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural
norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of
ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees
from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)

~~~
yummyfajitas
If helping people is what we care about, perhaps we should consider whether
unrestricted immigration or basic income/other welfare state policies will
help more. From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can
come even remotely close to the benefits of open borders. It kind of makes one
wonder whether helping people is the real goal of BI proponents.

As for the "sudden influx," I think it's important to recognize what the real
problem is. In Europe, Muslim immigrants seem to rape and commit other crimes
a lot more than natives.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-
apart-o...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-open-
door-migrants-Sweden-seen-Europe-s-liberal-nation-violent-crime-soaring-Far-
Right-march-reports-SUE-REID.html)

I say "seem to" because stats on this are notoriously hard to come by. For
example, Sweden censors that data in their crime statistics. Similarly,
various police agencies seem to ignore crimes in order to avoid seeming
racist.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/12/swedish-
police-investigating-alleged-officer-led-coverup-of-sexual-assaults-by-
migrants/?tid=a_inl)

[https://www.rt.com/news/328465-police-500-assaults-
cologne/](https://www.rt.com/news/328465-police-500-assaults-cologne/)

I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a credible
plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a problem.

NYC and London have faced a sudden influx of foreigners over the past 15 years
but no one really cares. Why worry about some Indian or Russian working at a
bank, doing yoga after work and then going home?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a
> credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a
> problem.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? If the immigrants are all "some Indian or
Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home" then
we're fine, but unrestricted immigration would mean accepting the violent
criminals, or racists, or foreign agents under orders to move to strategic
voting districts etc.

> From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come
> even remotely close to the benefits of open borders.

Open borders make competition much more aggressive. A complete lack of
competition is inefficient, but competition within borders is generally
adequate for that, especially when the border is the size of the US or the EU.

Sufficiently aggressive competition produces local maxima. It means no one has
any margins to invest in the future. It erodes the tax base because taxes have
to come only out of discretionary income or people will starve, but with
enough competition employers can pay subsistence wages. And consumers making
subsistence wages are price sensitive which drives down the margins of
businesses. This is all very "efficient" \-- it's the thing competition is
"good at" \-- except that it means there is no money for people to go to
college or do any R&D that won't pay out in the current fiscal year or
anything like that.

Borders artificially reduce competition somewhat. That isn't always bad.

A basic income helps with this. It gives people unconditional money that they
can use to _escape_ the local maxima created by aggressively competitive
markets. Then those people can go to college and invent medicines and
technologies that benefit people on the other side of the border.

That works better than everyone being "equal" because everyone is making
subsistence wages.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous
inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term
business investments.

Is there any reason why that argument doesn't apply to inequality _within_ a
country as well?

In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous
> inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term
> business investments.

Having some amount of inequality is the only way it's _possible_ to have long
term business investments -- or any investments at all. Because we need
doctors, engineers and businessmen but also miners, truck drivers and
janitors. These professions will never have equal status, and it will always
take more resources to train an engineer than a janitor, but it isn't "fair"
that one person gets to be the engineer while another has to be the janitor.
Yet that unfairness is inherently necessary if we want to have engineers.

> In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade
> barriers?

The goal is to have a moderate amount of competition. Too much and everyone is
making subsistence wages and no one can afford to go to college (and your
government has no tax revenue to subsidize it). Too little and the inequality
becomes unnecessarily excessive (which is, among other things, inefficient).

Notice that there are two different kinds of competition here. Between
employees we have quite enough already, because employees largely aren't
organized. But competition between business entities is currently on the low
side. Compare e.g. the market share of Facebook in the market for social media
with the market share of an individual Facebook employee in the market for
software developers.

So the questions have different answers. The sweet spot for employees seems to
be no restrictions within the US/EU but restrictions between countries. For
business entities even the trade barriers between countries seem to restrict
competition too much. (Or at least, a lack of trade barriers doesn't
inherently lead to ruinous competition there, because there are other factors
inhibiting competition between businesses.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we
impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to
American levels? Similarly, India should perhaps split herself into US-sized
chunks, and Biharis shouldn't be allowed to migrate to Bombay? (Shiv Sena
would love this.)

Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade
barriers to keep our size down to the optimum?

This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to
correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have
hugely different sizes.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
But India _does_ have a problem with excessive competition keeping wages low.
The rest of the EU might actually be better off with fewer countries in it
(e.g. without Greece). Measures to keep the US population stable rather than
growing could be beneficial.

And there are obviously political considerations. Nobody is going to let you
carve up national borders over this, so we're stuck with the existing borders
even if that isn't 100% perfectly optimal. Estimating the optimal size is
going to be at the "orders of magnitude" level anyway.

------
J-dawg
The UK has obviously seen a lot of debate about immigration recently, around
the Brexit referendum. I've often felt like non-EU immigration was the
elephant in the room during all this.

'Leave' voters have often been portrayed as racist bigots by liberal 'Remain'
voters. (I'm one of the latter, and I've been guilty of this myself at times).

But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a
racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have
special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is
subjected to ever harsher visa rules?

I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's possible to make the liberal
case for EU freedom of movement without being something of a hypocrite. And I
say this as a (confused) Remain voter.

EDIT: Before anyone says, I know there is more to the EU debate than just
immigration, and that not all Remainers are liberal/lefty, just as Leavers are
not all right wing. But there's no denying that immigration was the main issue
on many (most?) voters minds.

~~~
sheepz
Please stop using the word 'racist' where it does not apply. The freedom of
movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but on the citizenship
of any of the Schengen Area countries. "Xenophobic" is a much better term
here.

Furthermore, where does it say that the freedom of movement is due to some
ideology which considers all nationalities to be equal, rather than just being
a policy to improve the welfare and trade between EU members?

~~~
MarkMc
> The freedom of movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but
> on the citizenship of any of the Schengen Area countries.

That's true, but can't it still be considered racist? It may not be direct,
intentional racism, but the net result of UK policy is that white people can
enter the UK much easier than black or brown people.

If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, isn't that a sexist
hiring policy?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, is that a sexist
> hiring policy?

Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?

If you require loan applicants to have income sufficient to make the loan
payments, and that is true of more white applicants than black applicants, is
that a racist policy?

~~~
zo1
>" _Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?_ "

Side note: Not sure about better, but definitely get paid more according to
some studies.

------
the_mitsuhiko
Passports and citizenship in many ways are the most unfair thing in the world
as your place of birth influences what you can do in life.

For many of us the idea of having a bad passport is only theoretical in nature
but it decides many things in life for others and sets stupid arbitrary
ceilings that should not exist.

~~~
bisRepetita
I find that Chris Rock has the best summary of it with his "I'm American"
routine: "What, you think you’re better than somebody from France ’cause you
came out of a pussy in Detroit?"

Nothing specifically American about it though. Many people in France think
they're better than Syrian refugees because they're born from a pussy in
Paris.

Full transcript:
[http://www.cswap.com/2004/Chris_Rock:_Never_Scared/cap/en/25...](http://www.cswap.com/2004/Chris_Rock:_Never_Scared/cap/en/25fps/a/00_36)

~~~
tarancato
The ancestors of that pussy in Paris built an advanced society with equal
rights, education, respect, etc. That's why people born from a French pussy
deserve that, while people from other societies do not.

Is it our fault that other people that have had the same hundreds of years to
build advanced societies haven't done it? Do we have to literally live worse
because of it?

~~~
wreft
People from other societies deserve all these good things too. Uncontrolled
immigration may not be the best way to achieve this though.

~~~
tarancato
No they do not deserve anything they and their ancestors haven't worked for.
Nobody just "deserves" anything.

~~~
lordnacho
> Nobody just "deserves" anything.

A few comments up you're saying the French deserved their stuff because their
ancestors worked for it.

~~~
tarancato
Nobody just "deserves" anything [just for being born. Someone has to work hard
for everything]

~~~
turar
Yet you claimed precisely that a few comments above.

~~~
NetStrikeForce
Cognitive dissonance.

------
jstanley
A large majority of people view me as a crackpot when I say passports should
be abolished, and free men ought to be able to travel the planet freely.

It never occurred to me that the world was like this as recently as 100 years
ago!

~~~
CalRobert
I suspect it has a lot to do with the rise of relatively cheap global travel
and strong disparity in the median wealth of different nations. 100+ years ago
could you travel from a poor country to a wealthy country with relative ease
and expect to raise your own standard of living? Either the journey was
expensive and arduous, or the situation in places you could travel to was not
likely to be a massive improvement on your own. There are very strong
exceptions of course; Irish people leaving the famine come to mind, but it
pretty much came to people dying to push them to make the trip.

Also, 100+ years ago an immigrant was less likely to be viewed as a burden,
because there were fewer (if any) government supports for regular citizens.
I'm pretty left politically, but I acknowledge that the more government spends
on its people the less likely the government (and the voters) are to be
inclined to let newcomers in who are not immediate contributors.

~~~
jrockway
States in the US have different laws (consider income tax rates), and travel
inside the US is super cheap, but we don't see people migrating like crazy to
avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government.

~~~
wtbob
> we don't see people migrating like crazy

Yes we do! How many people do you know who were born in the state you now live
in?

I don't think one person in my office was born in this state.

~~~
oconnor663
I think "to avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government" was an
essential condition on what you just quoted. And for what it's worth I think I
agree -- I don't think I know anyone who has moved to a state mainly for tax
reasons. (Though I do know people who have _avoided_ moving to California,
allegedly because of taxes.)

Though maybe the fact that people _can_ move to take advantage of state
giveaways, is a big constraint on the way they're currently designed? What
conditions does Alaska put on its Permanent Fund payments?

------
insickness
This discussion is synonymous with whether countries should even have borders.
If borders aren't policed, they may as well not even exist.

It would be great if all people were kind and caring, if there were no
corruption, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, crime or discrepancies in
standards of living. But we've seen over and over that the road to hell is
paved with good intentions. The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a
good example of that.

~~~
icebraining
_The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a good example of that._

Is it? Are illegal immigrants more likely to cause problems that both natives
and legal immigrants? From what I can tell, at least the attacks that make the
news have all been perpetrated by people born and raised in Europe.

EDIT: [http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased-
crim...](http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased-crime-rate-
in-germany/a-18848890)

~~~
tdkl
Cologne rape happened after this article, so did the massacres in France and
Germany.

~~~
icebraining
Which of the massacres were perpetrated by refugees or illegal immigrants?

The Nice attack was made by a legal immigrant, living in France for more than
a decade. The Brussels ISIL cell members were almost all born in Belgium,
France or Sweden. The Charlie Hebdo shooters were born in France, as was the
guy who took those hostages in the supermarket. The Munich shooter was born in
Germany.

Which ones am I missing?

~~~
pzh
Born in France doesn't mean socially and culturally integrated. Many of these
attackers were children of immigrants who either didn't integrate because of
their own cultural beliefs or because the host society didn't provide the
necessary conditions. Whatever the reason, these people didn't feel like they
belong to the host societies and radicalized. If anything, these attacks are
examples of unsuccessful integration and of the failures of free movement and
immigration of people of radically different cultural beliefs, and not the
other way around.

------
danidiaz
In his book "Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars" [1]
historian Paul Fussell devotes a whole chapter to "The Passport Nuisance":

> As a fixture of the european scene since 1915, the passport now seems so
> natural that one forgets the shock and scandal it once occasioned. Robert
> Byron is one who treated his with a due contempt. In the space asking about
> "Any special peculiarities," he entered "Of Melancholy appearance," and in
> the square reserved for a photograph of bearer's wife he drew a ludicrous
> cartoon, "resulting," Anthory Powell recalls, "in the document being
> withdrawn."

[1]
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154471.Abroad](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154471.Abroad)

------
zwieback
When I read Dickens I'm always surprised how citizens could get locked out of
their own city walls at night or would bribe the watchman to "forget" that
they've seen the villain or hero pass the gate.

I think in the past there were much more restrictive laws in place at times,
other times maybe more lax.

------
wodenokoto

        >But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a 
        >passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to 
        >the global conditions that prevailed before the start of 
        >the first world war.
    

I wish the article was more detailed about what was/is considered changed in
the global condition.

------
Havoc
I'm fine with the controls part, but can't we at least get rid of the paper
documents? People just lose them anyway.

Surely a combination of say retina + finger + voice etc would provide more
security than could ever be needed...

~~~
fijal
I think the whole point of the article is to showcase that maybe you don't
NEED all this additional security. I purposefuly try to avoid going to the US
because of the security and bureaucracy involved in crossing this border in
the first place

~~~
the_mitsuhiko
In particular because the number one cause of illegal immigration in the US is
visa overstaying. So how exactly are the passports or visas helping that case?

