
How did we come to be so certain that closed borders are our salvation? (2013) - trextrex
http://openborders.info/blog/how-did-we-come-to-be-so-certain-that-closed-borders-are-our-salvation/
======
mynameishere
Shrug. At least they're somewhat open about their politics. That's better than
most mass-immigration cheerleaders, who make-believe they care about border
security and what not. Standard straw man though. "Salvation"? No one ever
mentioned "Salvation". No one. "Sanity", yes.

It's not really an issue that warrants a lot of study, in my view. If the
Guatemalan government is happy to see its peasants swarm to the United States,
they can probably be trusted as authorities on the value of said peasants. A
humanitarian could only say "These people are beneficial!" than he would
immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back."
That has never happened.

~~~
MJuliusKing
" A humanitarian could only say 'These people are beneficial!" than he would
immediately realize, "And Guatemala needs them more than us. Send them back.'
"

Faulty logic. One of the biggest reasons for supporting liberalized
immigration is that it lets people move to the areas where they are most
productive. People in Guatemala become massively more productive when they
move to the USA, which earns them higher wages and makes them better off
(along with others who benefit from more production).

This website itself endorses that reasoning:

[http://openborders.info/place-premium/](http://openborders.info/place-
premium/)

What you're talking about is the more limited concept of "brain drain". IMO
its practical importance is a lot more questionable than people think. It's a
small factor compared to the global benefits of liberalizing migration.

------
mc32
Perhaps open borders should be treated like inter-national economic
agreements. Have open borders with countries who reciprocate open borders with
you. So, if Canada will let all and any Americans in, we reciprocate. If
Mexico opens borders with Haiti, then Haiti should open its borders to Mexico,
etc.

I don't think it can work unilaterally, it has to be bilateral and
multilateral --eventually having universally open borders --but given the
displeasure with the soft equivalent, global economics "globalization", I
don't see this happening any sooner.

If "globalization" \--which in theory would eventually bring equilibrium to
economic effects-- has such resistance and suffers from criticism from the
left and right, wile being a "soft" form of migration, imagine how people
would receive "hard' worldwide migration. I don't see it being received well,
if done unilaterally.

~~~
IssaRice
See [http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-trade-and-
reciproci...](http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-trade-and-reciprocity/)
. In particular:

"Now, the analogy between trade and migration is far from perfect. But I think
that on the issue of reciprocity, the economists’ objection to mercantilist-
style thinking in the trade context can be transferred to the migration
context. In other words, _unilateral open immigration_ generates net benefits,
_even if_ other countries don’t follow suit. Thinking of immigration law in
reciprocity terms is fundamentally misguided."

~~~
mc32
I think it's not misguided as a way to obtain traction. If, say, Singapore
unilaterally opened its borders, it would be overwhelmed by people from ID,
PH, TH, etc. But, if they slowly opened borders bilaterally with say, MY,
their economies would have time to adjust, as they adjust they can then extend
their borders to VN, let's say. It gives economies a way to adjust without the
economic shakeout disrupting the locals too much.

Look at Mexico, it clamors for the US to open its borders to Mexico, if they
believed open borders were beneficial and without repercussions, they would
open their borders to Guatemala and Honduras, among others -but they don't
because of labor protectionism (ethnically they are very similar, so it's not
so much ethnic antagonism0.

~~~
IssaRice
Sure, that's reasonable. This is a specific "slippery slope to open borders"
as discussed here: [http://openborders.info/blog/slippery-slopes-to-open-
borders...](http://openborders.info/blog/slippery-slopes-to-open-borders/) .
The relevant "slippery slope" is:

"Gradual expansion and merging of free migration zones: For instance, the EU
is a free migration zone for European countries, and it is gradually adding
countries. Suppose the United States and Canada created their own free
migration zone, Southeast Asian countries created their own free migration
zone, and a few free migration zones emerged in Africa and Latin America
(South America). The US-Canada free migration zone could, after some time, add
Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, and then merge with the South American free
migration zone. The European free migration zone could eventually merge with
the new unified American migration zone. Over time, as the threat of
terrorism, and the subjective sense of the threat, receded more and more into
the past, the Gulf states could merge with the European free migration zone.
And so on, until eventually the whole world would be a free migration zone."

------
fiatmoney
Unless you think jamming between 100 and 600 million people [1] into favelas
is a good idea, you will want some kind of restriction on immigration. It's
fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed borders".

And it's also particularly difficult to take Lee seriously when he says that
"it’s difficult to find any serious social scientist who believes immigration
increases crime rates", or bemoans the lack of research on immigration, IQ,
wages, and economic growth, considering what happens to people like Jason
Richwine who actually attempt to study the issue.

[1] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-
drea...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/161435/100-million-worldwide-dream-
life.aspx)

~~~
MJuliusKing
"It's fairly hilarious that he claims the current situation is "closed
borders"."

Most of the people who want to migrate are prevented from doing so by law.
That's close to "closed borders". And he makes it pretty clear in the first
paragraph that he's talking about restrictive immigration policies (including
current ones), so the semantics on "open" vs. "closed" borders aren't the most
relevant point.

Regarding suppression of research: Richwine didn't have tenure. Prof. George
Borjas hasn't been fired (or censured), but he has numerous influential
publications on immigration and he calls for more restrictive policies. There
are a lot of studies on the fiscal impact of immigration, and while many are
positive or near zero, some are negative. If there's strong evidence of
publication bias, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it.

For what it's worth, I don't think Richwine should have been fired just for
anti-PC stuff on IQ. But that's just Heritage's PR decision.

IMO a more likely explanation is that economists have a consensus in favor of
immigration liberalization as a pro-market policy. There is plenty of research
on the issue that does indicate positive effects of immigration:

[http://openborders.info/economist-
consensus/](http://openborders.info/economist-consensus/)

Re favelas: Okay, it depends what you prefer, to be honest. If you care a lot
about avoiding _visible_ poverty in the First World, having open borders is a
bad idea. If you care about reducing absolute global poverty, it's probably a
very, very good idea. If you wanted some kind of compromise, one option would
be to let them enter the country but have restrictive zoning laws to keep the
slums outside of existing major cities (and just build new cities where
immigrants move to).

Nothing about adding a few hundred million people to the US population (and
keep in mind, they would probably trickle in at first at a slower rate) would
be inherently catastrophic. Scary-looking numbers aside, it's the truth. The
US has low population density by most standards, and it wouldn't be difficult
to build some new cities. If anything, it would raise the values of American's
homes, which could benefit people quite a lot. And if there really were an
issue with some scarce resource (water, maybe), there's a price system to
handle that.

~~~
IssaRice
Adding to the point about visible poverty, there is also
[http://openborders.info/blog/the-border-as-
blindfold/](http://openborders.info/blog/the-border-as-blindfold/) , which
quotes:

"Migration controls serve as a _blindfold_ , enabling Americans to ignore most
of the poverty, deprivation, and vulnerability that exist in the world by
keeping it physically at a distance. In the past, people lived without this
blindfold. The wealthy lived amidst poverty, sometimes engaging in generous
charity to the poor, sometimes learning, perhaps callously, to ignore them.

Citizens of a modern welfare state, by contrast, feel that the state should
coerce people to give to the poor so as to remove from the streets the kind of
visible poverty that would make them feel obliged to give, allowing them to
feel conscientious and affluent at once. The price of this moral complacency
is paid by would-be immigrants who are not allowed to come to America to
better their condition by honest labor, lest their poverty trouble the
consciences of affluent Americans."

------
pfisch
How was Texas created again? Someone remind me....

I think it had something to do with open borders...

~~~
sosuke
Which part of the history had to do with open borders creating Texas? Was it
the Spanish explorers in the 1500s? The French? Was it Mexico's independence
war? Texas independence war? Texas joining the Union? They don't call it the
Six Flags over Texas for nothing
[http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm](http://www.lsjunction.com/facts/6flags.htm)

~~~
pfisch
"The Texas Revolution, also known as the Texas War of Independence, was the
military conflict between the government of Mexico and Texas colonists, most
of whom were land owners from the United States." \- Wikipedia

They let a bunch of Americans settle in Texas because they basically had open
borders and then they seceded in a huge land grab.

~~~
sosuke
Then it sounds like a case of they did unto others but don't want that done
unto them. :-)

------
mtimjones
The right wing in the U.S. wants more control over immigration, not an end.

The real question is "How did we come to be so certain that open borders are
our salvation?"

~~~
ThomPete
Isn't something like 40% of USA fortune 500 companies started by immigrants?

~~~
finid
The percentage of startups founded or co-founded by immigrants should be about
the same or higher.

------
mproy
Can Hacker News not rise above the partisan politics that pollute every other
site? Why am I seeing this trollish post here?

~~~
finid
I think your concern is addressed in the "HN Guidelines"

"What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. "

More at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
mproy
Seeing as the post has pretty much disappeared from the site (not in the first
10 pages) only 1 hour later, I'm feeling pretty confident about my assessment
of it's quality and contribution.

