
How Not to Design a World Without Borders (2014) - monort
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/how-not-to-design-a-world-without-borders/374563/?single_page=true
======
Asbostos
They begin with an odd argument made by the US - Ecuador's open borders have
increased human trafficing. The concept of human trafficing only exists
because there are closed borders that people want to cross. If the US opened
its borders, it would surely have a huge influx of people, but it would also
stop having human trafficing.

The other neighboring countries claiming that Ecuador's policies were
destabilizing the whole area could perhaps have meant "Those bad people are
escaping the confines of their bad-people country and spreading to ours"

Sarcastic comparison: Maybe the US should close its internal borders with high
crime neighborhoods so those bad people can remain trapped among their
deserving neighbors instead of robbing the more privileged classes.

~~~
rgbrenner
You're using "human trafficking" to mean illegal migration. When in fact it
actually means:

 _the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced
labor or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may
encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage,[3][4][5] or
the extraction of organs or tissues,[6][7] including for surrogacy and ova
removal. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the
violation of the victim 's rights of movement through coercion and because of
their commercial exploitation._ [0]

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

~~~
smoe
From the same Wikipedia article:

"Sexual trafficking includes coercing a migrant into a sexual act as a
condition of allowing or arranging the migration. […] Trafficked women and
children, for instance, are often promised work in the domestic or service
industry, but instead are sometimes taken to brothels where they are required
to undertake sex work, while their passports and other identification papers
confiscated."

Here the closed boarders play a role. When those people won't even try to
contact the police because of beeing afraid that they will be put in jail and
then sent back, the closed boarders are a good thing for human traffickers,
even though it makes getting in and out of a country a bit harder.

Also I could imagine, if the boarders where open, people would be more likely
to just try their luck in an other country than getting in touch with some
creep promising wonderland for a fee.

~~~
mattlutze
I don't think rgbrenner's response was in favor of closed borders, but in
correcting the previous poster's confusion over what human trafficking is. As
it were, if the borders were open folks wouldn't have to use shady agencies
and immigration traffickers to get in at all, but could rather just save some
money for a ticket and finding a job.

------
timedoctor
Less than 100 years ago it was considered NORMAL to segregate black people and
prevent access to certain locations in the US. Now it's illegal and considered
totally unacceptable.

Is it possible that in the future it will be considered as unacceptable and
illegal to discriminate based on your country of origin?

I mean why should a black person from the US have access to different
locations than a black person from Nigeria? Or why should a white person from
France have access to different locations than a white person from Ukraine?

~~~
jmnicolas
Because a white person from Ukraine will work for cheaper than me, a white
person from France. How long before it's impossible to work for a decent
salary (which are already not that decent in France).

And there's the problem of welfare, look at what's happening in Calais. All
the illegal immigrants from Africa are trying to reach England from this
French Port since they believe England is the best welfare state.

So yeah I agree we're all brothers, but I'd rather see French in France and
Ukrainians in Ukraine.

~~~
jotm
On the one hand, I support open borders and immigration, but on the other
hand, it's human nature to go where it's easier to live instead of trying to
better your current place of residence.

Without borders, people will just flock from one place to another,
destabilizing and draining the cities of resources until other places become
more desirable, and when that happens, they'll just move to other, better
places.

It's very much like all the nomadic tribes of old (incl. North American
Indians), and the gypsies today, only the world is overcrowded and we can't
maintain a progressing, stable civilization with that kind of lifestyle.

I believe education plays a key factor, people need to change their worldviews
and culture to live together on Earth, and that's not gonna happen anytime
soon.

Maybe if the rich would invest in infrastructure all over the world, to better
everyone at the same time.

Too many times I've seen millionaires living in huge mansions while the
neighborhoods around them crumble. But they won't invest in their local
community because there's no ROI (They really need $24 million in their bank
accounts, 1 million less would be catastrophic, right? /s), and they can
always move somewhere better. This mentality is destructive...

~~~
ux-app
> "Without borders, people will just flock from one place to another,
> destabilizing and draining the cities of resources..."

I'm not sure about that. After all, even within countries there are huge
disparities between regions and we don't see this effect take place.

~~~
antillean
Apart from what merpnderp said about per capita income, I'd guess there are at
least two important things at work here.

The first is that the disparities between regions within a country like the US
are quite different from the disparities between countries across the world.
In particular, wealthy regions and cities in rich countries tend to have
_lots_ of poor people. I think they might even have disproportionate shares of
the poor.

Then there's the redistributive effects of things like having a single
currency, single regulatory regimes, and explicit central government
redistributive taxation. These all (especially the last) work to prevent
disparities between regions within rich countries from becoming as big as
disparities between countries across the world.

~~~
ux-app
> "The first is that the disparities between regions within a country like the
> US are quite different from the disparities between countries across the
> world."

That's a fair point, I'm sure there are differences which make looking at a
country in isolation not very useful.

What about the EU? There is free travel across the EU and the economic
disparity between member states is huge. For example look at UK/Germany as
compared to Estonia/Bulgaria.

This hasn't resulted in catastrophic mass migration across the union.

~~~
antillean
The European jury is out on whether or not there is ongoing catastrophic mass
migration across the EU.

Anti-immigration sentiment has been surging in the EU over the last few years
in large part because of perceptions of excessive migration from eastern
European countries like Estonia and Bulgaria ("the periphery", as they call
them) to western and northern European countries like the UK and Germany ("the
core countries", as they call themselves). In the UK, for instance, the UK
Independence Party got something like 13% of the popular vote (though only 1
seat, because as bad as UKIP is, the first-past-the-post electoral system in
modern Britain is worse) in this year's general election, and they're a
single-issue, anti-European-immigration party. Word is that similar things are
happening in other rich European countries, as seen with the National Front in
France, the Danish People's Party in Denmark, and the AfD in Germany.[1]

To zoom in a bit on the UK (where I live), there is evidence that migration
from the EU is high and growing[2][3]. But I don't think that anyone outside
of those who are right-of-mainstream on this issue think it's
_catastrophically_ high. I'd guess at three main reasons for that. Firstly,
accession to the EU requires certain "convergence criteria", which include
levels of economic prosperity and social stability which, while not strict
enough to mean that all the joining countries are virtually the same on these
things, _are_ strict enough to mean that they aren't as far apart as, say, the
US and Haiti -- or even the US and Mexico. Secondly, the EU has a good few
common institutions, including ones that do things along the lines of
redistributive taxation.[4] And thirdly, there are differences in language and
culture which might be restrictions to many people, especially in a continent
as linguistically (if not culturally) diverse as Europe. (I'm guessing that
and size are parts of why everyone isn't flocking to Luxembourg.)

1\. Germany's Angela Merkel under threat from Pegida rallies --
[http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/06/threat-to-merkel-from-
right-w...](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/06/threat-to-merkel-from-right-wing-
rallies.html)

2\. British and other EU migration --
[http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/britains-70-million...](http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/britains-70-million-
debate/5-british-and-other-eu-migration)

3\. Bulgarian and Romanian migration to the UK --
[http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-
statistic...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-statistics-
quarterly-report/february-2015/sty-bulgarian-and-romanian-migration-to-the-
uk.html)

4\. EU contractors and beneficiaries of funding from the EU budget --
[http://ec.europa.eu/contracts_grants/beneficiaries_en.htm](http://ec.europa.eu/contracts_grants/beneficiaries_en.htm)

~~~
ux-app
Thanks for your European perspective. I live in Southern Australia, so about
as far away from Europe as possible, so all of my knowledge on the issue is
anecdotal.

In the EU, hasn't the net result (across Europe) been a positive one? I.e. the
positive impacts on weaker economies have outweighed the negative impacts on
the more developed, core, countries?

I think you're absolutely right that the difference between US and Haiti can't
really be compared with the differences between EU member states.

I really hope the EU experiment does end up working. A world without borders
would be amazing.

~~~
antillean
Yeah, I think -- and just about everything I've seen on it says -- that the
net effect of the EU has been positive for all European countries and most
European people involved.

I also hope the experiment works, and not just because I'm a migrant to Europe
who's annoyed at needing visas to work and, in some cases, even just visit!
The European project's going through a bit of a rough patch now, though, with
Greece and the rise of anti-immigration sentiment. I think it needs serious
reform to work and be good.

------
anti-shill
the corporate media always speaks with reverence regarding the idea of doing
away with borders....gosh, I wonder if that has something to do with the fact
that the corporate media is funded by advertising purchases made by big
business, the same big business that buys labor.

