
The New Passport-Poor - Thevet
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/21/the-new-passport-poor/
======
rayiner
The article’s premise is wrong. Freedom and rights are subject to the
reciprocal freedom and rights of others. “Your rights end where my nose
begins.” One of the fundamental collective rights of a nation state is to have
a border and control who goes through it. Requiring passports is not an
impingement on anyone’s freedom; it is the exercise of a country’s freedom to
control who trespasses within its borders.

The whole angle about passports being a recent phenomenon is a red herring.
Routine international travel is also a new phenomenon, enabled by relatively
new technology (airplanes). That passports were not common in the 19th century
does not suggest that people back then believed that controlling their borders
was unimportant.

~~~
jessriedel
I agree with your second paragraph, but not your first. We all agree that the
fact that a legal restriction was democratically approved absolutely does not
make it moral (e.g., slavery). A nation doesn't have collective rights to do
anything; the individual citizens have rights. And if a minority of citizens
wants to welcome and employ immigrants in their home or town, there is a
burden on the majority provide the same kind of _overwhelming_ justification
we require for other restrictions on rights (free-speech, taking of property,
etc.) In particular, your suggestion that nations have rights to control
immigration suggests it would be OK if nations had explicitly racist
immigration policies; indeed we allow individual citizens to have racist
policies for who they let into their home on account of that citizen's
individual rights (even though we may strongly disapprove of those
individuals).

[https://openborders.info/](https://openborders.info/)

~~~
rayiner
> A nation doesn't have collective rights to do anything; the individual
> citizens have rights.

That’s facially untrue. For example, the right to self determination. It makes
no sense to say that an individual has the right to, e.g. have a democratic
government. Groups of people have the collective right to form democratic
societies.

~~~
always_good
You've used the adjective "facially" multiple times now, but I'm not sure what
that clarifies.

Are you saying they are superficially wrong, but actually right once you dig
beneath the face/surface?

~~~
rayiner
Facially wrong means that it’s an assertion that’s wrong in its face. You
don’t have to dig into it to realize it’s wrong.

------
latte
It's important to note that it's not just bureaucrats or dictators who insist
on enforcing passport and visa control. For better or worse, a lot of regular
citizens of country A would be against citizens of country B staying in, or
just entering country A's borders.

~~~
rayiner
Replace “lot” with “almost all.” I’m from the subcontinent. Do you think
people from Bangladesh/India/Pakistan want people from the other countries
freely wandering across their borders? Nobody wants that. It’s Western conceit
that they’ve somehow evolved this particular mode of tribalism (what most
people in the world would instead call ordinary national sovereignty).

------
pjc50
Related: [https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-
montini/2018...](https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-
montini/2018/05/22/immigration-children-separate-families-lost-kirstjen-
nielson/631627002/)

There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal", just like there is
in the War On Drugs. In this case thousands of children have been deliberately
separated from their parents and then ... lost?

~~~
ng12
> There's a human cost to declaring people to be "illegal"

Who's declaring this? Nobody's declaring a human's existence to be illegal.
They're humans who have broken laws -- that is done something illegal. It
feels like a willful attempt to control a narrative by warping semantics.

~~~
pjc50
It's not unusual for people to refer to "illegals".

~~~
ng12
And when they do so they're obviously referring to the crime committed, not
their personhood. It's akin to calling someone a jaywalker.

------
schoen
See also [https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-
you-s...](https://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-
need-passports-or-visas-64847) (which was posted on HN two years ago).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12621909)

~~~
J-dawg
Thanks for posting this, I must have read it at the time because it feels very
familiar! Particularly the thread started by this comment from ChicagoBoy11
[0].

I've often wondered what a world without borders would really be like. As
ChicagoBoy11 said, it would be very difficult to oppress people if they were
simply able to get up and go somewhere else. Eventually I think the world
would be a better place.

But in the short term, developed countries would be absolutely swamped. They'd
have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work, welfare and
housing. Maps like this make you realise how "small" the developed/western
parts of the world are [1].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12622327)

[1] [http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-
zones-...](http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/earth-divided-in-ten-zones-of-
equal-population)

~~~
whatshisface
> _They 'd have to completely rethink almost everything to do with work,
> welfare and housing._

Here's my cynical take on what would happen: the well-to-do would benefit
massively as the poor moved in to reduce unskilled and low-skill labor prices.
Welfare would be stopped because society wouldn't be able to afford it.
Housing would be worked out automatically by the free market, except in SF and
other legally restricted jurisdictions. In the end, national inequality would
rise to match global inequality, because all that's happening is that
individuals are moving.

Ironically, the old Republican conservatopia vision of society (no welfare,
free market, not too much emphasis on the interests of the poor) would be able
to handle mass migration better than almost any other that the west has
considered. If there's no social safety net _at all_ , there's almost no cost
to having somebody new move in. (Police, sure, but you can tax the work of the
new people.)

------
morley
> Chinese citizens generally are evaluated for visas, mortgages, schools, and
> employment by social credit scores.

I only learned about social credit scores last month. Have they actually been
around for much longer? That seems unlikely, given that Wikipedia says it's
still proposed:

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

It seems disingenuous to claim that a proposed system is in general use.

~~~
greedo
It is in general use, just not fully implemented:

[https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-
passe...](https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/964020/china-passengers-
flying-ban-social-credit-score-system-bad-behaviour)

------
smnrchrds
> In China, a country that still requires documents for internal travel ...

I did not know about this. Can someone shed some light on limits to internal
travel in China?

~~~
schoen
I think people usually point to

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

------
tribeofone
I thought we agreed to keep this kind of drivel off HN.

------
SlowRobotAhead
An open borders argument... the single biggest truth about this is the author
would be horrified if their ideals were actually put in place.

~~~
jowiar
To me, discrimination based on where one was born is fundamentally immoral.
There are legitimate logistical difficulties with open borders, but we need to
identify solutions, rather than use them as excuses.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The solution is to enable everyone to improve their quality of life where
there are, as it's going to be impossible to come up with a system that is
"fair" to everyone who wants to emigrate/immigrant. You can't craft
immigration policy without a comprehensive understanding of how it relates to
your country's economic and cultural foundation (are you allowing large
amounts of unskilled labor in that is going to depress wages? allowing large
amounts of immigrants in who might not want to integrate into your society and
adopt your values? you're gonna have a bad time).

First world countries want the best of the best, not unskilled immigrants who
they'll have to support. Developing countries aren't going to want to allow
non-tourist immigration unless you have investment to offer. So we end up with
this byzantine system of quotas and quid pro quo which treats people like
pawns. Unpleasant and unsustainable for all involved.

