> Saying that you can’t come into Europe because you’re African is still racism.
Are you suggesting no countries in the world should have any border control?
You weren’t born here and don’t pay taxes here is pretty different from you’re African, right? So why do you say racism and not discrimination? Why do you say African and not non-European? Phrasing Europe’s border policy as racism against Africans is misleading and escalating, rather than edifying.
Let’s fix that: Saying that you can’t come into Europe because you’re not a European resident is discrimination based on country of residency that could look like racial discrimination if you’re not careful.
In as much as, ahem, some government policies actually are racist, it’s true that border policy does discriminate based on country of residence, but this is not necessarily racist. Europe is not necessarily discriminating against Africans, it’s discriminating all non-Europeans, including China, Russia, America, the Middle East, etc., right?
When people say racism it is often (usually?) referring to beliefs about other races being inferior in some way, or hate for other races. Racism typically means prejudice and antagonism combined with discrimination. Discrimination on its own without judgement may be necessary, and doesn’t mean there is any animosity or value judgements being made based on someone’s race.
To summarize / strawman, "Europe isn't racist, it's xenophobic, get it right!"
And to be clear, that's not wrong, but it's also a distinction without a difference. People will still feel discriminated against even if the source of that discrimination is different from what they named.
All countries have border policy including yours, this isn’t about Europe, or about Africa. Why do you assume border policy is xenophobia, and not, say, logistics and resource and tax management? Why would you jump to a conclusion this has more to do with race than with money or stopping crime?
I think some cities in the world do have borders with ID checks. Which cities are we talking about, specifically? In the US there are state borders that (edit: may) require ID checks. This is true in other countries too. And as others pointed out, you can’t cross private property boundaries in many locales either, whether it’s backyards or corporate property.
I can certainly think of several reasons why city border can and should be less restrictive than country borders, but I would first turn the question back to you, since your question involves unstated assumptions: why should it apply between cities? And then think about it carefully and see if you can imagine some reasons for why things are they way they are. A really big hint: think economics.
FWIW, the questions in this thread seem to be somewhat ignorant of history and global politics and economics. This stuff has been debated and written about ad nauseum, you can for sure find tons of material explaining how various countries/states/cities arrived at their border policies if you’re actually curious about it. I’m certainly no expert on it, so if your question is serious, please research the answer rather than wait for someone on HN to tell you.
The other thing your question implies, and others here are failing to acknowledge is the practical realities of the tradeoffs involved. There isn’t some perfect solution, that does not exist. This is an area of government that comes with both advantages and disadvantages no matter what policy is chosen. The goals are usually to balance the costs against the benefits. Assuming that lax borders is the answer is almost certainly the wrong answer. But, there are huge teams of smart people in every country who’ve studied and dealt with the logistics and legalities of policing borders. Sometimes there are brash politicians who dictate bad policy over the objections of many, but even so, to me it’s always absolutely wild to see armchair internet critics assume they know better and that obvious things have been completely missed. If you do think it can be improved and feel strongly, get involved!
> I can certainly think of several reasons why city border can and should be less restrictive than country borders, but I would first turn the question back to you, I since your question involves unstated assumptions: why should it apply between cities?
For the same reason it should apply between countries - whatever those are. It should be obvious that I don't think there are good reasons. You've got unstated assumptions about countries.
Your comment contains a lot of non-arguments: "think about it if you're serious", "think economics, "[what you're saying] is almost certainly not the right answer", "practical realities", "huge teams of smart people" etc.
You are on a soapbox challenging the status quo of every country on earth and I’m not, so you automatically have the higher burden of argument. I’m not defending the status quo, I only jumped in to help people who were making obviously incorrect and wildly negative assumptions about the reasons for border policies.
There are lots of reasons why the border policies between cities and countries might/can/should be very different, including but not limited to countries having a federal government or something analogous, and countries specifically wanting the free flow of citizens and their money within the country. Countries generally want the flow of citizens and money from other countries too, but they want control over what gets in the country. It seems fairly obvious to me that that strict city border policies everywhere serves little purpose and would be obnoxious and limiting for the people and the economy of that country, and that it would require a ton of enforcement resources that small cities don’t even have.
Here’s an analogy. Lots of companies have VPNs to get access to the company network. You don’t have a separate VPN for every team, or every building, or every computer. A few secret labs might have their own security, but by and large once you enter the company’s network, you have access to all the company resources. The VPN is like the country border. It’s a small hurdle for the employees of that company, but if there were hierarchical VPNs for everything everywhere in the company it would interfere with people’s ability to work and do very little to increase security; it would be net downside.
Again, it does not matter what my argument is. If you want to know the reasons why all countries in the world have border policies and why the country border policies are usually more strict than cities, the reasons have been written down, debated for hundreds of years, they exist and you are free to go read them if you’re actually curious (which you should be if you think it should change). They aren’t on Hacker News though, and no amount of opining on Hacker News is going to change the world’s border policies.
Hehehe. Smh. It’s also what is said to people who think the earth is flat. Some people just have beliefs that are ignorant of the things they can’t see. It seems like you just did compare borders to slavery, to complement your bogus comparison between borders and racism.
You can keep trying to poke some sort of specious logical hole in my arguments as long as you want, and it still won’t demonstrate anything, since I’m not arguing for borders and you’re not demonstrating any understanding of my points here. You seem unable to articulate any specific reasons, or even a specific goal. I’m not even sure what you’re proposing or arguing against. What do you want here? HN points? An actual discussion? Gain some realistic and practical understand why border policies exist? What?
No, some states have had border checks for things like animals and produce/fruit (to prevent the spread of some diseases), among other things, for many decades. The California border is the one I’ve run into most often. They don’t always ask for ID, I misstated that, but there is a stop and they can scan license plates and look for suspicious activity.
Hehe, maybe review some of the huge swath of border checkpoint refusal videos on YouTube before making such an assumption. Some people get away with it, and some do not. Refusing to show ID might be justification for detainment or arrest.
Also, pro tip: when crossing the CA border, if they do ask for ID or ask for you to get out of your car, make sure to buckle your seat belt before you drive. The cops waiting there will pull you over for buckling 3 seconds after you start moving, I learned first hand.
Edit to add a few informative links, as I’m googling them, with some details that are new to me…
Furthermore, why aren't efforts being made to fix those problems to make mass migration from more countries viable? The existence of an emergency situation that justifies an authoritarian solution does not absolve the state from its responsibility to take action to prevent that situation from happening.
What is the problem, exactly? What responsibility, exactly, does the state have to make mass migration viable? It seems like you’re making really big assumptions.
Make a list of the costs and benefits for both too lax and too strict borders for all the countries your ideas should apply to. Account for the costs and benefits of both incoming residents and outgoing residents, both from the point of view of the people moving, and from the point of view of the state. How would you balance lax borders against the downsides like weapons, drugs, human trafficking, and other criminal activity? Would you do anything to control the flow of too many people at once to places where there is no housing or utilities for them? Would you do anything to stabilize the economies of countries that lose or gain too many people in a short period of time? What do you propose for settling disputes about the border policy? If other people in your country don’t agree with your idea, how should the policy be decided? What would you say if you found out that the majority of people in the country you live in want strict borders, and vote for them?
The state has a responsibility to keep people happy. If states keep people sad, we should abolish them because they have no good purpose. Borders don't keep people happy.
Very telling that you didn’t address a single one of my questions…
Pls see Chesterton’s Fence. If you think borders serve no good purpose and that nobody is happy about them, it’s because you’re ignorant about borders and haven’t bothered to read anything or think about it at all. Lots of people want borders, and for better or worse, lots of people are happy about them, which is why they are there. You don’t get to take borders down until you understand and acknowledge the reasons they were put up.
Which state are we discussing? Can you point to a legal document or constitution for a country that defines the state’s purpose as keeping people happy? Maybe one exists, but I’ve never heard of that anywhere. I think in most countries, it’s your own responsibility to keep yourself happy. A lot of countries will, however, try to keep it’s citizens safe and try to protect the economy, and borders are seen as one of the tools to help meet those ends.
It’s not racist and you know that. They also would not want a white person without authorization.
Also, in your border-free dreamworld, how far does this go? Can anyone / everyone in the world come live in your country? How about your city? How about your backyard?
The end result of that is everyone moving to the rich countries with social safety nets, those countries then collapsing or removing those safety nets, and repeat until countries decide that was a terrible idea and we’re back to having borders except everything is a mess.
Countries aren’t geographic regions. They’re collections of people. If you magically swapped the populations of South Korea and Germany, those geographic countries would change overnight to be their demographic countries.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting your country to stay at least somewhat stable in its ideals, crime levels, particular problems, etc.
the point of a social safety net is to make sure people can afford a home and healthcare. excluding non-citizens from that, yet allowing them to stay here creates exactly the kind of situations that we do not want. and as soon as people get a job they also pay taxes, healthcare and social security, at which point it seems unfair to exclude them from those benefits. so i don't see a a way how this would even work. people living here either get a job, run a business or collect benefits. if they do neither, then how would they live? only independently wealthy people could do that without having some illegal income somewhere.
i am for the elimination of borders and free movement of everyone across the world, but that requires that we help raise the standard of living everywhere to remove the incentive for people to move just for economic reasons.
> People within a country can freely move between cities
This is far from universally true, both because of legal direct constraints on internal migration and because of implicit controls which are the result of economic constraints (which are themselves part of the means by which societies are governed, whether or not they are overtly intended products of state policy.)
I’m saying it should be the same between countries as between back yards.
The same logic that justifies national government with tax-levying and rule-enforcing power also requires national borders. (ie, a group of people own this area together and will vote to determine what is done).
In a world without borders, what's to prevent some wealthy Europeans from pooling their resources to buy up huge swaths of the Congo and doing colonialism, libertarian open borders style? Governments and borders are necessary.
That is naive. The wealth disparity between nations is so great that if borders were done away with, people from wealthy nations would be able to trivially outspend people in poor countries. Once they own the land and the businesses, political power is theirs. Meanwhile the people from those poor countries might try to do the same in wealthy countries, but wouldn't have the resources for it. It would be katastroika on steroids.
Then they can be removed in two steps. First, allow people to come and work to get wealthy so they can compete with other wealthy people. Second, allow wealthy people to spend money.
> The wealth disparity between nations is so great that if borders were done away with, people from wealthy nations would be able to trivially outspend people in poor countries.
Free movement of people does not mean that you don’t have extreme taxes on high-wealth individuals that they become subject to when they move.
> Once they own the land and the businesses
You are assuming, again, in addition to free movement of people a basically capitalist economic system in every country. That you are free to move to a country and live and, if you can find a job, work there does not mean that you can simply buy land and/or control of the non-financial means of production. It may mean you are as free to do so as local residents, but it doesn’t mean anybody is free to do so.
Note, that because even slightly capitalist countries – rich or poor – tend to provide relatively free movement of capital already, whether or not they allow free movement of people, this “buyout by remote elites” is already a problem for relatively poor capitalist (or even somewhat capitalist) countries, even with border controls – you don’t need to live in a country to buy up property and businesses there, and exercise control through such ownership.
