Well, i'm glad you see open borders as an ultimate goal, kudos there, but why do you think its important for "bilateral treaties". Workers are engines of production. They're valuable. We want more of them. Even if they're poor, they can still produce value. Production is the root of all prosperity. So there's no harm in letting people come here at whatever rate is best for them - if it's a sensible move for them, that implies that their productivity (reflected by their income) is increasing. More productivity = more stuff = more stuff for everyone in the economy to enjoy. Again, there's no harm in letting people come. Only increased production. So we should definitely let in anyone who wants to come. And so should every other country. But if the other countries remain economically stupid / bigoted and want to keep valuable workers at bay, fine, doesn't mean we should make the same mistake. It's still hugely beneficial to us (and everyone) to let them come here unilaterally.
Reality check: (1) Immigrants are actually NET CONTRIBUTORS to the welfare system. (2) Immigrants (at least the poor ones you're apparently worried about) are hard-working and yearn for financial stability; leisure is an utterly alien concept to them. (3) As societies become more heterogenous, welfare systems decline, because of inherent racism/xenophobia. The various elements of the population don't want to contribute to welfare cause they don't feel in communion with those "others". (4) If the welfare system becomes overburdened, I say Great! It just forces us to fix our broken system sooner than we otherwise would have. (Although again mainly because of my points 1 and 2 this would never happen.) (5) We can charge immigrants an entry fee, or a tax premium, or we can exclude them from benefits altogether. Any of those options would be vastly more humane than the status quo where we keep these foreigners trapped in their unproductive backwaters making ~$1 a day, starving.
You seem to have a pretty good head for economics. Let me point you to my other comment in this thread for some more info on this important topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
"Move from one stagnant area into a prosperous one to the point of dragging it down to be stagnant as well?"
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong... 100 times wrong.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
I'm sorry, I simply cannot fully agree with your statement. I also see you are ignoring a great deal of my statement. It is true up to a certain point that what you say is true, as I also said. But if you open the border wide to let anybody in for any reason the near utopia you are describing is just not possible. When someone crosses the border and finds a job to be the productive citizen you describe, all's well. What about when multiples start crossing and there are no jobs for them to have? Let's say your wonderful catering company has too many workers now and not enough new tech companies to sustain hiring yet more people streaming across your open border. Social services will start to fail as the demand increases but the tax revenue doesn't increase with the demand to support it. There are many municipalities out there that are struggling to come up with the money to support the influx of immigrants that were placed, not moved on their own, by means outside their control. I'm not even talking about obvious things like welfare. I'm talking having to suddenly build schools and hire teachers that weren't in the budget to support all these new kids that are suddenly showing up.
Question, would slicing coconuts on the side of the road in Haiti provide the equivalent in pay as taking a low paying catering job in the US considering and comparing elements such as cost-of-living and whatnot? There are many people living in ways we would consider abject poverty but seem to be much happier with their situation than many of the supposed better off immigrants. It's sometimes about perspective too.
I would also say the current economic status of many countries around the world suggest that "everyone way fucking richer in one fell swoop" is not happening regardless of their immigration policies. Everyone is definitely not getting richer in the US despite the years of people pouring across, what is essentially, our open border.
Making cheap clothes and electronics in factories are good jobs relative to the kind of work that the extreme poor do - scrounging for food in a garbage dump in Manila or farming shitty land. And they make clothing and electronics in Mexico (which is a relatively rich country by global standards) and in America and other first world places. It's not like the economy would just stop making clothes or electronics. It would adjust to satisfy the forces of supply and demand at some optimal equilibrium. Just keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production, keep your eye on production.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. First read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
You make the all too common mistake of confusing aggregate output growth with everyone getting richer. That's not a valid equivalence, as the 2001-2009 economic expansion in the US showed fairly dramatically, with the bottom three quintiles doing worse over the period of expansion, the fourth quintile mostly flat, and most of the gains in the to quintile (and, within that quintile, mostly in the top few percentiles.)
Aggregate growth doesn't mean everyone gets more; we have a system in which the major holders of capital are very good at capturing output growth.
Policies favoring aggregate growth aren't good for most people without policy reform that alters the way gains from such growth end up being distributed.
Productivity is the root of all prosperity. Read this excellent article: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/02/always_keep_you..... Workers become on average ~20x more productive when they migrate to the first world. Because we are capital rich and we have sane government and law and order. Imagine if you were moved to Haiti and you got stuck there. How much could you contribute to society in Haiti? You could maybe slice some coconuts on the side of the road - is that gonna make the world a lot richer? Roadside sliced coconuts? Nah, much better for you to be in first world even if you're doing a low skilled job here like delivering catering to a high tech startup. That catering company is able to produce food much more efficiently, and in SF or NYC you're able to distribute it much more efficiently, and you're part of this souped-up economic engine that's changing the world. That's why they make 20x or up to 40x more (in the case of the extreme poor) when they migrate to the first world. It's better for everyone! Economists estimate that moving from the status quo to fully liberalized migration (i.e. open borders) would roughly double global gdp - that's an insane silver bullet. That's everyone getting way fucking richer in one fell swoop.
And that’s exactly why the politicians in my state were the first in europe to allow all refugees and asylum seekers to live and work like any citizen. Because that productivity increase also boosts the local economy.
So what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals. So if we don't want walls around towns or cities or counties or states, why do we suddenly want them at the country level? What the hell is so special about your country? Does no one commit crimes there? No, of course they commit crimes.
And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
I don't think you're being fair here. Law enforcement has trouble crossing national borders, for one thing (especially in the case of Mexico where organized criminals have outright bought off lots of politicians). I don't think people who look at big drug-related massacres in Mexico on the news and feel worried about cartels entering the US are necessarily bigots.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
You're making this sound easier than it is. Lots of people die trying to do this now.
Nope. The border needs to be secure. There are people who hate the US and have committed violence against its people. This is a basic security problem and open borders would be a disaster. Your city argument is bunk, we are a country under a common Constitution, not a collection of city-states.
> And by the way, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks
Yep, and the government needs to do everything in its power to shut that down. Illegal immigration hurts the chances of any legal immigration package.
Except law enforcement in towns and cities cooperate while if a person does something in the US and leaves the victim may have very little recourse.
Your comparison of open borders and and having free movement within a country is weak.
"open borders" doesn't have to mean you open them overnight. You can attenuate the flow to a rate that's manageable to keep up with, to give the various infrastructure a chance to grow/adapt to meet the influx. You've attacked a straw man.
Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Please see my other comment in this thread for more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632