When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas • Hacker News Board

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#31

Post by sametmax » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #11

I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is abs…

Immigration is a huge issue. It implies tremendous demographic and resource management, logistic, cultural chocks, including educational challenges.

Of course nations want to control borders. If you don't, you can't deal with the population flow and all of the above. And you need to deal with the above. Just hoping everything will be ok if you don't think about it is like hoping schools will be ok if we don't think about it.

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#32

Post by oconnor663 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #27

jrockway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

States in the US have different laws (consider income tax rates), and travel inside the US is super cheap, but we don't see people migrating like crazy to avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government.

> we don't see people migrating like crazy Yes we do! How many people do you know who were born in the state you now live in? I don't think one person in my office was born in this state.

I think "to avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government" was an essential condition on what you just quoted. And for what it's worth I think I agree -- I don't think I know anyone who has moved to a state mainly for tax reasons. (Though I do know people who have avoided moving to California, allegedly because of taxes.)

Though maybe the fact that people can move to take advantage of state giveaways, is a big constraint on the way they're currently designed? What conditions does Alaska put on its Permanent Fund payments?

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#33

Post by anovikov » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:25 PM UTC

wtbob wrote: post #26

I'm reminded of this famous piece by A.J.P. Taylor: 'Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He c…

It's simply a replacement of informal barriers with formal ones, plus compensation of the lowering of travel and communication costs due to technology: someone who traveled abroad in the XIXth century was either well-off so he would pass any currently existing barriers easily, or really really needed it so he would do it, too. With international air ticket worth less than a good meal, some other barrier had to be constructed or all modern nations would be quickly razed by influx of billions destitute immigrants.

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#34

Post by JadeNB » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #15

This discussion is synonymous with whether countries should even have borders. If borders aren't policed, they may as well not even exist. It would be great if all people were kind and caring, if there were no corruption, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, crime or discrepancies in standards of living. But we've seen over and over that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problematic migrant situati…

> This discussion is synonymous with whether countries should even have borders. If borders aren't policed, they may as well not even exist.

Is this an argument against the discussion? That (whether countries should even have borders) seems like a reasonable question to ask. Nonetheless, borders seem to have existed effectively for a long time without the aid of passports. From the article:

> Indeed, for much of the 19th century, as an International Labour Organisation report stated in 1922:

> > Migration was generally speaking, unhindered and each emigrant could decide on the time of his departure, his arrival or his return, to suit his own convenience.

(Also, I'm not sure it's so obviously true that not requiring passports is the same as not policing borders.)

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

sheepz wrote: post #23

insickness wrote: post #15

This discussion is synonymous with whether countries should even have borders. If borders aren't policed, they may as well not even exist. It would be great if all people were kind and caring, if there were no corruption, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, crime or discrepancies in standards of living. But we've seen over and over that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problematic migrant situati…

One of the few sane posts here that is considering the realities of "the borderless world". There are reasons why countries all over the world have immigration policies. Each country is interested in immigration that serves its interests, and the leaders are well aware of the negative consequences of unrestricted immigration. The experiments with this like the Schengen Area might not survive the consequences in the c…

[deleted]

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#36

Post by ed8 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #7

jstanley wrote: post #2

A large majority of people view me as a crackpot when I say passports should be abolished, and free men ought to be able to travel the planet freely. It never occurred to me that the world was like this as recently as 100 years ago!

I suspect it has a lot to do with the rise of relatively cheap global travel and strong disparity in the median wealth of different nations. 100+ years ago could you travel from a poor country to a wealthy country with relative ease and expect to raise your own standard of living? Either the journey was expensive and arduous, or the situation in places you could travel to was not likely to be a massive improvement on…

I beg to differ with your last argument, France and USA have really different approach in how they support citizens, yet both are currently really opposed to let newcomers enter their borders. I think one problem is like you said, the huge improvement in ones' situation when moving to a new country. Why is there such a big difference ? Why money is concentrated in so little space and groups of people?

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#37

Post by zajd » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:27 PM UTC

Yeah I really wish we could go back to the time where children of aristocrats were the only ones who could afford to travel, influenza was murdering percentages of the human popluation and most black people were second class citizens. -a sensible, law abiding (white upper-middle class) Englishman

Really a shame we've given it all up.

edit. Wow I am loving this thread, these immigration threads bring out the best parts of HN community. Sorry I'm not holding a candlelight vigil for the loss of "White Europe"

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#38

Post by SilasX » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #2

A large majority of people view me as a crackpot when I say passports should be abolished, and free men ought to be able to travel the planet freely. It never occurred to me that the world was like this as recently as 100 years ago!

A hundred years ago it was much more expensive to travel, and governments less forgiving about cultural differences when enforcing local laws against immigrants. That doesn't mean it would be a sane policy today.

To put it another way, would you be okay with the entire Chinese army "immigrating" in preparation for an attack, as long as they all represented themselves as private citizens during the trip?

If not, then you agree with immigration restrictions in principle, "and we're just haggling over the price".

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#39

Post by ChicagoBoy11 » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #18

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #11

I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is abs…

I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or pensions, that made sense. HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with on…

I think you make excellent points. I think where we'd probably disagree is in how quickly (or easily) we'd reach some sort of equillibrium state.

You are absolutely right that countries which enjoy greater public benefits would likely enjoy a greater influx of people. But I disagree that that's necessarily a bad thing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And if residents of Iceland make it so appealing to just live there without contributing to society, then I don't see how it is a (globally-speaking) bad thing to have migration make it so that enough people decide to move there to make it less feasible.

Let's not forget: The people supposedly moving into those economies would likely be fleeing oppressive regimes with very little economic opportunities. And, with free movement, it would become much harder to give away freebies, AS it would become much harder to become an oppressive government. Stories like Venezuela would be more hard to come by if people could simply leave the country more easily.

Just take familiar HN-turf: Software development. What do you think would happen if all Indian developers (many of whom are actually really, really talented), could just as easily apply for jobs in the US? Undoubtedly worse for US-based developers, right? And maybe there is some sense that such a massive disrpution should be avoided, at least "suddenly" as you say.

But now you multiply this across every industry, with all of their individual justifications, and what you end up with is with an ossified global society. We end up trying each to protect our pie (from crop subsidies on out), all perfectly justifiable. But, as a global community, we make it worse for all of us.

Just this week Elon tried to inspire us about the idea of an interplanetary species. It just seems inconsistent to me for us to dream about being a people who can travel freely to the stars, but that we need to ask permissions of random strangers to visit family members, to employ our talent productively far from where we were born, etc.

I think you raise really valid points. But in my eyes, those are issues to be dealt with in the pursuit of this ideal, not justifications on why it should not be pursued/is not feasible.

Re: When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas

#40

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Sun, Oct 02, 2016, 2:33 PM UTC

zajd wrote: post #25

icebraining wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a good example of that. Is it? Are illegal immigrants more likely to cause problems that both natives and legal immigrants? From what I can tell, at least the attacks that make the news have all been perpetrated by people born and raised in Europe. EDIT: http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased-crim...

Well you have to understand that when white Europeans complain about "immigrants" what they really mean is "brown people". It's 2016 baby, thinly veiled racism is the name of the game. edit. I'm sure with these downvotes someone will come answer your question... lol

I don't know if that's entirely fair, the pro-Brexit people had strong opinions about Poles and Italians too.