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

As the article states, there were no artificial barriers before 20th century. But we still had plenty of horrible wars. So I disagree with your premise that removing barriers will lead to more harmonious relations.

In fact, the barriers seems completely irrelevant to the relations between different societies. We have had atrocities without them or with them.

But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to American levels? Similarly, India should perhaps split herself into US-sized chunks, and Biharis shouldn't be allowed to migrate to Bombay? (Shiv Sena would love this.)

Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade barriers to keep our size down to the optimum?

This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have hugely different sizes.

Disclosure: I'm an EU national living in UK.

> What I was trying to point out is that making a moral defense for EU freedom of movement (as many remainers did) is basically impossible without being a hypocrite. There are, of course, other reasons to defend it.

Your logic is flawed. EU FoM is not a barrier to increase FoM by adding more countries to the FoM treaties. It is a barrier if you want to do so unilaterally: i.e. if the new FoM country doesn't meet the required criteria to join the FoM space. It's a shame because that might mean that country has a lack of human rights respect or civil liberties, so we make it more difficult for its citizens to escape... But that's why we should be mindful about refugees and asylum seekers.

Man, it's funny how some people argue that the EU is racist because of FoM (talk about twisted arguments) and then they don't want to get any refugees from non-white/non-slavic/non-catholic countries that are escaping literal hell.

Going back to FoM, one of the Brexiteers mantras was "Turkey is going to join the EU and we will get flooded!"; which would be another step in extending FoM to more countries.

Funnily enough it was the UK the one pushing for a fast Turkey accession... and in any case it's vox populi that ain't gonna happen in decades due to Turkey not meeting the requirements by a long shot.

> I find it an uncomfortable fact that almost all modern immigration policies judge people by where they happen to have been born rather than their personal qualities.

Yes, it's a shame we have to come down to that. However it seems that's the fastest way to approve FoM between countries and, you know, at least "it's not personal". I'm not trying to defend it and I wish we had something better (like FoM for all), but other systems have shown to be less fair:

https://medium.com/@rachelnabors/wtfuk-73009d5623b4

And if you're in the UK surely you can watch all those Aussie Border Control shows in Dave or one of those Freeview channels - an American dude flying to Oz with his GF for holidays was refused entry because he got caught with some pot 20 years before in the US. Also there was this Aussie dude that overstayed his UK tourist Visa by something like 14 years (no kidding!) and he was sent back to Australia effectively destroying his life (friends, partner, ...) - were any of those fair? I would argue "no", other people might say "yes" - I don't really know what's the right answer, but it's clear that's not easy to decide who gets in and who does not.

Individual qualities are also subjective and subjected to other influencing factors: I'm sure you have in mind a Visa points system. What makes you think that that's the best system? Are we good at evaluating how "good" a person is? With that points system, would we still get unqualified EU labour to fill in jobs? If we don't, those factories might actually move to the country of origin of that cheap labour, throwing a sizeable % of British workers into the benefits system (and only a part of them would be able to get out - see Thatcher's years), putting a bigger strain into the welfare system. Wait, actually that might be the Tory plan after all, destroy the welfare system :)

> People have taken issue with me using the word racist (I still think it applies, even if we're not strictly talking about ethnicity), so what's the correct term? Nationality-ist?

IMHO "racist" perfectly conveys the message and it's only challenged by those who don't want to be tagged as "racist" while being so. You could get picky and use "xenophobic" which would be the 100% right word as far as I know, but I'm on your same side on this one: Arguing that racist is not the right word is an argument usually used by racists :) and pointless.

Even funnier — a Brit whose father has lived in Spain for over 30 years, has paid taxes and run a successful business there and although parallel to the ex-pat community in the very far south, not really ever been a part of it. He speaks Spanish and has a polyglot of international friends from all across Europe.

He's now looking to move back to Britain over the next few years (at least partly), and having paid into his own private pension and as part of his working career, the Spanish government one — should he not get a pension and healthcare in Britain? If not, then why this whole EU thing? If so, then why not British pensioners in Spain, etc?

Besides, 'Old Brits living off Spanish pensions' is a bit of a tired trope — many of them get fed up after a couple to a few of years, leaving local Spaniards with cheaper housing options as they offload their failed investments before they do mave back. The ones who don't, try integrating. Sounds like a bit of a win-win for Spain?

Laterally, in my time in the North of England and here in London, I've found that Spanish (and Italians, and French, etc) all also self-ghettoise, so as an adult I've shed the shame I once felt at the behaviour of ex-pat Brits abroad because — surprise, surprise — everyone does it.

You have your view on things — I have mine.

Explanation is extreme variability of rates. A 1000 mile return ticket in Europe can be $20 and can be $500, with average about the same as in the U.S. at around $200, i.e. 10 cents a mile. It mostly happens because most flights are between countries with extremely different living standards, and some passengers are business travellers from rich countries to poor ones, others are seasonal laborers going the other way around. There are no U.S. states with per capita GDP difference as big as U.K. vs Romania, for example.