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If borders were open

economist.com

31–40 of 147 posts

Re: If borders were open

#31
All that money measures is the ability to entice someone else. It does not measure wellbeing.

When it comes to migration, no one ever talks about the consequences of moving from a high context to a low context culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-_and_low-context_cultures

Aladair Macintyre: "Consider what it is to share a culture. It is to share schemata which are at one and the same time constitutive of and normative for intelligible action by myself and are also means for my interpretations of the actions of others" https://toutcequimonte.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/macintyre...

Low context cultures are more atomized and legalistic. Free migration is one of major the things that justifies the national security state powers... which ironically these days in the west there is no sense of a nation outside of the state. There is a weakness in that notion because the internet has weakened the state's ability to integrate minorities because those people can live mentally in their homelands.

Aristotle on immigration: "Another cause of revolution is difference of races which do not at once acquire a common spirit; for a state is not the growth of a day, any more than it grows out of a multitude brought together by accident. Hence the reception of strangers in colonies, either at the time of their foundation or afterwards, has generally produced revolution;"

Aquinas on immigration: "Thirdly, when any foreigners wished to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship. With regard to these a certain order was observed. For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations, as the Philosopher says (Polit. iii, 1). The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst, many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people."

Re: If borders were open

#32
What if the flow happened from richer to poorer countries?

Developing and undeveloped countries are notoriously protectionists, specially of their visa/labor markets. What would happen if they opened their borders to all, presumably including qualified/entrepreneurial people?

Re: If borders were open

#33
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. What do you base this on?

Based on the fact that there is finite money for social welfare.

There is also a finite, not infinite, number of people who would require social welfare for some periods of time. So...

Re: If borders were open

#34
post #6

>European countries, such as Sweden, migrants are more likely to get into trouble than locals, but this is mostly because they are more likely to be young and male. I don't even know where to start with this. Could it be that young and male aren't the core of the issue? I like how the article almost dismisses the realities of religious and racial conflicts. Then there is this: >If the worry is that immigrants will ou…

> If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? it just doesn't work that way. there's this thing called equality before the law, or something. this sort of thing has been tried and US state and local governments are generally not allowed, by federal law, to deny the most expensive benefits…

Benefits are already not disbursed equally across populations. (If they were, they'd be pointless.)

Re: If borders were open

#35
post #6

>European countries, such as Sweden, migrants are more likely to get into trouble than locals, but this is mostly because they are more likely to be young and male. I don't even know where to start with this. Could it be that young and male aren't the core of the issue? I like how the article almost dismisses the realities of religious and racial conflicts. Then there is this: >If the worry is that immigrants will ou…

Not to mention the social welfare systems would collapse.

+1. I, as an immigrant, contribute to social security even though i am not a citizen and have no plans to become one and therefore will not be eligible to social security benefits even though i contribute to it.

Re: If borders were open

#38

Did I miss the part where they discuss the economics of having a larger worker pool? like how that would affect existing workers? that seems like an enormous question to not address fully.

Plus there is a delicious delirium of every migrant population being equally capable of or inclined to productive work.

Re: If borders were open

#39
post #20

The world will be richer, I personally will be poorer. I'm OK with that if it was evenly distributed, but I doubt my fellow rich caucasian men will be.

Even distribution is not appropriate when work value is so terribly unequal.

Re: If borders were open

#40
> If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits?

What do you do when after a couple of years those very same immigrants starting protesting and rioting for civil rights like equal access to welfare benefits, equal taxes, right to vote and attribute racism as a motive for denying it to them rather than the original policy goal of making them pay their way and not overwhelm the locals in elections?

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