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Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
81–90 of 270 posts
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#82In Russia you can take a tour boat to St Petersburg from Finland and they let you in for 3 days no problem. True of many countries that accept cruises. I think cruise ship may be a good way to get into a country without trying to get a visa.
In the US at least, I would imagine that if your cruise ship stops at a port in the USA and you come onto the mainland, you would still have to go through customs if you're coming from another country.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#83[deleted]
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> New York (second poorest in the US) On what basis? It ranks 15th for median household income.
> > New York (second poorest in the US) > On what basis? Probably the same basis by which California is the poorest: statewide cost-of-living adjusted poverty line. There's a number of ways this measure is potebtially misleading; for instance, both New York and California are diverse states where the local cost of living varies considerably, and the numbers for any CoL adjusted measure would look very different if in…
Interesting and good points. Thanks!
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#85>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?
I've formed a firm opinion that nation states with borders restricting people's movements and economical freedom based geographical citizenship is a leftover 20th century concept that we need to move overcome.
Grew up in Europe and I see no reason why others shouldn't have the freedom of movement that I have, practical consequences aside. In my book it is (or should be) a fundamental right. It's more than just travel and tourism, it's also the right to settle as long as you comply with local law.
I've been saddened and disillusioned to see the rise of support for restricted border control in my home country during the past decade.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#86Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#87Nonsense. The airport has no need of additional procedures because it is gatewayed by Norway (it's not an international airport).
If you arrive there by boat, things look well different:
> Visiting yachts must obtain a cruising permit before arrival and make arrangements for special insurance to cover the possible cost of a search and rescue operation. Also compulsory is having a gun to protect the crew from possible attacks by polar bears, of which there have been several in recent years. Those who do not possess a gun can hire one locally. SAR insurance cover is also available locally but is probably much cheaper if it is arranged through one’s own insurance company or bank.
Source: https://www.noonsite.com/place/norway/svalbard-spitsbergen/l...
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#88I took the ferry from Dublin to Wales while on vacation. We collected all our passports once the ferry docked and we went to our car preparing for the immigration officers, police etc. There was no one. Literally. We only saw sheep for the first 10 miles or so after driving off the boat.
That's due to the CTA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Travel_Area).
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#89"As climate change renders the rest of the planet as hostile to human life as the far north, we too must make the choice between throwing up walls and letting them down" Is this really the general conclusion about the cause why people want to emigrate to "developped" countries (the "we" in the citation) ? climat change ?
Not necessarily the cause of migration today - I think this is a conclusion about how much more of a factor it will become in the future.
Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders
#90I think the degree to which open borders are a reality within the U.S. is under-appreciated. As a reminder, U.S. states are sovereign entities with their own criminal laws, tax regimes, educational systems, property and contract rights, civil rights, economic growth, industries, natural resources, etc. In some cases their laws are pre-empted by U.S. federal law, but there remains quite a bit of diversity. Despite thi…
You dramatically overestimate how much of an economic difference there is between MD and WV: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vwpy8_glsgc/Vi5llZ9ZILI/AAAAAAAAI... . Adjusting for purchasing power, the difference in median income is just 10%. It’s like the difference between Belgium and Australia. On the flip side, there is actually quite a difference between states like New York (second poorest in the US) and Virginia. And…
Having driven all over both MD and WV, both in cities and country. they are _very_ different. I also think that Belgium and Australia are very different in many ways, but they're also on opposite sides of the earth, whereas, as was pointed out, MD and WV share a border. I've also been all over NY and VA and would say they are more similar compared to the WV vs MD comparison. I'm not sure where you saw that NY is the second poorest in the US... would be interested to see a source on that.
Median doesn't tell me much because it doesn't describe the skewness of the distribution of incomes. Without looking, I bet that both: 1) max income is higher in MD than in WV 2) there are more people at higher incomes in MD than in WV
So I looked it up for MD [0] and WV [1] and while they don't really help with my conjectures, MD has a higher per capita income ($24,774 in WV vs $39,070 in MD) and lower poverty rate (19.1% in WV vs 9.3% in MD).
Also interesting to note from those sources that they have basically the same retail sales per capita and rate of persons without health insurance (although MD has about half the disability rate).
[0]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/MD [1]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/WV