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Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

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221–230 of 270 posts

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a far better track record than any other leading power in history when it comes to facilitating the development of other countries into nice places. See e.g. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-americans-spent-th... , or consider the motivation behind the Optional Practical Training student visa provision. As a US citizen, I personally spent three years working in China for a Chinese company, on sala…

You can be opposed, but that doesn't make your position correct. In fact, based on your steadfast commitment to your position despite the glaring evidence I've put directly in front of you, that... kind of makes you stubbornly closed minded. The fact that you're not even talking about the things I mentioned in my earlier comments should be a red flag for you; why won't you talk about the facts related to immigration…

1. How relevant is open space when a majority of prospective low-skilled immigrants want to live in already-heavily-populated areas, not North Dakota?

2. I already mentioned that the other countries most comparable to the US (Canada and Australia), including on the open space dimension, make the same hard distinction between high-skill and low-skill immigrants... and they are doing conspicuously better than other Western democracies at simultaneously maintaining high immigration volume and avoiding populist revolt. It is not my problem that you failed to parse this. New Zealand did see a political turn in favor of more restriction recently, but it was from the left. If anything, it's Singapore's lack of space that makes it practical for the Singaporean government to enforce the conditions under which they can keep so many guest workers around to mutual benefit, such as no pregnancies.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#223
post #4

>The Dream of Open Borders Is Real—in the High Arctic For whom is open borders a dream?

For me. I'd love to see open borders, where everyone has the freedom to move to where they can achieve their goals and dreams, rather than being restricted to the country where they happened to be born. How many Einsteins have been born in Africa, but denied the chance to make the contribution to humanity that they could have? (And before the cynics note that open borders are incompatible with welfare states, that's…

How many non-Einsteins from Africa and Asia would want to move to Western countries if given a chance? a few hundred million? A billion? How does a say Germany or France support a couple hundred more million people all at once?

I think open borders is inherently a call for decreasing standards of living for the populations of those countries where most of the migration would be directed to. I just can't picture a scenario where hundreds of millions of people move to my country within a short span of time and not completely destroy the infrastructure under the weight of sheer numbers.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "second poorest" is likely a misquote. The Hasidic community of Kiryas Joel has a notably high official poverty rate due to the lifestyle of the people living there. This is one village in one county. The entire state in aggregate is not anywhere near the poorest even with NYC removed.

New York has the second lowest purchasing-power adjusted median income. On the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure (which accounts for cost of living), New York is the third poorest, with 17.9% of people living in poverty (versus 14.8% for West Virginia): https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio....

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korean border control is there to stop people from leaving, not entering.

I presume it's also to keep out subversive foreign agents. And reporters. And people whose mere presence is suggestive of Western capitalism and therefore subversive. Something like that.

i.e. basically everyone

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#226

Antarctica too: if you can get there, you can step onto the ice. There's a pattern here: the only places with open borders are places where you wouldn't really want to live anyway, while the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable.

> while the places with the strictest border controls are often those that are quite desirable

Curiously, this seems to me to be a 20th century invention.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#227
post #193
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theconversation.com/is-syria-really-a-climate-war-we...

that article mentions that drought was one of the many reasons of the Syrian civil war, not a “significant factor”.

What is a reason if not a significant factor?

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#228
post #191
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina strikes me as a strong combination of "desirable" and "open". Virtually anyone can become a citizen, and it's a prosperous enough country, currency decline notwithstanding.

“it's a prosperous enough country” define prosperous please. from my knowledge argentina is a financial basket case since a century ago.

A century ago it was the world's 10th wealthiest state per capita. Right now it tops the list of the upper middle-income group, so is almost a high-income country, and per capita is richer than, for example, Russia.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#229
post #119
post #87

Nonsense. 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…

It is an international airport, when you fly from Oslo, you go through immigration and exit the Schengen area. While the visa requirement of transiting through Norway probably limits most visitors, the article does mention there are charter flights from Moscow every other month that avoids this restriction.

It looks like it's about 4500 km from Longyearbyen to Istanbul, which seems like a charter flight could then really open up international access without regard to visas -- since Turkish Airlines flies to around 120 countries from Istanbul Atatürk Airport, which allows visa-free international transit¹.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turkish_Airlines_desti...

I don't think this will happen since that charter would be insanely expensive, and it would be hard for large numbers of people who all can't easily get a Schengen visa to coordinate regularly to pay for it to happen at the same moment.

I think it would be a fun premise for a movie, at least.

¹ It might be challenging to convince the Turkish Airlines gate agents in all of the origin countries that the passengers, some of whom are not legally eligible to enter Turkey visa-free (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Turkey#/media/F...), are all planning to make an inter-airline transfer in Istanbul, although maybe they could all show some kind of boarding document for the charter.

Re: Svalbard is as close as you can get to a place with open borders

#230

I 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…

Most people don't like migrating (whether that's intercity, interstate, or to a different country). Culture, identity and familiarity have a lot more staying power than HN readers (who tend to be a very transitory demographic) give credit.
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