If People Could Immigrate Anywhere, Would Poverty Be Eliminated?

Eliminated? No, I think that's overstating it. But reduced? Likely.

Yes

I believe most of the people, especially the most poverty stricken ones, would stay put

How would they move if they can't support themselves? Food is the priority

Of course, this may lead to a different balance of people in countries, so it may work from that side.

Well as a citizen of two countries (one in the EU) I am quite mobile myself, but sometimes the language is a bigger barrier than the 'official' borders.

On the other hand, some people go out of their way to cross borders illegally exactly because it's illegal.

I've thought about this for a long time, as an American who twice lived overseas as a bona-fide long-term resident of another country. My wife, a first-generation immigrant to the United States, is just one of many examples of first-generation immigrants to the United States I know, from many countries.

From the article: "George Mason economist Bryan Caplan, whose writing at EconLog inspired Naik's interest in open borders, has offered 'keyhole' solutions as a substitute for black and white, yes-or-no questions on immigration. 'If immigrants hurt American workers, we can charge immigrants higher taxes or admission fees, and use the revenue to compensate the losers,' Caplan wrote last year. 'If immigrants burden American taxpayers, we can make immigrants ineligible for benefits. If immigrants hurt American culture, we can impose tests of English fluency and cultural literacy. If immigrants hurt American liberty, we can refuse to give them the right to vote. Whatever your complaint happens to be, immigration restrictions are a needlessly draconian remedy.'"

Further along in the article, what is to me the scariest possible outcome of huge immigration is mentioned: "Naik points out that 'political externalities' may be a major drawback of allowing anyone who wants to move to stable, wealthy nations to do so. Gallup polls have found that 700 million people would like to permanently move to another country, many of them from developing nations with failed political systems. If the U.S. or another wealthy nation were to see a sudden large increase in immigrants from these countries, it's possible that the new populace will vote for bad policies in their new home. As Naik puts it, some people believe that 'if you're coming from a place that has a problem, you are probably part of the problem, and if you move to a new place you might bring the problem with you.'" I would indeed want a keyhole solution to acculturate new immigrants to United States political culture (which I have seen done, for my wife) before allowing them to vote in local or national elections. One great advantage that the United States has over many other countries is that its sources of immigrants are so diverse that the immigrants tend to educate and broaden the perspective of one another. As I have related before here on Hacker News, all my grandparents were born in the United States, but three of the four spoke a language other than English at home, and my two maternal grandparents, one born in Nebraska and one born in Colorado, received all of their schooling in the German language. My grandparents learned English and learned American attitudes about civic culture because they interacted with other people who had come here from other places besides where their ancestors came from. That's always the strength of American society, and that's why I'm generally sympathetic to very open immigration policies. I am aware many Europeans don't feel the same way, but most countries in Europe LOST population to emigration until rather recent times, so the European experience with the benefits of immigration is not as deep as the American experience.

The other reason the policy suggestion is plausible to me is that I have visited Hong Kong, a territory that was flooded with immigrants during my lifetime, on more than one occasion. Countries that receive large influxes of people from elsewhere can learn to deal with that.

AFTER EDIT: Here's the website with the policy case for open borders

http://openborders.info/

mentioned and linked in the submitted article.

This video, although speaking only about allowing unrestricted immigration to the US, is worth watching for perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE

Unrestricted immigration would make the West's social safety nets and healthcare impossible to maintain. There would be corresponding civil unrest as a reaction.

The obvious first thing to do about world poverty is provide free birth control and related education.