Open Borders 101

Preventing an American from returning from Haiti to the US would harm that American. Would preventing a Haitian from migrating to the US be any less harmful?

Estimates show that open borders would roughly double world GDP—an increase of roughly 100%. As a comparison, removing the remaining barriers to free trade would increase world GDP by only around 2%.

People must be a member of at least one country; no one is forced to be a member of at least one private club. Countries provide essential services; private clubs do not. A person excluded from a country loses most chances to interact with the citizens of the country; a person excluded from a private club can still interact with the members of the club. Because of these important differences between a country and a private club, the fact that a private club can exclude a person with little or no reason doesn’t mean that a country can similarly exclude the person.

Private property rights mean having the right to decide who can and who can’t come into your house. Immigration restrictions are inconsistent with the private property rights of those who want to allow foreigners into their house. Additionally, a homeowner could demand that only a certain type of speech be allowed in their house, but a government should not be able to make that demand of people who live in the country.

Being born in a rich country today is like being born a noble in the Middle Ages; being born in a poor country is like being born a peasant. In the Middle Ages laws prevented peasants from becoming nobles and from moving to another place in search of a better life. Today laws prevent most citizens of poor countries from becoming citizens of rich countries or from moving to rich countries in search of a better life.

Racial segregation limited where people lived and worked based on a characteristic they couldn’t control—the color of their parents’ skin. Immigration restrictions limit where people live and work based on a characteristic they can’t control—the citizenship status of their parents. Is it right to punish people for having the “wrong” parents?

In South Africa under apartheid, people were not allowed to live and work where they wanted; some people were only allowed to live in places where earning opportunities were scarce. Restrictions on mobility were based on conditions of birth. In the world today, people are not allowed to live and work where they want; some people are only allowed to live in places where earning opportunities are scarce. Restrictions on mobility are based on conditions of birth. The difference between South African apartheid and the world today is that the economic consequences of today’s immigration restrictions are much greater than those of apartheid.

We are aware of the costs of coronavirus lockdowns because they are new and disruptive. Most people aren’t aware of the much greater costs of our worldwide immigration lockdown, because it is the only thing we’re used to.

In theory, many of the same arguments used to justify restrictions on international immigration could also be used to argue for restrictions on migration between the states or provinces of a single country. The fact that these arguments are used to justify international immigration restrictions, but not to call for within-country migration restrictions, is due to anti-foreign bias.

Unlike racial and sexist biases, nationalist bias, which causes us to view the people of our own country as more important than the people of other countries, remains socially acceptable. Our descendants will feel as ashamed of our nationalist bias as we feel ashamed of our ancestors’ views on race and sex.

A Congolese girl not having life chances equal to those of a Congolese boy is widely considered as morally unacceptable. But preventing a Congolese girl from moving across national borders to have the same life chances as a German boy is considered morally acceptable.

Using physical force, or the threat of it, to prevent a hungry, peaceful person from reaching a marketplace to buy food, harms that person and is wrong. Using physical force, or the threat of it, to prevent peaceful potential immigrants from reaching a country where they may improve their lives, harms those potential immigrants and is similarly wrong.

Can I justify forcibly preventing Bob from attending a job interview by saying that I didn’t want to accept a slightly lower salary due to the job competition?

Protecting some destination-country citizens from slight economic disadvantage through competition doesn’t justify the extremely harmful use of force to exclude potential immigrants from the country.

The fact that a government has special duties to its own citizens doesn’t mean that the government can use harmful force against foreigners in order to protect some citizens from slight economic disadvantages due to market competition.

If a government is worried about the costs of providing social services to immigrants, it is better to allow the immigrants into the country but not allow them to access those services than to use force to exclude them from the country altogether.

I can’t use force to keep Buddhists out of my neighborhood simply because I don’t want my neighborhood to change from a Christian one to a Buddhist one. Similary, we cannot use force to harm potential migrants by keeping them out of the country simply to limit their influence on our country’s culture.

Even if Sam wants to be surrounded by people who think and behave like him (and who don’t think and behave like Marvin), that doesn’t give Sam the right to use force to prevent Marvin from reaching the market, and seriously harming Marvin in the process.

Martin Luther King Jr. dreamt that his children would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. Today, hundreds of millions of potential migrants dream that they will be judged by the content of their character and not by the country of their birth.

15% of the world’s adults want to move permanently to another country (if they are given the choice between moving permanently or staying in their home country). More than 15% of the world’s adults want to move permanently or temporarily. In Sierra Leone and five other countries half or more than half of the adults want to move permanently to another country.

In the year 2020 there were 281million international migrants, making up 3.6% of the world’s population.

References by chapter.

References by author, in alphabetical order.