[uniqueid]

I wanted to like this essay, because I also worry about the loss of privacy today, but the goofy paragraph about borders turned me off. To believe that borders are conducive to peace sounds like a bad case of internet-brain.

[f154hfds]

I've always wondered how people who advocate for more open borders justify their position. Could you expand? Naively I would think regulating borders is an essential function in maintaining rule of law - undocumented workers are fodder for exploitation. But I'm honestly open to being wrong.

[tzs]

The US had completely open borders for its first hundred years or so. It wasn't until 1875 with the Page Act, which restricted Chinese women, that we stopped having wide open borders. That was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which covered Chinese men.

For white people the borders remained wide open. In the late 19th century some restrictions where added on white people, too, but the borders were still easy to get through. The restrictions were things like a small immigration tax, a requirement that you would be able to take care of yourself, exclusions of people with diseases, and things like that. If you were white and in good health, there was essentially no problem getting in.

In 1917 they added a literacy test, but you could take it in your native language, so it wasn't much of a barrier.

It wasn't until 1924, with the Immigration Act of 1924, that we started seriously limiting immigration beyond the restriction on immigrants from Asia. It limited immigration from a given country based on how many people from that country were in the US in 1890, to "preserve the ideal of US homogeneity". (You would probably not be wrong if you read that as "to keep too many Jews from coming to the US". As things got worse for Jews in many countries in Europe more Jews wanted to leave those countries than did before 1890. Countries that weren't persecuting their Jews did not have such an uptick in emigrants compared to before 1890. Thus, the proportion of Jews in the total set of people wanting to immigrate to the US was going up).

[f154hfds]

Thank you for the response! Could I have some references for these claims? Not that I doubt you but this historical context seems very important to the debate.

[tzs]

Here is an article about the history of US immigration [1]. I got the big picture from there, and looked up the mentioned specific laws on Wikipedia.

[1] https://newrepublic.com/article/154717/open-borders-made-ame...

[uncletammy]

> ... undocumented workers are fodder for exploitation

There are a number of good arguments for stopping undocumented workers but I don't think "keeping them from being exploited" is a very good one. Most undocumented workers in the US come from countries where their next best alternative is being exploited by cartels.

A much better solution is to overhaul our immigration system to make it effortless to get immigrants on the books and paying into our system while we deal with the much harder problem of finding them a forever home

[godelski]

> A much better solution is to overhaul our immigration system

Why not instead fix this problem?

> Most undocumented workers in the US come from countries where their next best alternative is being exploited by cartels.

[svachalek]

Your suggestion is rather than modifying our immigration system, why not simply eliminate crime globally?

[godelski]

I mean I have no issues with fixing the immigration system.

My issue is with the problem being the cartels which the US has had a lot of historical connections with their rise to power, so I feel like 1) we have a lot of responsibility because of that 2) those countries don't fully have the means to solve the issues by themselves (obviously we shouldn't just go in uninvited), 3) we'd be attacking the root of the problem which is beneficial to both people here (from drug war effects) to people there (also drug war effects).

Trying to claim I said we should simply eliminate global crime is not a good faith read. It is a far exaggeration from what I said. Clearly a laudable goal, but we can significantly slash NA and SA cartel power without coming anywhere near solving global crime. If we consider Pareto effects this would probably be a better way to spend resources too. But the answer of how to do this is complex (not that fixing the immigration system is by any means simple). Saying that reducing cartel power is impossible perpetuates the problem and in of itself is a problem because it does not allow us to have the conversation in the first place.

[uniqueid]

  I've always wondered how people who advocate for 
  more open borders justify their position.

To me, it seems like the default position, as long as one believes in liberty and, obviously, doesn't hold essentialist views about culture.

Mind you, my position isn't "open all borders now, and damn the consequences!" It's a goal for the world to work towards, not something that we can do without accounting for economics, law, and xenophobia.

[jacquesm]

Of course you could always document them.

[adamsea]

Agreed : )

[BearsAreCool]

Not OP, also not advocating for totally open borders and am specifically focusing on the claim related to borders and their effect on peace.

From my own experience it is far easier to dehumanize and even demonize someone or some group of people that you don't personally know. I was lucky enough to have the experience of living in another country outside of the US for a large period of childhood and personally knowing and loving people in that country has shaped how I view every "dispute" between the US them. It reminded me that these countries are not faceless titans battling each other like some kind of Olympic competition, but rather are made up of individuals whom I care deeply about and any blow to the country is a blow to them. They are not just a soulless "them" but are instead individual people and it hurts me when they are hurt. I can talk all day about utilitarian ethics and maximizing happiness on all the globe but at the end of the day I care so very much more about those who I know. While war is not even really close to being on the table for this country, I know that I would vehemently oppose it. If borders were more closed it is very likely I never would have gone to that country, in fact restrictions in place already made it difficult though achievable. Even if someone has not traveled to a foreign country, every immigrant that he or she will meet is an ambassador for their home country.

Of course, many of the more despicable acts in history come not from physical borders between countries but borders put in place by more invisible factors like societal norms. Barriers between men and women, the old and young, and naturally between those of different caste and ethnicity. To continue the parallels in the article, with privacy we have seen the borders shift from some vaguely defined border on individual social media platforms to closer and closer to each individuals mouth, where we increasingly act with restraint on what we say for fear of retribution from friends, family, or even the government. As you touch on with things like immigrants being fodder for exploitation, when the borders of a country open we often simply move the true borders between humans from those of a country to those of society.

[darksaints]

> undocumented workers are fodder for exploitation

So do the right thing and make their migration legal. That is what people mean when they say they want more open borders.

[tomp]

They don't, that's the trick - they just insult those who vocally oppose their ideas.

But it's immediately obvious to any mildly intelligent, intellectually honest person that open borders are only possible for ultra-capitalist countries; imagine putting a billion people into the EU, and the countries are going to go bankrupt and collapse faster than you can say "public healthcare and free schooling".

[uniqueid]

  they just insult those who vocally oppose their ideas.

It's fair to call me out for insulting the author. The remainder of the comment is misguided because, as I replied elsewhere in this thread, I see open borders as a long-term goal.

[falcolas]

> To believe that borders are conducive to peace sounds like a bad case of internet-brain.

There's an old saying about this: "Good Fences make Good Neighbors". A fence (border) make it easy to say "you can't plant that tree there."

Borders (largely) define where one government can affect resources claimed by another government. For example, it would suck if it was easy for the US to send loggers into Canada's forests because the US claims that those forests belong to them. A border makes it clear that "forest X is within Canada's borders, and thus belongs to Canada".

The location of the border may still be disputed, but it simplifies a lot of other interactions.

On the flip side, borders also make it easier to create accountability for a resource (like who maintains roads near/between countries).

[hacknat]

I'm going to ask you to defend this claim. I consider myself a reasonably astute leftist student of history, but I don't think history is on your side. To be sure, borders are not a guarantor of peace, but you can't really argue with the results of Westphalia.

[uniqueid]

  you can't really argue with the results of Westphalia.

In which modern nation does one find Westphalia?

[hacknat]

The historical results of the Treaty of Westphalia.

[uniqueid]

Germany is not a poster-child when it comes to avoiding border disputes.

[hacknat]

Sure, but the Thirty Years War was no joke either. I'm not sure that you're making arguments any more. You may be right that borders cause more harm than good, but the bulk of historical evidence is against you. If you're going to challenge the principle of Westphalian Sovereignty[1] then I think you owe more to a good faith discussion of the topic than a glib remark about German history. Assuming for a moment that you're talking about WWII, then I would cite that as a case in favour of my argument not against it.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_sovereignty

[uniqueid]

Westphalia is a blip in history. The world has gone through cycles of war and peace, borders or no.

Meanwhile, there are more separatist groups than there are countries, and some of them enjoy blowing things up. How did borders work out for the Middle East? How did they work out when the USSR disbanded? Etc etc.