[b4ke]

I keep hearing about it being military-aged men whom are illegally emigrating to the u.s., and low recruiting would seem like a low-hanging fruit in the form of conscription for immigrants.

I mean it also would afford their actual stations more contract labor in non-military support roles at their posts for their spouses. Also would reduce recruitment costs as you wouldn’t need so many incentives to get em through the door, reduce over-crowded shelters, and the kind of people willing to serve and improve their station are the kind of immigrants we profess to want.

[ben_w]

For the most part, my views on migration are "why do we even have borders?" (And then I look at humans choosing to be all Machiavellian to each other and am sad for a bit).

Given we live in a world with borders where nations try to subvert each other to their own interests, I think training migrants to use weapons you give them is going to be a great way for, say, America to give Mexico a military for free. (As a European, I think this would be hilarious… but more as a plot for a Peter Sellers film rather than as actual news to wake up to).

[mlrtime]

> why do we even have borders?

Do you mean like right now? You would propose removing world wide borders and citizenship requirements?

Or do you mean in a utopian future? If the former, is there any real programmatic intelligent analysis of how this would actually happen and what the negatives would be?

[ben_w]

> You would propose removing world wide borders and citizenship requirements?

From the point of view of citizens or economies rather than nations, their removal would apparently be a good thing, free movement boosting trade and the economy: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/08/06/open-borders-econ... (Michael Clemens also quoted in other papers, I don't think I've heard of wbur.org before).

But it's the same problem as anarchy: to focus on only some aspect of freedom is to ignore harms prevented by the absence of, or limits to, that freedom.

> If the former, is there any real programmatic intelligent analysis of how this would actually happen and what the negatives would be?

I lack the necessary foundation to distinguish between such an analysis and a think-piece in a newspaper (or, these days, the output of a LLM, or a YouTuber in a suit and tie). Link I gave above? I can Google Michael Clemens, but even seeing a list of accolades whose standards I don't know either, means I can't tell how he and his views are rated by other economists. And worse, when I do look up a list of works by Michael Clemens, one of the results tells me:

"Michael A. Clemens [\n] Not to be confused with: Michael Peter Clements" - https://ideas.repec.org/e/pcl20.html

(And I'm only 80% sure the one quoted in the paper was A. not P.)

And even if he's great, Gell-Mann Amnesia effect says I can't just assume that he'd necessarily agree with how his views were presented by the press.

Treat my position as vibes, not a policy proposal.