[hn_throwaway_99]

It would be impossible to do without taking breaks, as explained in the article:

> Due to visa limits, Bushby has had to break up his walk. In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days before leaving for 90, so he flies to Mexico to rest and then returns to resume the route.

Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order to avoid Russia and Iran because of legal issues, nevermind bring imprisoned in Russia due to what sounded like bureaucratic BS, it's more impressive than I first thought.

[reisse]

From Wiki:

> They were detained by Russian border troop officers while they were crossing the Russian border near the Chukotkan village of Uelen, for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry.

Illegal border crossing is absolutely not bureaucratic BS in any country.

[JKCalhoun]

"not entering Russia at a correct port of entry"

I'm laughing at the lack of nuance in laws in general. Some guy crossed the Bering Straight on foot as part of a 27 year quest to walk around the world and the law makes no exception.

I remember as a teen being hauled into a police station because a friend and I had been exploring the storm drains ("sewers") with a home-made flame thrower (okay, so the movie "Alien" had recently come out… Yeah, we left the flamethrower behind in the sewer when we popped our heads out and saw police).

Someone in the neighborhood had called the police because she had seen us going down the manhole opening. (The police said the report came through that some kids had "fallen" into the sewers.)

So I'm sitting in the police station with good cop and bad cop sitting there musing over my case. "How about 'Failure to use a sidewalk when a sidewalk was available'," bad cop said as he read from a book he was paging through. That got a laugh all around…

They let me off after an hour or so of this.

[BryantD]

To be completely fair, Russia did decide to make an exception in this case, although it took a couple of months (during which Bushby was detained) to get there.

I am a little bit torn in this case. From our vantage point it's obvious that Bushby wasn't running an elaborate long scam to get into Russia. In the moment... I don't know, former UK special forces guy? Long history of espionage between UK and Russia? Two months seems too long; it's also not as easy as your case of a teenager in the sewer.

[JKCalhoun]

I saw that. Six months (if I recall) is kind of a long time…

[hn_throwaway_99]

Fair enough, but I interpreted "for not entering Russia at a correct port of entry" as he had a visa to enter the country, but he just didn't land at a recognized "port of entry", which given he walked/swam across the Being Strait, is unsurprising. But I don't know the full details of the situation.

[pksebben]

This might be a little broad for most, but I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired. Who cares? We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

I'm saying this as someone who enlisted in the defense of said nations once. Most of the structures that make up a country these days are for the birds - let a guy hike for chrissake. I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense. We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

[godsinhisheaven]

The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history, and I don't see it petering out anytime soon. Plenty of people care, for all sorts of reasons, many of which I would say, are good!

[chimeracoder]

> The whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty has been with us for essentially all of human history,

Quite the opposite. The modern concept of "border sovereignty" as intertwined with the nation-state is a Westphalian construction. (Students of world history will recognize why this timing is not a coincidence). And even then, they didn't exactly catch on immediately.

Sovereign nation-states are a tiny piece of human history. They're not even the majority of recorded human history.

[tomrod]

What, your ancestors between 600k years ago up to 150 years ago are a joke to you? Human history began with European Great Powers?

Göbekli tepe easily refutes your isolationism, as does stone- and bronze-age globalism.

[crazygringo]

Not really. Tribes generally lived in specific areas, and would go to war with other tribes if those tribes tried to expand into their turf. Or would go to war to expand their turf. That's basically the early version of nationalism and borders, with the tribe as the nation, and neighboring tribes understanding which area was whose. Even nomadic tribes would be nomadic within a certain area, and jealously protect the area they would go to at the start of every spring, for example.

Even modern primates establish territories for their groups, and warn off and fight other primates attempting to encroach. So this general behavior is quite natural. The concept of open borders where anyone can just waltz in and live somewhere where they're not from or didn't marry into and haven't been invited -- that's actually the relatively newer idea, historically speaking.

I'm not arguing for more closed borders today, but I don't think we're should pretend that the historical human condition has somehow been "open".

[nullstyle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything Disagrees with you, and has several examples of tribal fluidity and more freedom of movement than you imply here.

[tomrod]

No, really. You could make a city be defended but there was no great way to make a nation state before gunpowder without natural barriers in place.

Further, trade goods are found over large distances, which doesn't work over large distances and many alleged single-tribe-lands unless the good is extremely valuable and defensible from theft.

Your claim that great powers style organization is specifically refuted.

[guywithahat]

It's not just a human thing; people who study wolves find they maintain surprisingly strict borders between different packs, and this behavior continues though a lot of other mammals and even some smaller animals like certain birds and insects.

[pksebben]

That's partially true; the bit about borders and human history (so long as you sequester 'history' to 'recorded history') - but nationalism is actually newer than you'd think, and there were human societies for thousands of years before there were borders. More recent if you go by the current definition of border (formalized, surveyed borders are also relatively modern).

Is nationalism going to peter out? No, of course not. Do some people care for reasons that are important to them? Sure, I don't want to tell anyone how to feel. I am just another jerk with an opinion like the rest of us.

But if you were to ask me, it's take it or leave it. I'd be more than happy to see free movement in the world. Just another set of rules I'm not using.

[bluebarbet]

Yes, hard borders are far more recent than people think. As late as the First World War you could travel the world without so much as a passport.

But: back then only a handful of very rich people had the means to do that, and taxation and social protection were much lower than today. Those things are related. They (IMO of course!) are what make borders a pragmatic necessity.

[jandrewrogers]

You could travel across the North American countries without a passport until quite recently. That only stopped being a thing after 9/11.

[alva]

Passport equivalents go back to 1350BC

[BeFlatXIII]

What are those reasons?

[bluebarbet]

The most obvious one is that the modern welfare state relies for its legitimacy on social cohesion, i.e. a certain base of shared values and identity. You will not get people to consent to heavy taxation and redistribution if they feel that their society is full of foreigners. This observation is perhaps more relevant to Europe than the USA.

[SauntSolaire]

And that's before mentioning the economics of funding a welfare state with a relatively static/shrinking tax base and growing, imported, welfare recipient class - the latter being practically unbounded in the case of illegal immigration.

[phantasmish]

The US (where “open borders” are often characterized as national “suicide” by right-wing figures) had open borders well within living memory.

By ship? No. But you’re from Argentina and made it all the way up to the Rio and want to cross to work on US farms or whatever? Yeah whatever man, totally fine, just walk in. Anyone from the Americas was welcome, no waiting, no la migra hunting them, no nothin’

We didn’t change that until the ‘60s, and the only reason it didn’t cause a ton of problems immediately (farms at that time were already heavily dependent on migrant labor operating a bit under the table, and their lobbies were not quiet on the issue) was that enforcement was and has been, at times (and especially at first) mostly rather half-assed.

[marcusverus]

> Who cares?

The vast majority of people care.

> We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

Reasoning from pre-agrarian living patterns is, quite frankly, hippy nonsense. And no, we didn't settle in cities because of "the designs of the empowered few", but because agriculture leads to more permanent, prosperous settlements, which attract raiders, and settling close together allowed for common defense. In other words, as soon as people earned a living by their own planning and sustained effort, (as opposed to merely collecting the bounty of the earth) they settled down and drew borders to protect what they had built from people who wanted to just show up and reap the rewards of their effort, at their expense!

> I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense.

We can't have borders because you could see Tijuana from your back yard?

> We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

[cthalupa]

> Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

Fundamentally, everything in your post down to this ending boils down to whether or not you think that immigrants coming into the country is a good thing or not. People will try to split hairs over "doing it the right way," when until the 1900s doing it the right way was basically just having enough financial stability to make it here - many states had nothing beyond 'means testing' that would easily be passed if you could afford to make it to America rather than stowing away, and many states had less than that. For most of American history, immigrating properly was literally just showing up.

For the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, the only difference between them and the legal immigrant is the amount of paperwork on file. And many of us arguing that that paperwork matters are beneficiaries of a time where that paperwork wasn't necessary.

It's very explicitly a case of "Fuck you, got mine."

[marcusverus]

You can be butthurt all you want, we don't owe foreigners access to our country.

[cthalupa]

If the people in the country had that sort of mentality when your ancestors came here, there's a decent chance you wouldn't be here.

[pksebben]

You know, ideological differences aside, there are some brass-tacks reasons that this particular brand of rhetoric does you no good, and actually hurts you.

Bought groceries lately? Kind of expensive, no? A significant portion of that is due to the central valley labor shortage. Which is a direct result of ICE enforcement. Same goes for price increases in restaurants across the country. Those increases in prices at the grocery store also translate to inflationary pressure across the board. People have to spend more to eat, so they demand bigger salaries, so their companies raise prices. Not rocket science.

Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here? Are you directly benefitting from this or is it just a balm for some vague jingoist need to feel superior? I'm genuinely curious. The common arguments like 'they're importing rapists' is... well I don't even know where to start with that one it's just preposterous and demonstrably false. Immigrants aren't taking your job, are they? Like what is it?

[nephihaha]

"I find the whole concept of nationalism and border sovereignty kinda tired."

Well, it looks we'll have some kind of global government within a couple of decades. It won't be better than what we have now, in fact it will be even less accountable.

[guerrilla]

That depends on your values. I think it's bureaucratic BS in every country. The world hasn't been like this forever, and still isn't like this for other animals.

[uhdhr]

If you enter a bear's den, especially if it has cubs, the bear will likely attack you.

If you enter the territory of a swan, especially during nesting season, the swan might attack you.

If a foreign object enters some animal's body, the immune system may attack that object.[0] Allergy might be related to the immune system misidentifying allergens.

Squirrels can be surprisingly territorial.

Ants have wars. [1]

This is not surprising, since the consequences of territory being compromised can be severe. For instance, in this case [2], the territory was compromised through deception, like pretending to be one of them, and it led to the severe weakening or death of the whole colony through the mass devouring of their offspring.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_body_reaction

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

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/123ke...

[guerrilla]

Right, so birds protrcting their nests means they shouldn't be allowed to migrate thousands of miles every year. Makes sense. ;)

We must ban the squirrels from ever leaving the tree they grew up in! Let no bear seek a new cave lest she be punished with a swift death.

[gosub100]

I agree, and one of their great concerns is keeping foreign spies from getting in. Even though Russia isn't in good graces with the world currently, I think it's I'll advised to go off-script with any nation's border checkpoints.

[bluedino]

Just this morning I watched a video someone shared on LinkedIn. A lion cub was being nursed by a ewe!

[uhdhr]

There are cases of pet dogs, having great relationships with their owners, eating the corpses of their owners after the owners died of some unrelated reasons. Possibly due to starvation in some cases.

In that video, was the ewe and lion cub pets or wild animals?

[yawpitch]

So you’re saying we are no better than animals, and shouldn’t aspire to be?

[falcor84]

It was clearly a response to the grandparent's "... isn't like this for other animals". It's a fine thing to aspire to be better, but we just shouldn't be claiming that human behavior is any way less natural than that of all other animals.

[uhdhr]

Please define "better" in this context.

One definition of "better" could be to seek to avoid the extinction of the human species and of civilization. With that definition, in the current situation, taking measures to help avoid nuclear weapon usage, could be considered in depth and genuinely "better".

[uhdhr]

You can also consider the subject in terms of IT. Firewalls can be argued to delimit territory, as can login systems. Sandboxes are probably the reverse, in terms of keeping something in instead of keeping it out.

Some cells have cell walls, and viruses as I understand it have to penetrate that wall.

Nuts and fruit sometimes have protective shells.

An argument could be made that borders and territory are fundamental.

For an agent that seeks to defeat border control mechanisms, it can potentially be effective to convince the target parties that border control mechanisms generally or specifically are harmful, are useless, or have drawbacks. This is not always completely false in all cases, for instance regarding immune systems misidentifying harmless allergens as harmful, causing potentially significant harm as allergy. However, if an agent uses such approaches, they have to be careful not to buy into that idea themselves, lest matters may become strange and weird. And, in the modern day, if an agent is especially successful and competent with defeating border control mechanisms, considering the extreme power that the human species holds these days, such as with nuclear weapons, it puts an extreme responsibility on such successful agents, at least in the current systems. Otherwise, the consequences might be extremely detrimental to the human species as a whole.

[yawpitch]

What an interesting set of increasingly bad metaphors.

IT defenses are just an existing human cognitive bias carried forward into a new realm… a bad idea carried forward is still a bad idea.

The cell wall of the vascular plants doesn’t exist to keep viruses (or anything) out, it exists to provide structural rigidity and keep water pressure in… in fact any plant without a sufficiently permeable cell wall dies as a consequence.

The virus in turn isn’t an agent at all, it just passively exploits the permeability of cell walls and membranes in order to replicate. In doing so it helps drive the cell’s evolution, by both acting as a pressure and a mutagen. Life, again, depends on information transfer across permeable membranes.

Nuts and other fruits, by the way, are the sexual apparatus of the plant… they don’t even begin to develop until a migration has occurred, and once they’ve developed their primary purpose is, again, to keep energy and water in more than they’re to keep anything out… in fact they universally fail to function if they’re too good at keeping the outside out.

[_heimdall]

We are animals, we shouldn't try to avoid that as if its a bad thing.

[yawpitch]

We should be, then, at least equal to animals in our behavior, and should also aspire to improve on them.

[15155]

> The world hasn't been like this forever

People didn't receive handouts from governments in centuries past for just showing up and performing no contributory function. Kill all entitlements and let's open em' back up!

> still isn't like this for other animals

What reality are you living in where countless animal species aren't territorial? This is common sense.

[mnky9800n]

That would be amazing if some country tried to enforce visa rules on animals.

[guerrilla]

They do actually, for example with swine in Denmark. They've built fences for that purpose specifically.

[mnky9800n]

Do they have passports? Like how do they know if the pig is danish or German?

[guerrilla]

I think many are tagged, but otherwise they have a lot of surveillance and fences. They probably track them after breeches as well. The point is to control disease.

[MrBuddyCasino]

Humans and animals enforce their borders since millennia.

The idea that borders are unimportant is very very recent. That is to say, its commie gobbledygook.

[nozzlegear]

> enforce their borders since millennia.

In English it's "have enforced their borders for millennia"; the phrase "since [length of time]" is almost always grammatically incorrect and a giveaway that someone's not a native English speaker.

[MrBuddyCasino]

It is not my native language, and I wouldn't have made this mistake if I wasn't in a hurry and on my phone. Unfortunately I cannot edit it anymore.

[BeFlatXIII]

Borders of Westphalian nation-states being relevant is recent, unlike personal and tribal territories.

[MrBuddyCasino]

"Borders didn't exist before the treaty of Westphalia" is a hell of a take. If you want to stretch the State Sovereignty / Non-Interference aspect of it to that definition you're going to have to make your case properly, because I don't see how such a position could be defensible.

[uhdhr]

I am not convinced that the idea is recent, or rather, related ideas are not recent, going back thousands of years. It can be extremely complex, to put it very mildly. How well people that put their trust in some of those ideas fare, can likewise be an extremely complex topic, and can also be political. In some cases in some ways some of them might have fared well, in some other cases in some ways, maybe less so.

[MrBuddyCasino]

A group of men crossing the border into another country was (usually) automatically considered invaders if its size exceeded a certain number.

Eg Iberian Peninsula (Reconquista and later): Foreign parties >10 armed men could not cross without permission between christians and muslims.

Chinese frontier zones, Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks etc all had similar rules. If you want to go back further, then Assyria, Egypt, Hittites, Greece had such limits.

[uhdhr]

You are correct that there are many examples of border control mechanisms, in different levels and ways. Maybe even usually the vast majority for many levels and ways.

Some nations, countries or groups, or other levels, did play with some of those mentioned ideas of less border control mechanisms in some ways or levels, also going back thousands of years.

Countries that were not successful with border control mechanisms, sometimes ceased to exist.

But there are many different levels and ways, and the whole topic is, to put it very mildly, extremely complex.

[yawpitch]

Right, well we know which side of the enclosure of the commons you for some unaccountable reason assume you’d have born in.

[ginko]

Why do you think it's a communist thing? Communist countries (both historically and current) tend to protect their borders fervently.

I'd say no-border cosmopolitanism is more of a classic liberalism thing.

[MrBuddyCasino]

One must distinguish between "classical" communism (Stalinism, which is dead except in North Korea) and the modern variety, which is alive and well and I think is what you mean.

There are many that think themselves "cosmopolitan", when it is a delusion and coping mechanism about being a parochial hicklib. A chip on their shoulder that makes them especially fervent acolytes of liberalism (as in: Obama flavoured, not the other kind), hoping it offsets their humble origins after moving to the big city, so folks won't get the idea that they are flyover country chuds that vote the wrong way.

A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.

The core tenet that makes this communism-adjacent is the denial of differences: everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc pp. Ignorance of history and the nature of man is a must to take this position.

[miyoji]

> A cosmopolitan, as in one that truly knows the different cultures and people of the world because he has deep first hand experience, or has read so much that it allows to draw some independent form of conclusion, is either a strong proponent of borders or a fool.

This is the most incredible No-True-Scotsman fallacy I've ever read.

[nozzlegear]

> parochial hicklib [...] offsets their humble origins [...] flyover country chuds

Tell us how you really feel, good grief.

> everyone is equal, "no one is illegal" etc

This but unironically.

[falcor84]

In practice, communist countries have always put a lot of effort into keeping their citizens in.

[LorenPechtel]

Yeah, although it used to be that if you were legal to enter the US you actually could do it anywhere, just report to the local officials as soon as practical. That's still how ships work, you have to enter a country's territorial waters before you can speak to an official.

Neither the US nor Canada does that now, effectively slicing the Pacific Coast Trail at the border. And now we have the scumbags for no good reason blocking off access to the southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail. That fence isn't going to stop someone trying to sneak into the country!

[em-bee]

In Europe, he can stay for only 90 days

that doesn't make any sense for two reasons. first, he only entered the EU in september this year, so either the 90 days are not up yet or he should be in mexico now. is he? but why would he fly to mexico when he could just go to the UK?

but more importantly, he is a british citizen. getting a visa to walk through europe, especially now that he already has a track record of walking for so long should really not be an issue.

[ritzaco]

have you tried? I'm a South African living in Europe and visas are a nightmare.

Many europeans have never had to apply for a real visa in their life (I don't mean the online ones, or the apply on arrival ones, I mean the ones where you submit a 20 page form of personal details and hotel bookings and letters from friends you'll be staying with and bank statements and a full travel history) and they assume that I'm just making life difficult for myself by not doing some simpler option that they assume must exist.

I don't know about what visa options UK citizens have for the EU since brexit, but I'd be surprised it was as simple as "I feel like spending more than the 90 days I get".

[em-bee]

I'd be surprised it was as simple as "I feel like spending more than the 90 days I get"

why? that's exactly what i think he should be able to do. it's not like he spent 27 years walking across the planet in order to then misrepresent what he wants to do in the EU.

[machomaster]

UK is not part of EU anymore.

[em-bee]

if it was, he would not need a visa to stay more than 90 days.

for the third time: i am talking about how easy it should be for a UK citizen with his track record, to get a visa that allows him to walk through the EU for longer than 90 days.

[machomaster]

"Should be", "I think". Shouldn't you check the official rules first before writing opinions of how ought to be organized in your opinion?

The facts are:

1. The only EU-wide visa is 90/180. Citizens of UK don't need to apply for a separate visa.

2. Past the duration of 90 days, the matter goes to the national level. EU-wide long-term travel does not exist legally and this is done purposefully!

3. So the long stays require one country as your base. Long STAYS, not TRAVELS. Meaning that you get your official EU country of residence. Yes, you can travel to other EU countries, but outside travel still remain capped at 90/180, which is not useful in case of traveling through more than 2 countries.

[Broken_Hippo]

That's not the way it works.

I live in Norway, have residence and stuff. I can travel freely through most of europe without much hassle - but I can only travel 90 days out of 180 days - then you gotta go out of the area (or back to your home country if it is inside), stay out or home for 90 days, and then start anew. The closest border to me - one to Sweden - has no real security. A customs office because there is border shopping in the area and I know they very occasionally stop folks. A crossing an slightly inconvenient distance north just has signs.

Anything outside of this requires paperwork.

[em-bee]

the paperwork is exactly what i am talking about. with his track record getting a visa should not be an issue.

[machomaster]

> but why would he fly to mexico when he could just go to the UK?

Because of one of the original 2 rules he set up from the beginning.

[nly]

There is no Europe wide long stay non-working visa for UK citizens. 90 in 180 days is the Schengen visitor option, no?

[slow_typist]

90 days within any period of 180 days visa free. Everything else is bureaucracy …

https://uk.diplo.de/uk-en/02/visa-information-2441822

[anticodon]

He crossed the border illegally and was carrying a firearm with him. Maybe it's ok in the USA to cross the border illegally carrying a firearm with you, but I assure you it's not legal in all the other countries in the world and penalty would be very severe.

[_yb2s]

> Maybe it's ok in the USA to cross the border illegally carrying a firearm

By definition anything illegal is illegal, and no, you cannot bring a firearm across the border into the USA without a paperwork process.

[theultdev]

He said "it's okay" not that it's not illegal.

Of course it's illegal. But it used to be open season on the US border was the point. There were so many crossings, this dude would have gone unnoticed. Carrying or not. Nowadays not so much.

[_yb2s]

I crossed the border from Mexico into the USA towing a large trailer a few weeks ago and was waived right across with no questions or inspections. All that has changed recently is an uptick in racial profiling at the border.

[theultdev]

You crossed legally. You didn't swim or walk through the desert. They have xray scanners, dogs, and many other methods to inspect vehicles. You may not have even noticed you were inspected.

Nothing racial about it, many races from many nations crossed illegally. It's about legality, not race.

[_yb2s]

No, the scanners and imaging equipment do not fit large trailers like I was towing, so I had to bypass all of the equipment to a manual inspection area, but then they waived me through.

Racial profiling - as well as other types of profiling - are absolutely a major factor in US border enforcement, and are currently done openly and legally. Your odds of being extensively searched are astronomically higher if you are crossing legally but have an accent or darker skin tone. ICE and border patrol openly use racial profiling, and recently won a supreme court case Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo allowing them to continue doing so. They wouldn't fight all the way to the supreme court and win for the right to racially profile people if they didn't even do it!

Moreover, the job of a border agent, especially under the current administration actively seeks out and recruits employees that are attracted to the idea of a career that allows and encourages xenophobia, bullying, and racism. Sadistic people like Greg Bovino, who revels in fascist imagery and illegal brutality rise to top leadership positions. The recruitment materials for these jobs use white nationalist and white supremacists imagery and slogans- often using images stolen verbatim from white supremacist websites and forums.

[shmeeed]

Wait, he was carrying what?

Did it not occur to him that this might be a bad idea?

[paganel]

> Given that he literally swam across the Caspian Sea in order

Why didn't he take the ferry there?

[anentropic]

I guess it didn't fit with the goal of 'walking' around the world, probably wanted to avoid motorised transport

[falcor84]

> At the start of his quest, Bushby made two rules for himself, neither of which he has broken.

> “I can’t use transport to advance, and I can’t go home until I arrive on foot,” Bushby said. “If I get stuck somewhere, I have to figure it out.”

[throw-the-towel]

The only ferry in the Caspian I know goes to Turkmenistan, which is North Korea-level strict with issuing visas.