| > Not having states with citizenship is not a human right. Double negatives in English are difficult to parse, and I can read this two ways: - "There is no legal entitlement to migration." - "Citizenship is a human right, and must be exclusionary lest new citizens dilute the value of existing citizenships, ergo any policy that makes citizenship easier to obtain is a violation of human rights." As a statement of fact, the former is true, but I also wasn't arguing that you already have a legally recognized right to enter any country of your choosing. If you were arguing the latter, however, that is bullshit. Citizenship cannot be a human right because it is a status granted by a state. The state does not grant you your human rights[0], it can only promise not to interfere with them. As for the historical counterexamples to migration as a human right, I can also bring up plenty of historical counterexamples to free speech as a human right. There have been just as many societies that tried to quell speech as there were societies that tried to quell migration. And, likewise, most people were not in a position to migrate, just as prior to the printing press and mass literacy, most people did not have an audience for their speech. But we would not say that "free speech is not a human right because a lot of countries tried to quash it", or "because most people in most times did not have the means to use it". That would be absurd. Furthermore, we should keep in mind that when I talk of migration as a human right, I am not solely talking about immigration. Most historical examples of states suppressing migration were just as interested in keeping people from leaving as they were concerned with those entering. The king does not want his servants leaving for a better kingdom; so he welds the exits shut. This practice continued all the way until the Soviet Union made this policy so onerous that the US decided that it would only trade with "non-market economies" if they abolished their exit visas. Emigration is already a legally recognized human right and any country that does not let its citizens leave is rightfully attacked as despotic. As for culture, uh... I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make. Even if every country in Europe were sealed off from one another, the culture of today would be dramatically different from 40 years ago, or 40 years from now. You just don't notice it because you're drifting along the same tide. Likewise, two different countries do not become the same merely because that tide is pulling really fast. France and Czechia were far more isolated 40 years ago, than they are now that the Iron Curtain is gone and the EU allows freedom of movement. They are still culturally distinct countries, even though they're moving in similar directions nowadays. [0] There are countries in Europe that use their constitutions as a place to put general welfare and infrastructure goals. For example, in Finland, broadband Internet access is a "human right". For the purpose of this discussion we're going to only be talking about human rights as negative freedoms - i.e. the Anglo conception of human rights. I am not opposed to positive freedoms, but that's not what we're talking about. |
I think human rights are an abstract western concept that aren't as universal as the definitions like to claim. The free speech thing for example is not upheld in the vast majority of muslim countries when it comes to various discussions and criticism of religion. And that's a ton of countries.
There's other examples as well,.
>Most historical examples of states suppressing migration were just as interested in keeping people from leaving as they were concerned with those entering.
I don't think so tho it's of no matter to the discussion. At the end of the day keeping people from leaving was far more difficult than keeping people from coming in to the place where one did have power and jurisdiction.
>This practice continued all the way until the Soviet Union made this policy so onerous that the US decided that it would only trade with "non-market economies" if they abolished their exit visas. Emigration is already a legally recognized human right and any country that does not let its citizens leave is rightfully attacked as despotic.
India is one such country today and they trade just fine. That's not to say that I think it's just.
>As for culture, uh... I'm not sure what kind of point you're trying to make. Even if every country in Europe were sealed off from one another, the culture of today would be dramatically different from 40 years ago, or 40 years from now.
Not in the same way in any shape or form. Despite americanisation, other international influences and local cultural changes I found the culture of my great grandparents recognisable and familiar and can trace the family back hundreds of years in that same spot. Look at the census list from napoleonic times and all the other family names sound familiar too. I have their mannerisms, I speak their dialect, i speak their language, i eat their foods, etc. If i go to an open air museum to look at one of the dwellings from hundreds of years I find a ton of design elements that are essentially the ones I found in my great grandparents farm.
Mind you there are strong differences still and they exist even within less than 40 years but there's an obvious difference between those two kind of changes that one can only look past if they're wilfully doing so.
For example on the contrary I go to my capital and it's surroundings and they don't have the dialects there from a century ago. In fact they don't even speak the same language. Consequentially they watch different media and vote differently. They don't identify themselves with the people that existed there a century ago and to top it off and all of it led to sectarianism affecting our politics to this day. (which was utterly predictable.) There was a second wave of external migration mostly in the last 2 decades leading to those with national descent being about 20% of the population of which less than a quarter speak the old language (typically without the old dialects). This is Brussels I'm talking about and the same change that happened there now happens across the country at a slower (read historically breakneck) speed.
It has proven not to be beneficial for the local population (unemployment is trough the roof, there's a ton of religious radicalism, outsized crime and integration issues, etc) We also still live in a context where a fully sovereign nation has control over who it accepts and were it fully democratic it would answer to it's citizens who when faced with migration that does not serve them would mostly block it. Not by building a wall but by simply barring from the privileges and functions required to exist in society.
Every country does that to some extent and so I'd say the universal part of this supposed human right is so universally rejected that it can't be called one at all.