A note on an argument about open borders

I made this same point a few years ago in response to Wellman’s argument. You can find it my (widely unread) paper on this and related issues:

http://paq.press.illinois.edu/24/1/hidalgo.html

Sort of carrying on from Straightwood, is the (Heath Wellman et al ) argument that aid *at current levels* absolves the obligation ? Or is there a hypothetical level at which it does ? (Even if ‘aid worked’, at current levels it really isnt a burden to bear. ) And what about things like increased access to Western markets for developing countries ?

It’s fun that you mention Wellman. In his famous essay defending the right of the state to close its borders, he also countenances military intervention as an alternative to permitting refugees:

In my view, [asylum seekers] might also be helped in something like the fashion in which wealthy societies could choose to assist impoverished foreigners: by, as it were, exporting justice. Admittedly, one cannot ship justice in a box, but one can intervene, militarily if necessary, in an unjust political environment to ensure that those currently vulnerable to the state are made safe in their homelands. Let me be clear: I am not suggesting that this is always easy or even advisable, nor do I assert that states are necessarily obligated to take this course of action. I claim instead that where asylum seekers are genuinely left vulnerable because their government is either unable or unwilling to protect their basic rights, then their government is illegitimate, it has no claim to political self-determination, and thus it stands in no position to protest if a third party were to intervene on behalf of (some of) its constituents.
[…]
[David] Miller seems to me to get it just right when he suggests: “The lesson for other states, confronted with people whose lives are less than decent, is that they have a choice: they must either ensure that the basic rights of such people are protected in the places where they live–by aid, by intervention, or by some other means–or they must help them to move to other communities where their lives will go better. Simply shutting one’s borders and doing nothing else is not a morally defensible option here.”

Matt, I actually wanted to read that paper by Pogge a few months back, but I couldn’t access it by quick and dirty googling. Would you be willing to send it my way?

I figure it this way: a given government has duties to its own people (people who hopefully consent to be governed by said government). It may have duties to the rest of humanity as well, but those are distinctly secondary. One can certainly make an argument about whether one’s self-interest, properly understood (that is, not a narrow, short-term self interest) includes lots of developmental aid or open(ish?) borders, but I’m not really sure I get the idea that a national government is obligated to let anyone and everyone in.

If you were Wellman, why would you limit your alternative-to-open-borders argument simply to increasing development aid? There are other measures that cd be taken, e.g., an end to subsidized agriculture in the rich countries; a tax on international financial transactions whose proceeds wd be directed to meeting basic needs; finding better ways to bypass aid around those govts that do not use it effectively, or use it in ways that don’t directly benefit the poor, etc.

Whether or not Easterly is right about the effectiveness of aid in its current form(s), it’s probably not too hard, as an empirical matter, to come up with measures that could reduce poverty or have a good chance of doing so. Then one might want to weigh the political likelihood of those measures being adopted (prob. often low) against the political likelihood of open borders (also prob. low). And then weigh the relative likely benefits of each. But it seems likely that there are a range of ways to reduce global poverty, and open borders isn’t the only one. So, istm, if one wants to make the Wellman-style argument in the strongest form, it would not be “no duty to open borders because increased development aid could have comparable benefits” but rather “no duty to open borders because a range of measures, including structural changes in trade and finance rules etc., could have comparable benefits.” That argument would still be subject, I suppose, to empirical challenge, but it seems a stronger argument than one putting all of its eggs in the development-aid basket.

On a separate pt., re Straightwood @1: I think some improvements over recent decades have taken place on measures like infant mortality, literacy, some basic health issues (e.g. malaria), and (more problematic) — rural development etc. Of course a lot more should be done (and will have to be to even come close to meeting most of the Millennium Dev. Goals, I think).

Btw, on another issue, a USAID official in an interview yesterday recommended this address for those wanting to help re the Syrian refugee crisis:
championthechildrenofsyria.org

Related:

http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.25.3.83

http://www.cgdev.org/files/1425376_file_Clemens_Economics_and_Emigration_FINAL.pdf

Who has the burden of proof? What if migration impoverishes poor countries even more than border controls?

How did immigration abolish ‘democracy and the welfare state’ in Dubai and Singapore ? Dubai has never been democratic and (afaik) it’s welfare state is based around doling out oil income (so will last as long as oil reserves) Has Singapore ever been democratic? My impression is it has a pretty strong welfare state regardless ?
The evidence does show that emigration is positive for (most) sending countries. Maybe not awesome, but that depends on the definition of awesome, I guess.
I agree with you on open borders, the unknowables are too much for me personally, but I’d imagine we can manage *much more* immigration than we do at the minute.

Open borders find less problematic justification through negative argument; extant theories grounding border restrictions are invariably laced with fatal problems. This, of course, is not improbably the consequence of most such theories deriving themselves from state-centric philosophies, which merely don’t have sufficient elasticity to plausibly extend into the international sphere.

The OP is a very helpful articulation of the debate (see also the recent debate between Song, Volpp, and Shachar), and the burdens that fall on those who argue for aid as a substitute for open borders. Thank you! Yet even with open borders most probably could not afford to make the move (at present something like only 3% of the human population does not reside in the country in which they were born) and many who could would not desire the cultural disruption of migration. That would seem to bolster the argument for effective aid to correct the possible social injustices in the international birthright lottery.

The developing backlash against generous asylum/immigration policies in Nordic countries illustrates the likely outcome of widespread liberalization of immigration policies. Rather than a smooth assimilation, the rapid influx of culturally diverse immigrants often results in clumping up of the newcomers in ghetto like concentrations resistant to assimilation and targeted for discrimination.

Unless immigration policies are carefully crafted and the rate of influx properly controlled, the political stability of the host country is threatened. Simply throwing open the borders is an irresponsible policy. Most of the population of Haiti would leave tomorrow if the USA or France would accept them.

Another critical question is whether the highly organized political economies, by dint of their organization, are undermining the capacity of less well-organized political economies to improve their own situation. This is the question Marxists answer too quickly

What does “by dint of their own organization” in- and exclude? exerting influence on foreign politicians to make them organize their country in a way that suits them? Creating/joining something like the EU — which requires all member states, regardless of their level of industrial/societal development, to not protect their own industries, privatize, and bans them from slapping tariffs on imports from highly developed, mercantilist states like Germany/NL (where there is a 30y history of wage suppression + very efficient production overall, helped along by their deliberately setting a too-low exchange rate when entering the euro)? And which ‘Marxists’ are you referring to?

@25

Perhaps you can point out a developed country that has no restrictions on immigration from poor nations. This would provide an excellent proof of how innocuous such a policy would be.

Recognizing that wealth of nations is the outcome of highly organized social and political systems, controlling the boundaries of such systems would seem like a necessary adjunct to the general business of keeping them highly organized.

Somehow, when I read this eminently sensible sentence, I thought not of the Mexican would-be immigrants stranded in the deserts south of me, but the German 6th Army stranded at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43. I can’t blame Bruce Wilder for my whimsies, but it does seem to me that given human passions, and human ingenuity, the principles of organization, stability, and boundaries he rightly cites can be violated in all sorts of ways, some of them far less savory — and far more dangerous — than opening a country’s borders to the poor, no matter how many of them are believed to be out there clamoring to get in.

The U.S. has indulged in almost all of these violations in Mexico and Central America, except, perhaps the outright conquest that once seemed so attractive to the Nazi regime. To speak of chickens coming home to roost doesn’t solve the problems that Bruce is concerned about, of course, but it does at least provide a context missing in the insufferable pronouncements of our bigots and management experts.

zerospinboson: What does “by dint of their own organization” in- and exclude?

I can think of lots of things; it may depend on what one’s model is of the economic relationship, between a country, which has developed and a country, which has not.

I wasn’t thinking particularly of manipulation of the weak by the powerful, which is automatically moral suspect. My point, generally, is that I am questioning whether one can do the moral analysis, without confronting the functional details of how the systems develop and operate to produce wealth. For that purpose, the moral analysis of manipulation is too easy, so the examples are too easy.

I was thinking more generally of how the investments and innovations that make some industry in one place vastly more productive can immiserate some people in other places, dependent on the older process, method, industry, leaving the immiserated without the surplus necessary to find alternatives, and benefit from trade.

LFC @ 7:10 pm brought up one possible example — “end to subsidized agriculture in the rich countries”. Some highly developed countries, like the U.S., have highly productive agricultural sectors, and the export of U.S. agricultural commodities can hurt farmers in less-developed countries. Using a term like “subsidized agriculture” makes it seem like the moral analysis is an easy trump, but I’m not sure that it is.

Ronan(rf) @ 10:43 There’s a wide difference between average incomes in countries in eastern and western europe, with no movement restrictions among many of them and pretty innocuous outcomes.

You think what’s been going in Spain, for example, is pretty innocuous?

Thanks to Matt (@8) for mentioning Chang. I didn’t know of him, and having looked through a couple of his articles, it’s good stuff! (Not that I entirely agree with the view necessarily, but it’s well argued.)

Maybe the energy of the would-be immigrants could productively utilized.
Channeled in useful specific ways. The way the yearnings of the lower classes have been over the years, like in enlistment in the “all-volunteer” military.
Real estate, IT, financial sector entry-level, all have seen their own versions of desperate immigrants headed for a new life, with foreseeable consequences of eventual labor glut and disappearing promise.
Things bottleneck and get backed-up wherever the current gold mine gleam is, without artificial restriction.
Instead of just throwing open the borders and waiting for everything to even out, we could sign people up at the border, let them choose their area of endeavor ahead of time.
A valve on the pipeline of aspiration. Open, but not all the way.
Survival faddism directed in productive ways that will help the already well-positioned instead of threatening them, as now.
Because we’re surely going to run out of leaf-blowers and dishwashing machines if this open-borders thing takes off.

Presumably, the opening of all borders will also wave a magic wand over immigrants who view large families as desirable and wish to cling to diverse customs, such as female circumcision, arranged marriage, veiled women, or honor killings. The time scale of cultural adaptation and assimilation is substantially longer than the time required to relocate. The social and political problems resulting from such lumps in the melting pot cannot be wished away by some naive vision of the family of man.

Consider the Roma, an excellent example of culturally diverse immigrants. Their failure to assimilate and troublesome behavior has resulted in the forcible expulsion of many of them from France. When even countries like Belgium are politically stressed by old indigenous cultural differences, what makes us confident that unlimited immigration will not add fuel to the fires of discord?

IceNews, today:

The Danish People’s Party (DPP) has developed into Denmark’s most popular political group with 19.5 per cent of people surveyed saying they would be voting for the party in the next elections. Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s ruling Social Democrats have been in power since 2011, when they won the election with 24.8 per cent of the votes. The DPP only won 12.3 per cent of the votes back then. Analysts claim the Social Democrats have suffered a drop in popularity because of social benefit cuts they introduced. Many were also angered by the government’s decision to sell utilities company DONG Energy to Goldman Sachs last year. The DPP initially supported the sale of DONG but when it was clear the public was not backing it, changed its stance. For the past decade, the DPP has wanted to government to introduce more stringent immigration policies to, in turn, receive the party’s backing.

Immigrants in the Scandinavian country have faced mounting problems with discrimination and racism, with regulations making it tough for them to follow up such incidents in court.

If nation-states are morally legitimate as organizers of political economy, then some possible regimes of border control are morally legitimate.

I wonder, when Chris B. goes to the ATM, if he expects the amount of money he can withdraw to be based not he amount he has deposited and withdrawn. Or, does he expect the bank to make a determination how much human wellbeing would be improved by letting him withdraw money vs. someone else. I’m guessing the former. The right to property is not contingent on any duty to help the poor.

Now, you might very well believe that the rights of property have inherent force but the rights of citizenship do not. That’s certainly a position people hold. But you need to defend it. The question is, which rights do we exercise only contingent on (someone’s judgement of) the outcomes that result, and which rights are we free to exercise how we choose. I’m sympathetic to the idea that deciding who can join our family is the latter kind of right but deciding who can join our state is the former kind. But that’s the argument you have to make.

Before you ask, Who should be allowed to enter the UK, you have to establish that this the current citizens of the UK don’t have the right to make this choice for themselves.

LFC @ 2:30 the fact that protectionism is still a factor

I wonder if the era of Archer-Daniels-Midland, Cargill, Monsanto, and a “free trade” politics of Intellectual Property protection and the subversion of public authority to regulate, if we do ourselves any good to go along with such cliches as “protectionism = bad”.

I’m just not sure that our common ideas or intuitions of 1) what’s fair, 2) what policy actually is, and 3) how either relates to what makes people or countries rich or poor, have any fixed or reliable relation to one another. The desire to arrive at moral principles looks to me like a desire to economize on the need for factual information by truncating any commitment to understanding how things work, to theories of either politics or economics.

Just to say it’s worth looking at Blattmans take on Deatons argument

http://chrisblattman.com/2013/10/17/is-aid-a-roadblock-to-development-some-thoughts-on-angus-deatons-new-book/

and the general pushback collier has gotten

As a counter argument to Collier see that Clemens paper I linked to above.

Quote:

“The departure of some people—such as the skilled or
talented—from a poor country might reduce the productivity of others in that country.
Such an effect would tend to offset the gains from emigration. Externalities like these
are often assumed to be so pervasive that the literature refers to skilled migration with
a pejorative catchphrase—“brain drain”—embodying the assumption. (To see why
economists should avoid this term, picture reading a journal article on female labor
force participation that calls it the “family abandonment rate.”)

But it is not well-established under what conditions the emigration of skilled workers
results in a net depletion, in equilibrium, of the stock of skilled workers in the origin
country. Mountford (1997) and Stark, Helmenstein, and Prskawetz (1997) and a
subsequent literature theorize that when emigration to high-wage countries becomes
possible, even when it is costly and uncertain, the expected value of human capital rises
for all potential migrants. Because not all of those who were thus encouraged to invest
will leave, the existence of an emigration option for some people can tend to raise the
human capital stock at home. Macro and micro studies suggest that this effect is real,
and large enough to substantially offset the departures

Clemens then goes on to point out that even if “brain drain” effects are real they are peanuts compared to the huge gains. And points out counter evidence to the brain-drain thesis:

“if human capital externalities from health workers were a first-order determinant of basic health conditions, African countries experiencing the largest outflows of doctors and nurses would have systematically worse health conditions than other parts of Africa. In fact, those countries have systematically better health conditions (Clemens, 2007)”

And as far as that NY Times column goes, the only supposed piece of evidence which actually supports the title “Migration Hurts the Homeland” is the statistic on Haiti. The rest is mostly about how … great the gains are for India and China. Not sure why the fact that if the gains for countries which are not India or China are not as large, then they must be negative. Even with regard to Haiti, cause, effect, correlation not causation and all that.

Remittances generally go directly to people who need it and largely bypass government corruption.

They don’t necessarily bypass plain ol’ organized crime corruption though.

BW @46
such cliches as “protectionism = bad”
Protectionism is not necessarily always bad, but in these particular cases a strong case prob. can be made that it is. But I agree that one needs the facts first, which leads to:

The desire to arrive at moral principles looks to me like a desire to economize on the need for factual information by truncating any commitment to understanding how things work
Philosophers and pol. theorists (not that I am either one) should, as Chris B implies in the OP, not “economize on the need for factual information” but, on the contrary, try to integrate the empirical — an accurate “understanding of how things [currently] work” — with the normative.

For example, as js. notes @21, if you think as a factual matter that the rich countries are, in various ways, actively harming the poor ones — or if you think that the existence of corrupt, ineffective govts in some poor countries can’t be considered in isolation from external forces and incentives that help perpetuate them — you might cast the moral issue less in terms of a “duty to aid” and more in terms, first, of a duty to refrain from doing harm, or a duty to reduce or minimize or compensate for the amt of harm done.

Of course, that economists, economic historians, and others do not agree on “what makes countries rich or poor,” that e.g. Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly can probably have a long, not overly friendly debate about what and whether aid works and how, that people have no doubt spent careers decorously fighting each other about the effects of immigration, suggests that “how things work” is not something that will always be easy to discover. But no one, afaics, is calling for ignoring “the facts.”

Greg @53
You’re missing that the OP gives reasons to think that open borders would “work.”

Goldin/Cameron/Balarajan have a solid survey of the upside/downside to international labor migration that comes down hard on the open border side of the question. I reviewed it here.

One of the disturbing/aggravating things about the UK debate – and there are occasional signs of it in this thread – is how quickly and easily it slips from discussion of migration to discussion of social security. All migrants are poor (the rich ones don’t get classified as migrants, and they’re welcome as long as they bring some of their money); therefore they must want to come here to take advantage of the welfare system, we can’t possible afford that, we ought to have the right to control who gains access to benefits so we must stop them coming in the first place. Lots of logical leaps, but plenty of rhetorical power, feeding off general demonisation of the undeserving poor, and that’s why arguments along the lines of “if they’re driven and ingenious enough to make the journey, they will surely be driven and ingenious enough to make a living here” always get trumped by “ah yes, but what about all the spongers?”

arguments along the lines of “if they’re driven and ingenious enough to make the journey, they will surely be driven and ingenious enough to make a living here” always get trumped by “ah yes, but what about all the spongers?”

Some of this definitely happens in the US as well. But I think the more common thing you see among liberal-left types especially is the argument that immigrants will worsen the condition of disadvantaged natives. I think it’s actually a bit of a complicated thing, because while on principle I do completely favor open border policies, I don’t also want to get in bed with neoliberal/laissez-faire types on this, several of whom do also favor open-ish borders. So I do think you’d have to couple open borders with some sort of controls on capital (i.e. labor policy), robust transfer policies, etc. Otherwise, I don’t see why it’s not possible that poor people get fucked all over again, and equally all around this time.

#40

That doesn’t prove anything beyond the fact that people like to blame their problems on foreigners – and you are playing the same nasty game.

I’m disturbed at how the open borders argument assumes self-stabilising economies.

When we look at the economic upheavals prompted by the border-controlled addition of the workforce of China and other countries to the international trading system, it’s easy for the optimists to say “it’s all working out ok” – but I think the OP would be amongst those that in the context of a domestic political discussion would be more wary.

This post at The Economist shows how that wariness is now even slowly permeating some less fringier parts of economic discourse:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/02/labour-markets-0

(There’s lots of “wrong” in that article, but my point is that we’re edging towards the admission that economies don’t self-stabilise.)

And of course, we should consider the complications of naive utilitarianism – should we have open borders and it not destabilise (for example) the UK, how do we balance that with the likely destabilisation of (for example) Botswana created by the sudden wave of emigration?

The EU is sure not an experiment in just open borders the way suggested in the blog post, as an alternative to development aide. Rather open borders are the last step after development aide and legal integeration. EU regional development policy aims at ensuring a living of at least 70% the EU average everywhere in part because that is the level necessary to avoid large scale emigration. The divergence in lifing standards is also not that big to begin with. In addition, ex communist eastern European a special case, since they have so high education standards compared to their gdp level. Just open borders is a deaply market fundamentalist approach that can never ever work.
Fortunately, in contrast to almost conspiracy theoretical thinking about the EU, the EU is not market fundamentalist, despite some structural pro market bias in institutions (which is strengthend, not weakend by this hyperbolic anti eu rethoric).

Chris I think I have asked you this before but remind me, do you think that barriers to trade are morally permissible?

All this sounds like alternative ground for people who are bored with Just War Theory. Having destroyed the indigenous social habitat by economic and other intervention, is there an ongoing obligation to allow the human residue to sleep under bridges where they choose? Or do they remain attached to the land that was taken from them?

Truly the global urban-industrial system has not much interest in looking in the rear-view mirror and undoing the damage done, but I’m sure we could think of ways to provide a decent life in central Mexico if we worked at it. Anything else is just rearranging the deck chairs.

So it goes. I dare say a rational people could stop having wars, too.

@ Chris #75
Given that the UKIP like the far right in the US (by which I mean all Republicans and some Democrats) seem to question the premise that there is any duty to help the global poor in any way that doesn’t help the global rich even more, should migration and aid really be tied together as alternate means to the same end rather than considered separately as different means for sometimes overlapping but not identical ends?

Thanks for the link W R Peterson . (I wasnt trying to argue against or downplay their positive effects btw, just curious on that aspect. This:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/garip/book/remittances-and-inequality

is all Ive ever read on that inequality argument)

For a project that is taking up my Saturday afternoon I happened to be looking at Michael Dummett’s little book from 2001, _On Immigration and Refugees_ again for the first time in a few years. There is a lot I disagree with in the book, but for people wanting a clear headed (if opinionated) introduction to this material, it’s a nice place to start, and can be read quite quickly. The 4th chapter, “Grounds for Refusal”, in particular has a lot of information relevant to this discussion. One thing that Dummett notes is that, right now, it’s rarely the worst off in any particular country that migrate (this has long been the case), but that one likely effect of increasing foreign aid (or sending remittance) is to make it so that some who could not move before are able to do so. This sort of thing is part of what I had in mind by noting that these discussions have lots and lots of moving parts to them, making them very hard to fit well into most blog comments.

Actually, U.S. politics was de-stabilized by the flood of Irish and German immigration due to famine and the 1848 revolutions. The nascent Republican Party was founded in large part on co-opting anti-immigrant sentiment, initially manifested among the Know-Nothings and the American Party. The Democratic Party in the north became identified with the urban immigrants.

Look, we have a modern example of mass unrestricted immigration,and it’s the EU in the early to mid 00s. Afaicr the only 3 countries to initially open their borders were Ireland, the UK and Sweden. Look at Ireland, it had full employment, the highest (or one of them) minimum wage in Europe and very generous welfare entitlements (which expanded, not decreased, during this time) and who’s foreign born population doubled during the 00s. (I’m going by memory, it must have increased even more so since the late 90s when more people left the country than came.) The demographics of this (afaicr, roughly)break down to – in order of largest foreign born group- something like UK, Poland, US, other eastern europe,Nigeria, other African, latin American (I really dont know but that’s the idea)
Here’s a case study that isn’t the antebellum US in the process of sweeping social changes circa the middle of the 19th century (ie one more relevant to what modern mass immigration would look like.)

Bruce, your argument is completely tautological: you claim xenophobia is a sign of destabilization, so immigration is bad – duh.

The open border radicals should address the economic issue of empowering the immigration of distressed refugees. Surely the same moral obligation that would compel a nation to throw open its borders would justify paying for the transportation of poor immigrants to the host country. Otherwise, there would be unfair economic discrimination against those too poor to travel across the open border.

As the setup in the OP suggests, I take it that the main intention of those who make the right-to-close-borders move (“concede a duty to help the poor, but say that such a duty can be discharged in ways other than admitting poor would-be migrants to wealthy countries”) is to forestall the argument directly from a duty to help the global poor to the conclusion that wealthy nations ought to open their borders (because, presumably, that would help the global poor). But if this is right, then it seems like the burden to establish a controversial empirical premise would fall on those who made the original argument for open borders. Moreover, the empirical premise they need to establish is much stronger than the one Bertram is demanding from their critics.

In particular, it seems that for their argument to succeed, they would need to establish not only that opening borders is part of some set of actions that would sufficiently help the poor (and so discharge the relevant duties), but that it is part of every possible set of actions that would sufficiently help the poor.

If all the critics of the argument want to do is show that the argument doesn’t establish that we need open borders, all they have to do is point out that the open borders advocates haven’t made the case for that very strong empirical claim, and perhaps suggest some sets of actions that might be counterexamples (the most obvious sets would include lots of development aid, but we need not limit ourselves to that, and we certainly need not commit ourselves to thinking that development aid alone would be sufficient). If they wanted to go further and establish the conclusion that we know we don’t need open borders, even if we have a duty to aid the poor, then yes, they would need to rely on the empirical premise Chris has called attention to (viz., there is some set of actions that would help the poor sufficiently to discharge our duty that does not include opening borders). But note that it’s much weaker than the one open border advocates need for their argument to go through.

Of course, the all-or-none arguments are probably not the ones we ought to be spending most of our time on, at least when it comes to policy making. The important question is: does the best (cheapest? most efficient? most politically feasible?) way of discharging our duties to the poor include opening borders?

N.b. I have very little familiarity with the relevant literatures, philosophical or otherwise, so I may have misconstrued the OP or the arguments it concerns.

Ronan(rf) @ 12:46

There was nothing cryptic about my comment @ 44. It was a straightforward quotation from a news article, located by doing a Google search. And, I offered it in refutation to the claim, in the immediately preceding comment by novakant, that “nothing happened to the Danish welfare state at all”.

Ronan(rf): “So you’re not implying ‘open borders migration’ (which I personally dont support and is not going to happen in any plausible future) will lead to instability, but instead that controlled migration will/has. ”

You’re really bad at trolling. You just make yourself look like an idiot.

“admittedly in regards Bulgarian and Romanian immigration which (afaik) has only begun in the last month ”

In terms of unrestricted

“Is it your view that the almost universal existence of immigration restrictions is the result of ignorant prejudice and irrational xenophobia?”

No. It’s my view your rhetoric is.

Bruce Wilder @86: American politics circa the late 1800s were certainly unstable, but I seem to recall that the primary argument was not over the assimilation of German and Irish immigrants. It was over something slightly different; I’m sure someone here can remember what the issue was. Anyone? Bueller?

Anyway, even stipulating that a local re-alignment of political parties is a “destabilization” that we should shape immigration policies to avoid… well, actually, no, we will not stipulate that, because that would be silly. In any case, a few years have now passed since the potato famine, and I think we may at this late date presume to draw some conclusions about how the 19th century Irish and German diasporas worked out for the USA. Surely the sight of the yet-unassimilated Gaelic and German ghettos in every city on the eastern seaboard must give us pause…

Straightwood- I’m not derailling this any more and have not been making an argument for unrestricted immigration. I’m saying you can argue against unrestricted immigration without scapegoating people (as did your good self)
Hint (1) the veil does not belong in the same category as FGM or honour killings, unless (perhaps) you live in a country where the law makes it mandatory. (2) You should stop using things like FGM and honour killings (of which you appear to know nothing) to argue against personal hobby horses like immigration. Speak to people who campaign on these issues (specifically women from within these communities) and they (some, of course) will complicate your position. (not that these things arent terrible and should be stopped, but that your use of them in a debate on immigration is a terrible, terrible bit of rhetoric) (Other hints) what the hell is the rest of your argument ? You’ve made a series of sweeping claims,that have yet to be expanded on.
Such as:

“Perhaps you can point out a developed country that has no restrictions on immigration from poor nations. ”

Yes, I did. Thoughts ?

Or arguments that are undeveloped(see above, also segregation, assimilation so on and so forth.), or that are outright ridiculous (vis a vis the Roma)

Well, my thoughts are the incentives are more or less the same, no ? Perhaps I’m wrong but does it really matter (that much) if your wages increase by (say) 10 or by (say) 2.5 ? On some level yes, but then again if you’re sitting in Poland (where per capitia gdp in 2002-3 was 9-11k) unemployed or broke, or in Haiti, is there that much of a difference ? It’s much of a muchness, no ?* And these things move through all sorts of different incentives (such as social networks) rather than purely monetary ones.

But I agree with you, and this is a fair argument. The outcome of open borders is too unknowable for me. But what we do know from the accession states is that small European countries can handle the influx (which *was* large and unprecedented) so we can step back a little from the hyperbole.

* does anyone know figures of emigration from each country, which might give an idea on how many left? And on past migrations, similar ones in specific regions (even btw the US mainland an Puerto Rico etc ?) There’s surely some way of predicting this..?

#96

You were just being willfully obtuse in order to suggest a causal relationship between the changes in Denmark and immigration. You associate immigration with social chaos and economic danger similar to Straightwood who immediately relates it to such things as honour killings and FGM. This is classic xenophobic framing as displayed by rags like the Daily Mail and their crypto-fascist readership.

Starting from the premise that a state does not have a “preferential” obligation towards the citizens it happens to govern, I see only three morally defensible limits on immigration: A) the maintenance of a functioning economic system; B) preventing the creation of self-segregated communities; and, since, unfortunately, rich country citizens can vote against immigration if they think it harms them, C) the highest rate of immigration that will NOT create a backlash among voters strong enough to roll back open borders. I would argue that we are not about to hit A), that B) may or may not be a problem depending on several other factors, including assimilation policies (but I won’t go into a rant against communitarianism right here), and that, much as I don’t like it, we may well be up against limit C) in several European countries.

Well, if you live in the greater Boston area, at least, you would probably conclude that Irish immigration worked out pretty badly for the USA.

Oh for the love of. Yes, poor Boston: if not for its un-assimilable Irish population, people might be able to enjoy its high property values, booming economy, multiple world-class universities, humming tourist trade, and (yes) ridiculously low crime rate. I’m sure the Boston city fathers regularly think “if only we were more like Toledo, or St. Louis!”

Boston is not all Southie, and Southie is not all Matt Damon movies and Michael MacDonald books. Sheesh. (If you were trolling deliberately: well played.)

Open borders advocates often advance an argument in terms of a duty to help the global poor

It’s surprising that anyone would seriously consider this framing. I see the poor every day, on my way to work. They can save or steal $50 and be in Vienna in 2 hours; there is no border control. But what would they be doing there? Sitting on a different street corner and getting arrested for public urination? Those who do emigrate are not poor, they are young ambitious middle-class (by the local standards) people. Their families, whom they might support, are middle-class families. Immigration does not help the poor. I’m sure there must be arguments for open borders, but helping the poor is not one of them; it just isn’t.

Actually, there were lots of Germans living in the United States at the time of independence.

Rakesh Bhandari: Of course this leaves open the question of what we should do if the state in a poorer country is unlikely to restrict markets towards any other end than enriching elites at the expense of the mass of citizens; then does not the case for open borders become stronger again?

The whole argument seems to have an ambiguous relationship with politics, democratic or otherwise. What if the states of richer countries are only likely to shape policy to serve plutocrats? Then, “open borders” are just another pretty slogan akin to “free trade”, to be used to obscure the nature of actual policy and manipulate the gullible public.

Ze Kraggash – Even if it was *solely* the developing worlds middle class emigrating it would still be people who are poor by global standards migrating, so I’m not sure what your qualification is meant to say. The major discrepancies in wealth are now between, rather than within, countries, so this should be one of the ways we conceptualise poverty imo.

Of course there’s reams of evidence (some laid out above) that on purely monetary terms immigration is very good for the person migrating, and generally very good (in terms of remittances etc) on the country sending. This evidence is pretty much irrefutable. So ‘the worlds poor’ do benefit. (There are any number of potential non monetary benefits as well – such as the creation of diasporic networks, offering incentives domestically for people to educate themselves/develop skills (that they cant utilise at home but can if they emigrate), political ideas, new skills and technologies diffusing bask to the sending country, to take the strain off services in the sending country etc)

But even taking your claims that only the middle class emigrates as fact (which is of course too general to be true) your reasoning is circular. Surely the conclusion is that if the working class in Africa are locked out of western labour markets then restrictions should be removed on Africa’s working class from immigrating ?

This is a decent, free online book on the case for less restrictions, if you’re interested.

http://international.cgdev.org/publication/9781933286105-let-their-people-come-breaking-gridlock-global-labor-mobility

LFC @111:

I agree that it could be that one need not establish the strong empirical premise I mentioned in order to reach the conclusion that borders ought to be (more) open. As you suggest, you might start from a premise that nations do not have any strong rights to exclude immigrants and refugees, and then all you’d need to conclude that we should have open borders is the much weaker premise that on balance, open borders have better consequences than closed borders. For all I know, this argument may be sound. I don’t know enough of the empirical stuff on this issue to have an opinion on what conclusion we should reach.

I only meant to claim in my post @94 that an argument for open borders that’s based only on a duty to aid the poor would need the strong empirical premise; that’s the argument that Wellman et al.’s argument addressed in the OP would have to be directed at. Now, if there are much better arguments for open borders than the one from duty to aid, and Wellman et al. don’t address them, then one can fairly criticize them for this omission. But that’s not the criticism made in the OP that I was responding to.

Vanya @107: Well, if you live in the greater Boston area, at least, you would probably conclude that Irish immigration worked out pretty badly for the USA.

Hear, hear! Boston for the Italians!

Ze Kraggash at 7:22 pm:

In an effort to prevent the siphoning off and misdirection of charitable assistance to some people who are not the poorest but merely the relatively poor, my friends and I have started an online campaign to identify the actual most miserable human being(s) alive on the planet.
It’s difficult of course because the ones at the very bottom keep dying before we can get to them.
Perhaps you’d like to donate some time? Distributed computing!
I like your image of some kind of African “middle-class” stuffing themselves into leaky boats with ruthless captaincies for outrageous sums (where’d they get that money anyway?), while their poorer brethren stay home.
Probably because they’re too damned weak from hunger to move, eh?
Rip the mask off that crap.
Where’s Darwin when we need him most?

“Starting from the premise that a state does not have a “preferential” obligation towards the citizens it happens to govern”

I truly believe that the average citizen would be appalled by that premise.

Not that anyone should care, but my comments earlier in this thread were intemperate and unhelpful.

Ze Kraggash at 9:43 pm:

I apologize for making you the single focus of what is a far more generalized vexation. Still, the image of so many poor souls drowning at the watery gates of what they hope will be salvation…and the ones who make it floundering into guarded camps with no easy exit.
Compassion’s a disability, not a liberating grace. It hurts, and in this falling world it hurts more all the time.
Makes me crabby.

Robespierre @ 12:06

Whose side are you on? And, who is going to be on your side?

“I think much of what I see as the hypocritical and halfhearted nature of the Left’s support for immigration is due to the fact that it has to pretend it won’t hurt working people in rich countries, whereas it is the quickest route to wage convergence between rich and poor countries (not convergence to poor-country wage levels, but not to rich-country levels either). It is as if the left had to “dupe” people into accepting immigration.”

Yeah but this isn’t true. Or at least in any meaningful way that Im personally aware of. The evidence just doesn’t show this, afaik, in terms of how immigration actually occurs in developed countries (which is just another public policy with ambiguous – going on irrelevant – results for the receiving country)
Mind you I’m not pretending the truth matters on this, but it’s worth noting.

Chris:

I’d suggest that the difference between Portugal and Poland (say) is that the latter was much poorer than Portugal when its citizens gained access to the EU labour market. Practically speaking, little could be done without massive and probably political impossible transfers of income to east from west.