WHY DO WE NEED OPEN BORDERS?
There are strong ethical, environmental, and—more commonly—economic arguments for why an open-borders position makes sense. The first and perhaps best argument for open borders is that borders kill. Just since 2014, according to the Associated Press, the number of migrants who have died or gone missing is nearly 60,000 worldwide. If people weren’t forced to board unseaworthy ships captained by smugglers, ford dangerous rivers to bypass visa restrictions, or trek across remote deserts to avoid violent border guards—that is, if they were allowed free transit—we could eliminate many, or even all, of these deaths.
Furthermore, the status quo is just not fair, in the basic sense of the word. Why does being born on one side of a line—in Piedras Negras, Mexico, for example—often consign one to a life of relative hardship, violence, and privation, while being born on the other side of the line—in, say, San Antonio, in the US—afford a life of relative opportunity, privilege, and bounty? Such inequality is enforced by our militarized borders: Philosopher Joseph Carens, in his book The Ethics of Immigration, writes that “The goal of the open borders argument is to challenge complacency, to make us aware of how routine democratic practices in immigration deny freedom and help to maintain unjust inequality.” For Carens, birthright privileges, or jus solis, are akin to feudal class privileges. As he argues elsewhere, birthright privileges grant “great advantages on the basis of birth but also entrench these advantages by legally restricting mobility, making it extremely difficult for those born into a socially disadvantaged position to overcome that disadvantage, no matter how talented they are or how hard they work.” That, according to Carens, is unethical.
Humans are a historically migratory species (along with starlings and cockroaches, we’re among the most widespread of all animal species), and our movement has been enshrined as a fundamental human freedom: Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The crucial part of the equation that has been missing, however, is that, in a world carved up into nation-states, a right to leave a state is only a half-right if it’s not accompanied by the right to enter into another state. It would be like if the First Amendment guaranteed the right not to stay silent but didn’t mention the attending right to freedom of speech.
https://www.thenation.com/article/open-borders-immigration-asylum-refugees/
Aww life is 'unfair'
There are strong ethical, environmental, and—more commonly—economic arguments for why an open-borders position makes sense. The first and perhaps best argument for open borders is that borders kill. Just since 2014, according to the Associated Press, the number of migrants who have died or gone missing is nearly 60,000 worldwide. If people weren’t forced to board unseaworthy ships captained by smugglers, ford dangerous rivers to bypass visa restrictions, or trek across remote deserts to avoid violent border guards—that is, if they were allowed free transit—we could eliminate many, or even all, of these deaths.
Furthermore, the status quo is just not fair, in the basic sense of the word. Why does being born on one side of a line—in Piedras Negras, Mexico, for example—often consign one to a life of relative hardship, violence, and privation, while being born on the other side of the line—in, say, San Antonio, in the US—afford a life of relative opportunity, privilege, and bounty? Such inequality is enforced by our militarized borders: Philosopher Joseph Carens, in his book The Ethics of Immigration, writes that “The goal of the open borders argument is to challenge complacency, to make us aware of how routine democratic practices in immigration deny freedom and help to maintain unjust inequality.” For Carens, birthright privileges, or jus solis, are akin to feudal class privileges. As he argues elsewhere, birthright privileges grant “great advantages on the basis of birth but also entrench these advantages by legally restricting mobility, making it extremely difficult for those born into a socially disadvantaged position to overcome that disadvantage, no matter how talented they are or how hard they work.” That, according to Carens, is unethical.
Humans are a historically migratory species (along with starlings and cockroaches, we’re among the most widespread of all animal species), and our movement has been enshrined as a fundamental human freedom: Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” The crucial part of the equation that has been missing, however, is that, in a world carved up into nation-states, a right to leave a state is only a half-right if it’s not accompanied by the right to enter into another state. It would be like if the First Amendment guaranteed the right not to stay silent but didn’t mention the attending right to freedom of speech.
https://www.thenation.com/article/open-borders-immigration-asylum-refugees/
Aww life is 'unfair'