Opening borders works for multicultural countries built on immigration. For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
He's referring to america... and I have to disagree.
What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs? Culture is probably worth preserving, but often culture is simply "the way it's always been" -- I'd argue the opposite, bringing different cultures together, if done right, will promote creating new culture that make more sense for today's reality, and not some 19th century status quo. Creation of culture is more important, imo, than maintaining culture -- as the latter can be done with history books while the former is a real policy that might enrich the lives of citizens.
While I agree with this in theory, I'm going to point you to this fascinating piece on some of the ongoing problems that the French tradition of republican laicity is facing from Muslim immigrants, as a general illustration of the conflicts involved:
In summary: the very culture of tolerance and openness towards others itself is sometimes threatened by those it wishes to welcome, and that's a hard problem to solve.
So there is no value in a uniquely Norwegian culture? Or Korean? Or Japanese?
One of the side effects of totally open borders is that human culture might homogenize, with strong bias toward the developing world where birthrates are exceptionally high. I think Indian and Bangladeshi culture are both wonderful, however I do not think they are necessary worth more than Norwegian, Japanese, etc.
There is something about the US that makes it desirable for people to move to the US. When proposing changes to the US, you need to wonder about that that thing is, so you can figure out if/how it will be changed by your new policy.
> What's so important about an ethnicity that it has to be kept at all costs?
If you're from a country that has a great history and traditions, and you are ethnically related to that, then your DNA constitutes a cultural artifact, just like some carving in a museum in your capital city or a traditional folk song. Through ancestry, you are related to the people who made those things.
It would be stupidly inconsistent to preserve those other artifacts, yet to deny that your living DNA has value in connection with them.
> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
Let's take those one at a time.
Language: Sure, granted, there's a tendency to gravitate towards more common languages. Arguably that's a net benefit for people who would otherwise have grown up only speaking a less common language; learning a more common language grants access to a much larger set of speakers, information, and opportunities. That said, language doesn't tend to be lost, just not kept as an exclusive cultural barrier. Witness the massive efforts to internationalize information, to improve accessibility. And it's still common in many countries to look down upon anyone not speaking the native language, if that can be considered a feature.
Ethnicity: What do you have in mind other than language and culture, here? Because I hope you're not suggesting "racial purity" as a property worth preserving.
Finally, culture: Only if that culture is unable to propagate itself on its own merits, or in other words, if that culture has merits worth propagating. Some cultures have incredible history and traditions, and those have typically been preserved and spread further than they ever would have been otherwise. On the other hand, there are cultures built on oppression, indoctrination, suppression of dissent, lack of opportunity, and other undesirable properties; those cultures don't tend to survive exposure to broader information and the outside world (as well as the visibility of those cultures and their traditions to the outside world), which is all the more reason for such exposure. Not all traditions are worth preserving.
You're right that not all traditions are worth preserving, but Darwinism isn't the best way to choose which traditions are worth preserving. The problem is that ability to propagate does not imply merit. If you put a bad guy and a good guy in a room together, sometimes the bad guy just beats up the good guy, and you realize that you shouldn't have put them together. This is the same kind of fallacy as "if a company went out of business, it must've been a bad company", and also "the invisible hand of gravity means it's good that the vase broke".
For example, there's tons of cultures that think murder for personal grievances is okay and praise-worthy. I've seen first hand what happens when such a culture meets a gentle Western culture, when the latter doesn't have an overwhelming force advantage. It's not pretty.
I'm not suggesting darwinism here, just availability of information. Assuming information or communication is not being actively suppressed (e.g. the Great Firewall), then it's up to individuals what culture(s) and traditions they want to uphold.
Social pressure and influence. I could feel myself changing when moving between Norway and Germany. I have the same amount of information, but I involuntarily adjust to my environment. I don't like everything about Norwegian culture (it makes your life a bit boring), but I like a lot of it.
Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
You can't hold a global referendum on that, because their votes would be vastly outnumbered by those who don't care or who want to trample on them and help themselves to their resources or whatever.
Eh, that's just cultural conservatism, the rallying cry of racists and skinheads the world over. Are you also afraid they might marry your women and corrupt your children?
It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
Ironic, really.
Now, that's not to say large, unintegrated (and note, I say unintegrated, not unassimilated... those are different things) immigrant populations aren't a challenge. They most definitely are. Any isolated population, particularly if they're disconnected from government, law enforcement, or the social safety net, are a difficult challenge (my own city struggles with pockets of unintegrated north african immigrant populations, for example). But it's a challenge xenophobic europeans created for themselves, by allowing these immigrant populations to remain isolated in the first place... ironically, in part specifically because of that very xenophobia.
> It's really quite fascinating... Europe, for generations, colonized the rest of the world, imposing their own cultures on indigenous populations (and I say that as a Canadian... we spent 100 years trying to wipe out our own indigenous population).
> Now that the tables are turning and Europeans are struggling with immigration into their own countries, violent xenophobia is springing up like a vile weed.
> Ironic, really.
Why? Do you think the indigenous populations meekly surrendered to the Europeans? They fought and lost (some because of diseases, some because of inferior weaponry). The Europeans are now are superior in weaponry, they have working (in theory) immigration controls. Why is it wrong if they fight?
(note: I am not European. From a former European colony.).
> Some people in a small, homogeneous country might feel hat their traditions are worth preserving. Theirs is the voice that matters.
Some cultures have long and proud traditions of oppression, suppression, subjugation, racism, sexism, murder, genocide, and similar; those cultures don't get a vote in whether to continue those traditions.
But with the exception of that, then of course, any culture gets to choose whether it wants to (collectively, rather than just individually) participate and interact with the rest of the world.
And this has nothing to do with resources; we're talking about culture and traditions here, not about land and strip-mining.
> For countries that are based on a unique language, ethnicity and culture, it is damaging.
Where are these places? Very few countries are based on a unique language, ethnicity, or culture, and those that are have generally only become so as a result of active suppression of minority cultures and languages.
In fact, apart from a few microstates and isolated islands, I can't really think of any monocultural nations.
Foreigners could have their cultural enclaves and Japanese theirs. Anyway, this is an extremely minor concern relative to the astronomic benefits of open borders. Please see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769632
Uh, you can get smuggled into the US via the Mexican borders for like a couple thousand bucks. There's a whole industry around this. The people who do the smuggling are called 'coyotes". Any serious terrorist is already here, via that border.
Also, so what if anyone can come and go. You live in a town or city, right? So the adjacent towns, they let you just waltz in and out of them right? They "don't control who comes through." Is that so terrible? Do you think your town should have a big wall around it and strict security cause you're worried about a potential fugitive slipping in? No, that's stupid. It's just a really inefficient/cumbersome way to deal with the problem of criminals. Instead, you leave society open and free, and when a criminal pops up, you track him down, arrest him, stick him in jail or whatever. You don't wrap everything up with giant walls and security just cause sometimes there are criminals.
If you accept that the language, ethnicity, and culture are valuable parts of that country-
Such a country can assimilate some number of immigrants each year while remaining mostly unchanged. The immigrants learn the language, the culture, and marry into native families.
But as you increase the number of immigrants, the country can no longer assimilate them. They don't all learn the language, they don't know the culture, they form social cliques with other immigrants from the same country. They begin to change the face of the host country.
Personally I've never been thrilled by immigrants who say "Elbonia sucks, let's go to another country that is better and make Little Elbonia".
Things change. That's called life. To assume all nations and all cultures remain static over time is absurd. Hell, the nations as they are defined today are a very recent phenomenon. Some have only existed for a few decades!
The host country will become a new, different, more diverse country. That doesn't mean the culture of the host country is completely destroyed. Altered, yes. Destroyed? Almost certainly not.
And the detrimental effects can be mitigated if the host country works to actively integrate (note, integrate, not necessarily assimilate) immigrant populations, rather than isolating them through xenophobic policy and politics. It's the very fear of change that exacerbates the challenges of immigration.
As an aside, your characterization of immigrants as from "Elbonia" coming to make a "little Elbonia" is precisely the kind of xenophobic tendency I'm talking about. I'm sure folks said the same thing when Little Italy or China Town showed up in New York City, and yet today those areas are considered cultural jewels, contributions to society rather than infections that must be dealt with, components that have been integrated into a modern American identity.
Maybe don't assume immigrants are foreign invaders and they'll be more likely to integrate rather than isolate...
So your argument seems to be "that damage is part of life, deal with it". That's fine, I was just trying to answer your question:
damaging in what sense?
I don't assume all immigrants are foreign invaders, thank you very much. On the other hand, I have known some immigrants who expressly wanted to get rid of the people in the town they had just moved to and import their old country's people, culture, and government. That's not my characterization, that's what was said.
China Town et al are great because they are integrated. You don't have to be from China to go there. But not every immigrant wants to integrate. Does that mean we repel all immigrants? No! Does that mean we embrace every immigrant no matter what? Also no. I see no reason to welcome people who want me gone, and say as much to my face.
It is possible to understand both these realities at the same time. We don't need to get all black-and-white, "all immigrants are evil" or "all immigrants are God's gift".
I have known some immigrants who expressly wanted to get rid of the people in the town they had just moved to and import their old country's people, culture, and government
And what percentage of immigrants do you suppose those folks actually represent?
Are they really such a large group of people that they could actively "damage" a culture? Are they really so large a group that they could actually "dilute" the culture of the host country?
Again, I already concede, dealing with unintegrated immigrant groups is unquestionably a challenge (though it's notable those same challenges occur with local minority populations and the poor). You'd be a fool to believe otherwise.
But this narrative, that small, homogeneous countries are in danger of being overrun by an immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country within the borders of the host nation strikes me as nothing more than rhetoric, a caricature, and nothing more.
Ultimately, I agree, immigrants are neither evil nor "God's gift". They're just people. Some of them are good. Some of them not so much. But I'm willing to bet the vast majority don't have cultural occupation on the top of their list of personal ambitions. Like all people they have more important things on their minds... jobs, family, food, a roof over their heads, those basic things that we all have in common.
"There's not enough of those types for them to cause damage" is not an unreasonable line of argument. One could argue it's OK to admit them because they will get nowhere.
The "immigrant horde hell bent on reinventing their home country" is not the narrative I was trying to present. I was mostly talking about the simple fact that a small homogeneous country that admits a very large number of immigrants (of any type, wanting to integrate or not) will be unable to integrate them all without experiencing significant change, which is concerning to some people. (You have already shared you believe it is a real effect but 'too bad'. I am clear there)
Just guessing here: instability, differing expectations, increased costs to everybody thru inefficiencies. It becomes hard to predict what folks will consider fair, adequate government services. Result is a lowering of standard of living for those in the dominant cultural group.
That's harsh. What if I proposed to destroy a culture, say Judaism, by dilution? Would that be ok? Why is it not OK that this guy wants to preserve his?
Judaism is alive and well as a minority group in many many parts of the world. "Dilution" has never threatened the existence of Judaism.
The one thing that did was actual genocide, as a result of racism and xenophobia because of fear that the Jews, the minority group, were destroying German culture. Go figure.
But a few immigrants? I think Judaism, or really any culture, is stronger than that.
Another interesting example is indigenous populations in Canada, Australia, and the US. Those cultures have remained strong with the exception of those where active attempts to extinguish them have occurred. The Canadian residential school system is a disgusting, shameful example of the latter.
Frankly, I'd be very interested to see an example where simple "dilution" has actually led to the destruction of a culture. I can't think of one.
I like that idea, that dilution strengthens rather that weakens. Comes down to what's really important to a culture, and what's incidental. And fear of change. A much healthier attitude than 'resist change at any cost'.
Question: why don't the immigrants just declare themselves Americans wherever in the world they are? Why do they need to cross the border?
If the person you are talking about is such a horrible person, and there are so many horrible people like him in America, why do you want more people to be subjected to them?
I never once claimed folks with these extreme xenophobic views represent any kind of majority in any given nation. They're a vocal, often violent minority. Their voices are getting louder these days, but so it goes with squeaky wheels.
I also never once claimed he was American. In fact, if I had to make a guess, I'd say he's a right wing European. But that's just a guess and isn't terribly relevant.
Before you open the national border, you have to start small!
First, get everyone not to lock their front door. Then, ban all fences and "no trespassing" signs.
If that pilot program is successful, then think about opening the borders.
It occurs to me that any country that opens its borders will be instantly flooded with every murderous scumbag that is fleeing from the law elsewhere. You will also be an instant transfer point for the trade of weapons, narcotics and so on. Not to mention human trafficking.
I guess how you deal with that is that you open your border to foreign law enforcement and give them a carte blanche about to conduct their investigation how they see fit, and make arrests.
Speaking of arrests, open borders means that someone can sneak into your country, kidnap someone, and sneak out.
Fallacy, fallacy, fallacy, fallacy. Oh, I lost count.
Private property != public property. There are things called roads, parks, forests that are public - these spaces are designed for common use. Separately, there is private property. Like your house or your real estate. That's yours. Just for you.
Open borders is about removing borders between our public spaces. Allowing one to drive from e.g. a US road to a Mexican road without a passport. Open borders isn't about letting someone stay in your house. It's about letting someone rent or buy a house in America and inhabit what would then be their private property. It's about letting them take a job in a foreign country or hire a foreigner to work in their business.
