US Politics on Sidechat | I’m pro-immigration but I feel like there should be conversations about how much is practical. But the thing is people who oppose immigration are so often just super fuckin racist that I usually can’t take that stuff seriously.

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US Politics 1w

I’m pro-immigration but I feel like there should be conversations about how much is practical. But the thing is people who oppose immigration are so often just super fuckin racist that I usually can’t take that stuff seriously.

Anonymous 1w

Like I think conceptually it’s a valid topic to discuss how many people a country’s social welfare system can reliably absorb. There’s valid conversations about the labor dynamics of immigrants. But SO often if you drill down on the reasoning behind social movements who want to restrict immigration it just turns out to be a bunch of racism. It means I can’t trust that people hold that position for actual normal reasons.

Anonymous 1w

there are certain people on here who genuinely believe our borders should be completely open and i don’t really know how that would be handled practically

Anonymous

#1 1w

I think that in an ideal utopianist world we would want that. Freedom of movement like we have between states or between EU countries. But because we live in a world with high inequality, that is not practical.

Anonymous

OP 1w

In the past, America was able to have fully open borders because the inaccessibility of ocean travel inherently limited how many people could come over, and there was significant frontierland to absorb immigrants. Overland immigration from Canada and Latin America was not limited because they were at similar levels of development to us, so people would go back and forth depending on labor demands.

Anonymous

OP 1w

it’s definitely doable, it would just take an extended transition to get there imo, but I digress and agree w OP fun fact, we formerly had entirely “open” borders up until world war 1! the spark of global warfare is what triggered this wave of identity checks at the border

Anonymous

OP 1w

We now live in a world where travel is easy, but inequality still exists. So everyone having fully open borders would drain the populations of developing nations and overwhelm the ability of developed ones to absorb the influx of people. The same thing goes in the other direction, people from wealthy countries would easily gentrify poorer ones (this is why American Samoa limits land ownership to Samoans).

Anonymous

OP 1w

(Oh shit I just saw your comment discussing the formerly open border lol, my bad OP!)

Anonymous

OP 1w

So I think in a hopeful future world where regional inequality does not exist, open borders would be achieved. But I think the inequality of the current world means that is not yet practical.

Anonymous

#2 1w

No worries