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Open Borders
The United States should have very loose restrictions on immigration. If you want to live here, and you pass a standard background check, you can live here. This used to be the norm, back in Ellis Island days. At the beginning of the 20th Century, it was just as easy to come to America as it was to go to a baseball game.
Just 2 percent of immigrants at Ellis Island were denied entry to the United States. “The great contradiction or irony here is that you have a massive inspection process, and you have this restrictionist sentiment and all these people you want to keep out of the country and, at the end of the day, less than 2 percent are rejected.
Of course, the people coming here were exploited for their cheap labor. These immigrants probably knew that and came here anyway, just like immigrants know that now. Dealing with the corrupt nature of America’s capitalism is bad, but it’s better than what many face in other countries: gang violence, broken infrastructure, absolute poverty. If people find the means to leave and come here, why don’t we let them?
Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times writes about this incredibly well and it is worth taking the time to read his entire piece on Open Borders.
When you see the immigration system up close, you’re confronted with its bottomless unfairness. The system assumes that people born outside our borders…
