(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
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I’d personally like to see the entire world opened up to free migration and travel, but doubt the possibility of it ever happening in my lifetime. But why not start with the “first world” countries. Why shouldn’t we push for a sort of European Union on a grander scale. The U.S.A., Canada, the countries of the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, et al seem to get along pretty well, and the economies of the same are such that I don’t think there we would be worrying about the effects of mass emigration or immigration.
What would be the harm?
And conversely, beyond greater liberty of movement, what might the benefits be?
Don’t we already have item 2? We’re all perfectly free to leave the U.S., or Britain, or New Zealand, etc., any time we want. It’s finding somewhere else that will receive us and let us stay that is the hitch.
No one is “held prisoner” in any of the “first world” countries.
I’ll go with Canada, but that’s all I’m hitching my wagon to. My state is already inseparable from 49 other fruit baskets, so one more’s about all I can handle.
The most significant problem might be Europe. If the European Union did not exist, having mutually open borders with the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, etc. would be better than having mutually open borders with Italy and Greece.
The OP is, perhaps, unaware of how many people in the EU feel about “freedom of movement”. At the least, the harm would be a hell of a lot of squabbling.
Open borders are fine… as long as welfare policies are roughly equal. If they are not, you risk a disproportionate number of unemployed, and unemployable, people migrating to the country with the best benefits.
There are lots of potential benefits to economic unions, and most of the arguments I hear against them are from those who would be disadvantaged by honest competition. But completely open borders are another thing altogether.
The problem is that even between similar countries like the US and Canada there are sufficient differences in laws and socioeconomic systems that open borders just wouldn’t work. For example, huge and fundamental differences in gun laws. Or radical differences in the administration of health care and the availability of other social benefits. In economic and other specific contexts issues like that can be solved by reciprocity agreements, but you can’t have reciprocity agreements between systems that are radically different.
The final nail in the coffin of that particular proposal is that in order to have an open-border community like the EU, countries have to cede a certain amount of their sovereign authority to central agencies that oversee the entire community. Can anyone really imagine the US ever doing that? What I can more easily imagine is some factions – particularly those with right-wing inclinations (the ones currently whining the loudest about illegal immigrants) – starting a bloody revolution to prevent it!
The gun issue would be a major one for Canada and the US. Canadian border controls often catch Americans trying to bring in guns. However, compared to the amount of illegal gun trade across the 49th already, I’m not sure it would be enough by itself to stop the proposal.
I don’t see health care as a problem. If an American comes to Canada and gets hurt, they get treated and have to pay. Canadians going the other way would continue to buy travellers’ health insurance to cover them in the US.
Would a central authority of any sort really need to be created? I was envisioning something as simplistic as a treaty saying, “The citizens of the United States of America, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. shall henceforth have a right to visit, live, and work in any member nation, and shall be afforded the same liberties and protections as citizens of the member nation in which they reside.”
I suppose there would need to be a provision for admitting new members in the future, so perhaps some council would have to be convened in that circumstance.
Well, of course, the EU already has this, pretty much, so there’s plenty of experience with the problems that can arise.
If a US citizen in, say, France has “the same liberties and protections” as a French citizen in France, then there’s a huge incentive for US citizens in need of medical care which is not provided to them in the US on terms they can afford to travel to France to avail of the public medical care available to French citizens. Obviously, any country with a free-to-user public medical system is going think twice before entering into this deal with the US.
In other words, this deal is destabilising (or simply won’t happen) unless there’s a fairly high degree of co-ordination across the participant states, not just on health, but on a broad range of social and economic policies. In the EU this is achieved partly through formal mechanisms whereby competence in certain policy areas is ceded to the Union, and partly through informal co-ordination, where member states retain the competence themselves but accept the reality that they can’t depart too radically from European norms without putting pressure on their own systems, or on their relationships with their neighbours.
Whether you think this degree of transnational co-ordination is a good thing or a bad thing is not the point. The point is that it’s a necessary thing; a prerequisite to open borders. And the question is, are all the countries you list sufficiently committed to open borders, and sufficiently confident of the benefits they would bring, to accept the formal or practical limitations on their freedom of action in social policy that open borders entails?
I think that such an open borders policy would be too much, too fast. I’d be much more amenable to a large free trade zone without a migration free-for-all. A more comprehensive union could be discussed in due time, if and when the free trade deal works out well.
Well, yes, there’s obviously plusses and minuses to an open border policy, and in any society there can be disagreement about whether the plusses outweigh the minusses or vice versa. It’s obviously a matter of some controversy in both France and the UK - and not just there.
There are open borders between all the countries of the EU and the EEA - a total of thirty-one countries. They are all democracies, so presumably in all of those countries majority opinion accepts, or at least assents to, the proposition that the plusses outweigh the minusses, at least in the context of the other aspects of EU/EEA membership. Only one territory - Greenland - has ever withdrawn from this arrangement.
It doesn’t follow, though, that it’s universally true that the plusses outweight the minusses. Switzerland, for example, has decided not to join. I doubt that open borders is the only factor driving that decision but, when aggregated with all the other aspects of the question, they presumably think that the minuses outweigh the plusses. And if you extend the proposed sphere of the arrangement to include countries as diverse as the US, Australia and South Korea, it’s far from clear that the balance of interests would come down in favour of joining. Australia has very tight immigration controls, and EU nationals are regularly denied visas or deported after overstaying temporary visas. Whatever motivates that stance, there is no reason to suppose that the motivation will magically evaporate if Australian citizens are given free entry to the EU.
How can any country withstand a rush of millions eager to make use of their resources? Where you have competition for scarce resources you have wars.
And if you put in any barriers to such a rush then you don’t have freedom of movement.
I’m of the opinion that good fences make good neighbours and where you establish trust and cultural affinity with neighbours the fences can be relaxed. However, to extend that policy worldwide in one fell swoop would be damaging in many ways that can be imagined and many,many more that can’t. Better to let it happen organically (which it will so it’s a moot point anyway)
Even within the EU’s free movement zone new entries are often subject to travel restrictions for at least a couple of years to stop the sort of rush you are describing.
No, it depends how you define open borders. Free movement between the countries doesn’t necessarily give foreigners in one country all the rights of a citizen of that country. For instance, even if you’re able to move freely for a job and employment, that doesn’t mean you can vote in the other country’s elections.