That’s a very good point, and really on topic for the whole open/closed border concept.
Two points:
Unrestricted travel between the states of the US hasn’t caused economic or social chaos or homogenized the country. If we assume that opening borders would result in a massive flood of poor immigrants desperate for any job and/or eager to get on welfare, we have to ask why poor people in “the hood” today in NYC, Chicago, etc. don’t just up and move to a better neighborhood or region. Even homeless people with no job skills don’t need a visa (or even a passport) to travel to the richest areas of the country. A few do, many don’t. Why don’t they? Maybe because it makes sense for them to stay where they are?
There’s evidence that many of the founders of the US envisioned the US more as a loose confederation of independent countries - more along the lines of today’s EU. A few decades in, the country moved toward a strong Federal government.
The EU has seven major governing bodies. Obviously, this need not be the case in a different kind of union, but the less sovereignty is ceded, the less integrated the union, so that with a lot of compromises it really just becomes a glorified free-trade agreement.
The gun thing is by no means the only issue, but yes, it’s a big one. If one envisions a union like the EU Schengen Area, where borders are supposed to be truly open, a border may be nothing more than a sign – “you are entering Country ‘x’” – like between states – and Canadian gun laws would rendered as moot and ineffective as individual state gun laws. There is already a flood of American guns flowing into Canada despite rigorous border checks; I hate to think what it would be like without those safeguards and deterrents – criminal importations by the truckload and wingnuts declaring their sacred inalienable right to bring their handguns, assault weapons, and ten thousand rounds of ammo.
And I’m not sure that there aren’t equal problems in areas like health care and social benefits. It’s fine to say that foreigners must have proper health coverage, but how do you enforce that with open borders? What if they don’t – what if they’re one of the 48 million Americans without health insurance – and they become injured or critically ill? Who’s supposed to be responsible? Certainly not the US government, which doesn’t even take care of its own citizens at home. Back home, these folks might be temporary beneficiaries of EMTALA mandated emergency care, but Canadian hospitals are neither subject to US law nor are they the beneficiaries of US federal health care payments which are a condition of EMTALA compliance; instead, they operate on the basis that virtually everyone always has health coverage and they will always be paid in full. As you dig deeper into how this kind of reciprocity might be managed if the numbers of people moving across open borders gets significantly large, it gets complicated.
Yes and no. They’re not part of the EU, but currently EU citizens do not need a work permit for most cantons (immigration is managed at the canton level, not at the country level), get one automatically for the others; also, Switzerland is part of the “EU healthcare system exchange” (for lack of a better word) whose citizens can get a “EU healthcare card” and count as being in the local healthcare system for any of those countries.
“The EU plus neighboring, not-EU countries not limited to EFTA, which have open borders for some things but not for others” is both more complicated and wider than it sounds when we abbreviate it as “the EU”. Not every country in the EU is in the Eurozone, there are open borders permits/healthcare wise with non-EU countries… the more closely you look at the details, the more dizzying it gets.
Study history much? The dust bowl? Okies? “Grapes of Wrath”? The emigration of Southern Blacks to Northern Cities after the Civil War? Any of the gold rushes? The Oklahoma land rush (where they get the “Sooners” from)? A portion of the Great Depression was like this, too.
Yes, there have times and places in the US when we’ve had massive floods of poor immigrants across very short terms. And yes, this has caused massive short term disruption in services.
No, it’s not the norm. But that’s because things aren’t drastically different between states. When things become drastically different, poor people DO just up and move to better neighborhoods - exactly like the dust bowl sending Oklahomans rushing to California.
And that’s the point people have made in this thread. In the long term, sure, things work out one way or the other. In the short term, you can see some really nasty things happen and we have.
Why doesn’t this happen within the same city or state so often?
Because things still cost the same and you still get the same services for your money. But in a different state entirely, there’s hope you can make much more money or get much better service with what you have. Not so with poor people moving within the same city to a better neighborhood. You don’t suddenly have a better job. Your money doesn’t suddenly go further. The services you can expect aren’t suddenly better. But those things might be true if moving from a dust bowl Oklahoma to a prosperous California.
In that case, they were sufficiently desperate that they were willing to move to the unknown for the hope of a better life compared to the certainty of a bad life. You have no such hope moving within the same region/city. A poor person living in the US today has no reason to hope a significantly better life is possible simply by moving to a better neighborhood (which itself costs money).
So you still need a situation where things are sufficiently different between locations and chances of success that people are willing to move en masse. That would be guaranteed by suddenly opening up borders while it isn’t currently true in the same city/region.
Not a bad idea, but this would require places like Japan and Korea to also freely allow any western migrants and businesspeople (it would only work if all countries reciprocate equally). Is that realistic?
That’s not a requirement for all EU citizens - only those who are not working in the member state to which they move. Note the disjunctive “or” in the Article you’ve cited.
It’s actually a non-binding resolution of the UN General Assembly. But arguably now binding as part of customary international law.
But why envision that? The border could still be there to check for all the things it currently checks for. Just that when you cross that border, you can work as if you were a citizen. A waiting period would be in effect for benefits, just as if you move from one province in Canada to another. Benefits would expire from the location you left as well. Just like it does now in Canada.