the right to global citizenship
December 2, 2018 6:55 AM   Subscribe

Left-wing Critics of Mass Immigration Have a (Weak) Point - "Mass immigration creates problems for the left. Tighter borders can't be the solution."
After all, it wasn’t merely low levels of immigration that made the New Deal era exceptional, but also, Jim Crow rule in the South (which temporarily persuaded some Southern Democrats that they could have their activist federal government and their racial caste system, too), a prolonged depression, a global war against fascism, and the rise of a rival great power with a competing, egalitarian economic model.

Given the impossibility of recreating these conditions, Cowie argues that the American left should abandon its nostalgic dreams of reassembling the New Deal coalition, and instead look to the “pre-Depression, pre-trauma outlines of progressive-style politics, albeit updated for the global age” — a politics defined by “shifting alliances, diffuse leadership, cross-class identification, and general social ferment.” While Cowie details the challenges that mass immigration poses for progressive politics, he also suggests that America’s foreign-born working-class can offer the left a vital source of radical energy; at one point, the historian approvingly quotes an organizer of the 2006 Great American Boycott, who argues that immigration activists “are rescuing from anonymity the struggle for the 8-hour day, begun in Chicago over a century ago by the immigrants of yesteryear. They are recovering the traditions of all working people.”

But in 2018, some on the left would beg to differ. In their view, the resurgence of a nativist far-right across Europe — and the election of a certain far-right nativist in the United States — have demonstrated the impossibility of reconciling progressive politics with mass immigration. These intellectuals embrace much of Cowie’s analysis, but reject his conclusion; they maintain that progressives will never find the road to America’s social democratic future until they circle back to its restrictionist past.

[...]

Given the choice between accepting Gilded Age-caliber inequality at the national level and complicity in mass death at the global one, it’s not clear to me how the latter could qualify as the “left” option.

Fortunately, it is far from clear that the left faces such a choice. Building multi-ethnic social democracies will not be easy (let alone multi-ethnic socialist states). But neither was toppling the ancien régime, abolishing slavery, or securing social welfare programs and collective bargaining rights. The vocation of the left, across time and geography, has been to demand the unprecedented and purportedly impossible — because honoring the fundamental dignity of all human beings has never demanded anything less.
The Left Case against Open Borders - "The truth is that mass migration is a tragedy, and upper-middle-class moralizing about it is a farce. Perhaps the ultra-wealthy can afford to live in the borderless world they aggressively advocate for, but most people need—and want—a coherent, sovereign political body to defend their rights as citizens."

The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely - "No defensible moral framework regards foreigners as less deserving of rights than people born in the right place at the right time."

For Bay Area Asylum Seeker, 'Surrogate Family' Gives Her Strength As She Awaits Migrant Son's Fate - "Veronica Aguilar arrived in a migrant caravan from El Salvador last year, seeking asylum in the U.S. This year, her teenage son is making the same journey, traveling to Tijuana in the current caravan with his grandmother. Veronica doesn't know how or whether she'll ever be reunited with her son. But there is one unexpected outcome from her immigration story. Veronica is living with a Bay Area couple who took her into their home. She says these people who were strangers just a few months ago feel like family now."

SRW: "The scope of the possible is large in social affairs, and includes outcomes without morally repugnant tradeoffs. But morally repugnant tradeoffs will be manufactured for us, unless we find ways to hold them off."

Globalization as a new Roman order, awaiting its early Christians
It is not till near the end of the book that Hardt and Negri spell out what they take to manifest the primal power of the helpless multitude: Empire, seemingly in control everywhere, is unable to bridle the planetary flow of workers seeking jobs and a better life in rich countries. Reshaping social relations everywhere, immigration on this scale reveals both the hostility of the multitude to the system of national borders and its tenacious desire for cosmopolitan freedom. ‘The multitude must be able to decide if, when and where it moves. It must have the right also to stay still and enjoy one place rather than being forced constantly to be on the move. The general right to control its own movement is the multitude’s ultimate demand for global citizenship.’ In keeping with its ontological background, Empire does not develop any sustained programme for the injured and insulted of the world. Logically, however, its most distinctive proposal (the right to a guaranteed basic income occupies second place) is for abolition of all immigration controls: papiers pour tous! For Hardt and Negri, this is a demand that opens up the possibility of rejuvenating the politically stagnant core of global capitalism. But the desire to live, work and raise families in more affluent lands arguably finds its true manifesto in the inscription at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, holding out the promise of entirely prosaic freedoms.
posted by kliuless (43 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Open borders was formerly a Libertarian plank for the US, until around the time they also went anti-choice on abortion. Open borders was traditionally opposed by labor and the left, for what were obvious wage reasons back then.
posted by Brian B. at 9:00 AM on December 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


If the best "the left" can do is to reinvent Jeremy Corbyn from first principles, we're fucking doomed.
posted by tobascodagama at 9:21 AM on December 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


It takes genuine skill and perhaps a dash of racism to treat mass immigration as though it is some natural and inevitable phenomenon and not the direct result of war, imperialism and environmental destruction under decades of US capitalist hegemony.

Whether you're for or against open borders is largely irrelevant if the resulting suffering remains extant. It is in strong opposition to the root cause that the left must make its case.
posted by smithsmith at 11:50 AM on December 2, 2018 [18 favorites]


I don’t understand how liberalizing visa policies equals open borders. Currently, the US has 500k-600k unauthorized entrances (through either visa overstays or actual border crossings) each year. Seems pretty goddamned open to me.

A more liberal visa system seems like it would tighten border security quite a bit, no?
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:36 PM on December 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Whether you're for or against open borders is largely irrelevant if the resulting suffering remains extant. It is in strong opposition to the root cause that the left must make its case.

Yeah this is pretty much my take, too, though it's hard to follow this to the logical conclusion without becoming a READ SETTLERS guy because, well, some parts of the logical conclusion are not likely to be an easy sell in rich countries.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


Surely, if we've learned anything in the last 30 years, it's that being Republicans Lite does not pay off?

What about an alternative platform:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Americans have always raised a fuss over the current crop of immigrants. But rather than give in to this, we should make the case that the fuss was wrong in the 19th century, when our ancestors arrived, and it's wrong today.
posted by zompist at 2:04 PM on December 2, 2018 [14 favorites]


some parts of the logical conclusion are not likely to be an easy sell in rich countries.

You think so? The vast majority of working class Americans are vehemently anti-war - indeed, rightly or wrongly, Trump's faux isolationism in this regard is and was part of his appeal.

The problem is that no one has been permitted to offer a credible policy option against imperialism from a leftist perspective because that ground has been completely occupied by center-left neoliberals with delusions of American exceptionalism.
posted by smithsmith at 2:22 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


In their view, the resurgence of a nativist far-right across Europe — and the election of a certain far-right nativist in the United States

This word needs to die, because it is not used to me mean what it should really mean.
posted by rokusan at 4:25 PM on December 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


You think so? The vast majority of working class Americans are vehemently anti-war - indeed, rightly or wrongly, Trump's faux isolationism in this regard is and was part of his appeal.

I just meant that I think most of us in the U.S. have benefitted materially from the

war, imperialism and environmental destruction under decades of US capitalist hegemony.

and that in a truly just global redistribution of resources a lot of us would be the ones giving. But of course it's a small percentage who claim the greatest share of the spoils, so I suppose it's a question of whether international solidarity is in fact achievable, and whether the majority of Americans can be convinced that they have more to gain than to lose by it in the long run.
posted by atoxyl at 7:36 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


I agree that immigration could present some great problems for the left, and am generally baffled by leftist support for less restrictive immigration policy. I suspect such support is the result of the vehement anti immigration sentiment on the right more than anything else, enemy of my enemy kind of stance. Because as I see it, the strongest argument in favor of less restrictive immigration is fundamentally capitalist, and at odds with the notion of creating a more equal society. Things (capitalism and less equal society) which the left are generally suspicious of. Quite irrationally, IMO, I might add.

In the big picture, migration is the very story of humanity, the way to advance beyond survival, and thrive. Being able to move on toward greener pastures as needed is how people have created prosperity for themselves and others. Restricting peoples movement is how governments have stifled prosperity, a surefire way to create misery. Whether on an international scale or local, the freedom to simply move is one of the most important keys to increasing prosperity not only for those who do so, but also for those who don't. Imagine being forced to stay in the town where you were born. Not so bad if it's a large one with a diverse and bustling economy. Pretty bad if it's a rust belt town.

Economically, less restrictive immigration is a free market solution to labor. Yet free markets have traditionally been viewed dimly by the left. Free markets have traditionally been lauded by the right. Yet the impulse of fear and bigotry have made immigration, and the possibility of non-European migrants being a market solution is a difficult sell to actual conservative voters.

And none of this even touches on the fact that almost everyone in the US, certainly those most vehemently against immigration, is descended from immigrants, if not an actual immigrant themselves.

Immigration and the left so far in the last few political cycles is a weird balancing act anchored in humanitarian sentiment. It can stay that high road as long as the right continues the barely veiled hate that propels its anti immigrant fervor. But of that fervor cools down, who knows where it will evolve and how the political lines will shift on the issue, when the left will have to address what immigration actually means economically.
posted by 2N2222 at 11:25 PM on December 2, 2018 [2 favorites]




I don’t understand how liberalizing visa policies equals open borders. Currently, the US has 500k-600k unauthorized entrances (through either visa overstays or actual border crossings) each year. Seems pretty goddamned open to me.

A more liberal visa system seems like it would tighten border security quite a bit, no?



I find "open border" is usually not defined. Too often, it's interpreted idiotically, with a claim such as, "If we have open borders, we'll no longer be a nation!" or some such stupidity.

Regardless how it's defined, a more liberal visa system encourages legal migration,and tightens security by definition. Opponents often play a stupid word game to deflect argument, claiming "I'm not against immigration, just illegal immigration." If the objection is to its legality, then why not just legalize it? Imagine if someone said, "I'm not against smoking pot, I'm just against smoking pot illegally".
posted by 2N2222 at 11:42 PM on December 2, 2018


Come live here, just pay your taxes. Don't really care where you're from. While we're at it, get out of here if you don't pay your taxes. I'm looking at you, billionaires. Please note, by "get out of here" in this context, I mean, get out of living existence and surrender your wealth and possessions to the public.
posted by GoblinHoney at 3:46 PM on December 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Left Case against Open Borders
An absolutely rubbish piece by the plagiarist Angela Nagle which has, at this point, been thoroughly discredited. And she's now doing the rounds on Fox News. Tucker Carlson called her piece the "best" in 6 months. Back in October she shared a platform with a fascist

Here is one such article that dismantles her "argument": Attacking Migrants Does Not Help Labor: A reply to Nagle
posted by standardasparagus at 9:03 AM on December 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Yeah, it's worth pointing out that in the context of left-wing journalistic discourse, Nagle's is very much the minority, contrarian view, and not one to which many people subscribe. This probably reflects which magazines and websites I read more than anything else, but I've seen it rebutted much more often than I've seen it defended. Of course it's a horrible look that she published her piece in a pro-Trump outlet and then publicized it on Tucker Carlson's show, but more importantly, the argument doesn't hold water.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:42 AM on December 4, 2018 [3 favorites]


Bernie Sanders on open borders:

Ezra Klein

You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ...

Bernie Sanders

Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein

Really?

Bernie Sanders

Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

Ezra Klein

But it would make ...

Bernie Sanders

Excuse me ...

Ezra Klein

It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

Bernie Sanders

It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids?

I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.

posted by Brian B. at 3:01 PM on December 4, 2018


Bernie Sanders is wrong. It's the fact that most immigration is illegal that keeps unauthorized immigrant workers working at $2-3 per hour. If they could work legally in America, they could complain to the cops if their employers tried to underpay them or subject them to unsafe working conditions, without fear of being deported. They could join unions, or start unions, without fear of being deported. The fact that immigration laws prevent them from working openly and officially in this country means that they have to work secretly, and are discouraged from joining in solidarity with their fellow workers. And the stigma that it creates also discourages native-born workers from joining in solidarity with them. That's splitting the working class, and it benefits the ownership class more than anyone else.
posted by skoosh at 3:52 PM on December 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


And people wonder why POC were suspicious of the dude. Some straight up "taking our jobs" bullshit.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:02 PM on December 4, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's the fact that most immigration is illegal that keeps unauthorized immigrant workers working at $2-3 per hour.

Regardless, those are moderate positions also found at Forbes and the Brookings Institution, which is Sanders' other point, as well the fact that open borders is a political boost for the right-wing, demonstrated in Europe and the US. It is also a misplaced concreteness to alter social politics and expect people to vote the same and therefore have the same laws, benefits and wages in place after the change is made. Everything could simply get far worse than now, based solely on perceptions, and in many cases, higher rents, less benefits and more job seekers during a downturn. On that note, we could blame everyone for being ignorant, but they have their own realities to suffer, and they don't see it as their local problem to solve. More to the point, they might be suspicious to see do-gooders and editorial egg-heads gambling with their future for people they don't know.
posted by Brian B. at 5:25 PM on December 4, 2018


I notice that you aren't arguing against the substance of my point, just that you think it's strategically a bad idea. However, being alt-right-lite does not necessarily lead to political gains, as the Christian Democrats and CSU recently learned in Germany (the most recent Bavarian elections in particular). What does move the needle in our favor is reframing the debate, and refusing to accept a misleading or disingenuous framing of the issues.

There's a nice op-ed from last month about Operation Libero in Switzerland and how they won four referendum battles in the last two years against the anti-immigrant, anti-EU Swiss People's Party.
How did we do that? We fought tooth and nail to defend the institutions that protect our freedom and the rule of law. We believed in our goals. And we decided to never sing the populist’s song – only our own song.
To me, it's pretty simple. There's an argument based on individual liberty – every human being should have the freedom to live where they choose, and government laws restricting immigration and discriminating against immigrants is an infringement upon that freedom. There is an argument based on compassion – people looking for a better life for themselves and their families are dying in the desert because of border fences and heightened patrols, and that is unconscionable. And there is an argument based on solidarity – the forces of racism and xenophobia are trying to divide us and set us against each other, but we won't let that happen, because we know that ultimately, we are all in this together.

We don't need to sing the racists' song to try and claw back votes. We have our own song.
posted by skoosh at 3:55 PM on December 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


To me, it's pretty simple. There's an argument based on individual liberty – every human being should have the freedom to live where they choose, and government laws restricting immigration and discriminating against immigrants is an infringement upon that freedom.

That's called the tragedy of the commons. As a counter-example, define freedom as being allowed to have anything you want. Of course, this means you can't really have it if someone else also wants it. The point is, wanting to live somewhere is usually a function of other people having already cultivated it to become a state where everyone would want to live.
posted by Brian B. at 6:10 PM on December 5, 2018


So the government of California should be able to prevent Oklahomans from moving into their state? Should the cities of New York or Chicago be allowed to deport immigrants from Louisiana or Georgia? I mean, those outsiders only want to move to L.A., Chicago, and New York because the people who already live there have cultivated those cities to be places where everyone would want to live. Are you advocating for border controls and residency checks at the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge? If not, why not?

Yes, I'm aware that such internal border controls would violate the U.S. Constitution. But the Constitution can be amended, so there's nothing really standing in the way if you could convince a decisive majority of voters and legislators to change that. So is that the world that you want? And if not, why not?
posted by skoosh at 6:26 PM on December 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Are you advocating for border controls and residency checks at the Lincoln Tunnel and George Washington Bridge? If not, why not?

No, because we have a federation of states for mutual protection and commerce, from days when it really mattered. Native-Americans might disagree with your theory though, and any nation that endured the Nazis or the Soviet Union. I'm betting Canada and Mexico prefer their sovereignty. These are cultural issues too. On that score, freedom is a human law, sovereignty is cultural, and defended borders is natural law, as in might makes right (but not really, hence the federation).
posted by Brian B. at 6:44 PM on December 5, 2018


You understand that there is a difference between immigration and invasion, right? I'm pretty sure that the Native American beef is not so much with other people living here, but with other people having forcibly displaced and disenfranchised them, not to mention being outright murdered en masse on occasion. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that despotic rule and mass murder were more offensive to the people of Eastern Europe than simply having German-speaking or Russian-speaking neighbors.

I wonder how you regard people from, say, Poland or Romania emigrating to Britain in recent years. They're all EU members, so it's all perfectly legal. Should we think of them as an invasion force, on par with the Red Army? Or as fellow human beings simply trying to find better work than is available in their old hometowns?

I am a bit baffled by your characterization of defended borders as natural law, but freedom as (merely?) "human law". As though the 49th Parallel is somehow more natural than a man being able to walk through the woods as he pleases! Do you mean to imply that natural law is more fundamental than human law, and that therefore border controls should take precedence over human freedom? This seems a strange conclusion, to say the least.
posted by skoosh at 8:43 PM on December 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


You understand that there is a difference between immigration and invasion, right?

Open borders is invasion, controlled borders is immigration. That's the easy part. It also works for other species that tend to grow out of control, such as invasive plants or animals that arrive from human travel. Freedom is another name for our mutual security and autonomy that is guaranteed by a collective band of voters who make laws and pledge support to each other. It doesn't include anyone else except by invitation, unless it spreads to allies through goodwill and commerce. It is part of material culture, and most definitely not a spirituality or a holy river or magic set of blessings that people can receive from someone who thinks it functions like a religious ritual.

I am a bit baffled by your characterization of defended borders as natural law, but freedom as (merely?) "human law".

Nature is not really a law, that's the point, or the irony as it were. It is all the power we struggle with every day at its mercy, unable to enforce.
posted by Brian B. at 6:57 AM on December 6, 2018


I believe that we might be uncovering an important divergence here. When you say "open borders is invasion," this is just not what invasion means to most people. Invasion involves armed people entering an area with the intent of imposing their own will upon the people in that area by force. Immigration involves people (almost always unarmed) entering an area with the intent of living there more or less permanently. Whether the borders of that area are controlled or not does not factor into this determination.

The United States, for example, had an unrestricted immigration policy until 1882. Millions of people from Germany, Ireland, Sweden, and elsewhere entered the United States, many of them with knives presumably. However, no one today would say that the Irish invaded the United States in the 1840s – rather, those that crossed the ocean onto these shores are said to have immigrated here, because they came to live here, not to impose their will upon the people here by force. Now, some of those people may have committed crimes after coming to the U.S., but that still does not constitute an attempt to overthrow the government, and cannot be made to justify characterizing Irish immigration into the United States as an invasion. We can illuminate certain very similar situations in the present day by comparison.

Invasive species are a whole other thing, and not a great analogy for human society, but suffice it to say that nothing is under control in nature (a default lack of management is what distinguishes nature from a garden), so it makes little sense to try to distinguish some aspect of it as "out of control"; an invasive species is not merely a non-native one that gains a foothold, but one that threatens to upset the entire ecosystem; and different people are not different species.

Nature is not really a law, that's the point, or the irony as it were. It is all the power we struggle with every day at its mercy, unable to enforce.

I can't make heads or tails of this. Why did you bring up natural law versus human law at all, if you don't believe in natural law? I assume then that you believe that the only real law is human law, but at this point, I'm not sure what you mean.

Freedom is another name for our mutual security and autonomy that is guaranteed by a collective band of voters who make laws and pledge support to each other. It doesn't include anyone else except by invitation, unless it spreads to allies through goodwill and commerce.

What you call "freedom" here is more commonly called the social contract, but freedom exists prior to society. If you imagine a situation with one person alone in the woods, that person has freedom – they can do whatever they like, without fear of reprisal. The laws and so on come into play once one or more additional people enter the scenario. Now we have a society, which necessitates a social contract. Also, that social contract extends to everyone in our scenario, whether ally, enemy, or fellow citizen – no person who interacts in any way with any person in the network is separate from society, and rules and norms govern conduct with them as well. This is obvious in our day and age – there is a single standardized passport regime, and almost no state allows its citizens to kill foreigners, to give just two examples – but even North Sentinel Island and the rest of the world have rules governing their intentionally minimal interactions with each other.

Once we realize that no human being is outside society, and that the whole of human society is governed by one overarching social contract with a lot of little side deals under its umbrella, then we can start to think about the rules, their appropriateness, their fairness, and their morality a little more clearly and sensibly.
posted by skoosh at 8:29 AM on December 6, 2018 [2 favorites]


The point is, wanting to live somewhere is usually a function of other people having already cultivated it to become a state where everyone would want to live.

And then conveniently also enacted policies which strip wealth from other places while destabilizing the government and made those other places somewhere where no one wants to live.

As for the tragedy of the commons, the population growth in this country due to reproduction is significantly higher than the population growth due to immigration, so I'm not clear why we should be concerned about resource overuse on the immigration side.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:58 AM on December 6, 2018 [1 favorite]


Once we realize that no human being is outside society, and that the whole of human society is governed by one overarching social contract with a lot of little side deals under its umbrella, then we can start to think about the rules, their appropriateness, their fairness, and their morality a little more clearly and sensibly.

The building of a pan-human society does not require immigration to achieve in a confined area, but rather emigration of those knowledgeable. This is obvious from the assumptions.

Why did you bring up natural law versus human law at all, if you don't believe in natural law?

Nor is there an actual law of the jungle, but if you want freedom, you need to maintain civilization and that falls into a category of not allowing it to disintegrate, by judicious planning. In discussing human autonomy and government the useful realms are self-decision (by rights), majority-decision (by law), tradition or religion, and nature or power. Freedom is not self-determined, nor religious or natural, but requires a majority to achieve beyond the necessary guaranteed personal rights.
posted by Brian B. at 3:00 PM on December 6, 2018


the migration trilemma
I think we should talk about a trilemma for migration, which is three things, and we can only have two out of the three. You think of the liberal democracies — what would we like as a response for large numbers of people who need to go someplace? If it was some political jurisdictions, one of the things we want is local democratic accountability for the officials in the government. The second would be equal treatment under the law. And the third is, in this jurisdiction, the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, potentially numbers that are bigger than the existing population.

Picture one of these places when there’s a million people there, but you’d like it to be able to accept another 9 million. All three of those things are things that most people would support, and you can’t have all three. So, the two we pick in most existing jurisdictions — we just don’t allow large-scale migration, and you can see some logic to that.

If you’re one of a million people, and you like the equilibrium, and you’re contemplating bringing in another nine million, and you’re committed to equal treatment under the law, the system’s going to basically be the one that all the new arrivals are going to vote for, not the ones that you like. And the new arrivals might be coming for the thing that you like, but still, collectively, they might vote for or put in place something that isn’t the one they’re seeking out.

There’s a reason why democratic systems can’t absorb huge numbers of migrants. You could violate equal treatment and say, “Okay, we’re going to let large numbers of people come in, but they’re not going to become citizens, have a different legal status.” Because of the norms that evolve in these conditions of inequality, I think that is going to prove to be a very damaging approach for both the migrants who arrive and the people in the existing society.

I don’t think violating equal treatment is a very useful option. And the Hong Kong–like solution we should consider is to say, “We’re committed to large-scale migration for a period of time. We’re going to give everybody equal treatment under the law, but we’ll make the transition to local democratic accountability when we’ve basically reached our maximum population and the migration process is over.”

This is, I think, the way to describe Hong Kong under the British. The governor there was still accountable to a democracy; it wasn’t like an autocrat. They changed periodically. Some were better than others. But it was an offshore democracy in England. People in Hong Kong were really quite happy with that system under British rule. The pressure for democracy only came when it became apparent that the British would leave, and there was a concern about, who is going to guarantee our system?

We could consider Hong Kong–like arrangements, where an existing system of government helps create the frame for a new jurisdiction. Then large numbers of people can move in. Once you get full, it basically makes the transition to local democratic control.

It’s a very unfamiliar approach, and it has features that are unattractive. But the thing to realize is, we just don’t have an answer at all if we’re facing this kind of very large-scale crisis of migration. We don’t have an answer either to the chronic problem of people who really want to leave places — and hundreds of millions want to leave places they’re currently in — nor do we have an answer to the immediate crisis. What would we do within the space of a year when tens of millions of people needed to get out of an environment that was going to descend into violence?
Rohingya survivors face a new indignity: Banishment to a half-sunken island
posted by kliuless at 6:30 PM on December 6, 2018


Brian B.: I have to admit that I find it uncanny that every successive response of yours seems to include some additional confusing or baffling assertions. Not the same ones, but new and unexpected ones every time. For instance:

The building of a pan-human society does not require immigration to achieve in a confined area, but rather emigration of those knowledgeable.

What does "emigration of those knowledgeable" mean? "Knowledgeable" of what? Are you saying that we would need to send intellectuals or engineers to every part of the globe in order to build a single society that knits everyone together? More importantly, are you denying my assertion that we already have a single pan-human society, and that we need to acknowledge that in order to properly consider the question of how to make it more just?

In discussing human autonomy and government the useful realms are self-decision (by rights), majority-decision (by law), tradition or religion, and nature or power.

These might superficially sound like nice, neat categories, but I think you're conflating several different things here, and using terms in ways that stray quite a bit from their usual meanings. "Self-decision" and [justification? or something] "by rights" are two different things, for example. Law is unquestionably distinct from majority decision-making; a cursory glance at the historical record shows that law precedes majority rule by thousands of years. I suppose you could deny that Mosaic law, Hammurabi's Code, or English common law are really law because they weren't instituted by a majority vote, but that would be a No True Scotslaw fallacy. Also, nature and power aren't remotely the same thing, so it's strange that you're putting them in the same category. Individual rights are a feature of law, which is enacted by a state that also uses power to enforce said law. The previous sentence should make sense, but I don't see how it would make sense if we think of "rights", "law", and "power" as separate modalities of the relationship between individual autonomy and collective governance in the way that you seem to propose.

Freedom is not self-determined, nor religious or natural, but requires a majority to achieve beyond the necessary guaranteed personal rights.

So for most of this sentence, it looks like you're making a quasi-Hobbesian argument that, in order to maintain some modicum of freedom for most within a society, a sovereign state must be formed. You've replaced "state" with "majority[-rule regime]" for some reason, and skipped any mention of individuals ceding their previous, state-of-nature freedom to the sovereign in exchange for security (i.e. freedom from fear of other people's violence), so that's a bit odd. However, where things really go off the rails is "beyond the necessary guaranteed personal rights." What does "freedom" in the context of a liberal state mean, other than "necessary guaranteed personal rights"? And why would "the necessary guaranteed personal rights" not require a state to achieve?
posted by skoosh at 2:03 AM on December 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Regarding Paul Romer's migration trilemma, it seems like more of a theoretical than a practical issue, since there hasn't been a single crisis that has generated 20 million refugees since the Second World War, and no refugee crisis that has pushed a number of refugees into a single country that exceeds that country's preexisting population. Not even Lebanon, where 1 in 4 residents is currently a refugee, has reached that threshold. The 9 in 10 ratio that Romer posits is simply preposterous.

Also, even the theoretical problem of maintaining the system of government desired by the preexisting population is a solved one – the solution is a naturalization process. Almost every state already has such a process in place, usually one that requires years of residency, during which newcomers acquire the habits and values of the preexisting society enough that things carry on as usual (a process that Romer acknowledges earlier in that interview). Until naturalization is complete, those immigrants don't get to vote to change the system of government. So no one's democracy is going to get overthrown in favor of sharia law or whatever anytime soon, even if we let people live where they want.
posted by skoosh at 2:34 AM on December 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The idea that immigrants just won't understand democracy or whatever is some viciously, viciously racist nonsense.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:17 AM on December 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


years of residency, during which newcomers acquire the habits and values of the preexisting society

This is all much scarier if you believe that your own culture and values are weak-ass garbage that nobody would ever accept by choice.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:18 AM on December 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


The 9 in 10 ratio that Romer posits is simply preposterous.

It's certainly not preposterous when applied to the US, not at all. I mean sure, that would require the entire population of Africa to emigrate to the US, along with the entire population of Europe, and the entire population of the rest of the Americas, and then a few hundred million people from Asia, but that's totally a thing that could happen.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:25 AM on December 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


Not the same ones, but new and unexpected ones every time. For instance:

That was a direct response to your sweeping platitude about society and rethinking the rules based on their morality. Obviously you imagine a nation of thinkers wanting to sit down to rewrite everything to entertain an open border. Bottom line here is that I haven't said anything to really change anything, merely point out how unlikely it wants or needs change, but you deem it odd when it represents current reality across the board in every nation. I was also extending Sanders' argument to point out that freedom of sovereignty is not really in doubt at any point, and anyone defending it is within their existing natural rights, without ever needing to sit down to think it over.
posted by Brian B. at 6:43 AM on December 7, 2018


Well, here's the thing: muddled thinking and unresolved contradictions abound in political discourse, especially in the strata where politicians reside, as they have to maintain good relations with a coalition of disparate constituencies each of whom have their own (often internally muddled and self-contradictory) ideas and interests. In a world where media comes at us from all directions trying to sell us on this and that political position, often with the flimsiest reasoning behind it if any, we really have to make an effort to keep our heads.

Lots of famous people and august institutions might be showing signs of horn growth and graying skin in the face of all the rhinoceroses on the airwaves today, but that doesn't mean that we need to join this particular herd. Talking through the reasoning behind our positions, and being able to explain what we really mean, helps to keep us human. I don't consider it a wasted effort.
posted by skoosh at 12:41 PM on December 7, 2018


The 9 in 10 ratio that Romer posits is simply preposterous.

it's just a way to think (theoretically) about hong kong or, say, singapore? (in the interview, he's very interested in the naturalization process...)

It's certainly not preposterous when applied to the US, not at all.

or native americans? like compared with the maori?
posted by kliuless at 7:11 AM on December 8, 2018


As I said before, deliberate armed colonization and annexation efforts are not comparable to the immigration situations that we're talking about. Invasion and immigration are not the same thing.

What do you want to say about Hong Kong and Singapore? I've not been to either place, but I can guess that they have very interesting notions of citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, and belonging that probably differ significantly from each other, the United States, and the nation-states of Europe.
posted by skoosh at 11:27 AM on December 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


just what romer says:
the Hong Kong-like solution we should consider is to say, “We’re committed to large-scale migration for a period of time. We’re going to give everybody equal treatment under the law, but we’ll make the transition to local democratic accountability when we’ve basically reached our maximum population and the migration process is over.”
how to do assimilation -- and 'open borders' -- well, or at least not terribly; the naturalization process you advocate?
posted by kliuless at 2:19 PM on December 8, 2018


It looks like Hong Kong (more precisely, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) has several visas and work permits available [PDF] for various categories of people who want to live, work, or study in Hong Kong. Apparently, there are no immigration quotas overall. (Sorry to say that as of 2015, millionaires can no longer simply buy themselves residency.) There is one program for "quality migrants" that doesn't even require a job offer. After 7 years of residency with "valid travel documents" (which I take to mean a visa/work permit), a foreign-born, non-Chinese national is eligible to become a permanent resident of Hong Kong, which in turn entitles one to register to vote in local elections. However, Hong Kong's election system is a rather complex mosaic of individual and corporate voting, so it's not as wonderful a prize as one might think.

Basically, there is no ceiling on the total number of immigrants, but there are immigration/work permit requirements, and once you've lived there long enough, you can apply for permanent resident status, and then register to vote. It's not clear how many illegal immigrants there are overall, but it looks like somewhere around 11,000 non-Chinese asylum seekers were awaiting processing of their claims in Hong Kong (a region of 7.4 million people). I haven't come across any mention of democratization in Hong Kong that mentions immigrant inflows as an issue; the tension appears to be among proponents of direct democracy, those who oppose changes to the status quo, and the central government in Beijing. I don't know where Romer is getting this idea that postponing democratization until immigration stops and the city is "full" is a Hong Kong policy. If you can point me to a supporting source for that assertion, that would be helpful.

One final thing: I wouldn't say that assimilation and naturalization are the same thing, or that assimilation, in the way that term is usually used, is what I'd necessarily want. Really, all that is necessary here in order to avoid Romer's newcomers-outvoting-natives-to-overthrow-the-government scenario is for the newcomers to understand and accept the existing fundamental political regime. Acquisition of the predominant language will probably happen too, but even if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. Several democratic countries function well enough even with large swaths of the populace unable to speak the majority language. In India, South Africa, and Pakistan, there is no majority first language, so most people speak one or both lingua francas in addition to their native language. Yes, there are two lingua francas in each of those three countries. Somehow, life goes on. Assimilation, in the sense of language or culture, is not necessary.
posted by skoosh at 4:31 PM on December 8, 2018 [2 favorites]


"the existing fundamental political regime" is what concerns romer -- at least functional ones, which determines migrations' flows -- so whether 'naturalization' or 'assimilation', the rules and (cultural) 'inside of the head' norms those imply, and their interactions, is what he's interested in, which is what i find interesting, too :P

so, for example, consider!
In the 1970s, the same sorts of cultural pessimists thought that Hong Kong would always be corrupt. The actual experience there demonstrates just how wrong they were. Feasible policies can quickly change a culture of corruption.

As in many places, the responsibility for fighting official corruption in Hong Kong once rested with a special branch within the police force that was conveniently ineffective. In 1974, the governor general of Hong Kong vested anti-corruption responsibilities in a new elite ministry, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). The commission was directly responsible to the governor general, who was himself an appointed rather than an elected official.

The governor general in Hong Kong was not an authoritarian leader. He answered to the democratically elected British prime minister but his position did not depend on local political contests. As a result, neither the governor general nor the commissioners that answered to him had any interest in using the substantial powers of the commission for narrow political gain. They could be trusted with strong powers because they were held accountable to an offshore democracy that wanted Hong Kong to thrive.

Unsurprisingly, the ICAC's efforts met with considerable resistance from the police. The governor general was eventually forced to grant amnesty for past crimes after the police went on strike and threatened violence. Though amnesty was viewed as a setback at the time, it meant that the commission could use all of its resources to prosecute fresh cases involving corrupt police officers and officials. This made it a much better deterrent against continued corruption.

Along with the formal prosecutions, the ICAC used education to change Hong Kong's social norms regarding corruption. It organised a broad campaign, adding anti-corruption classes to the public school curriculum and creating anti-corruption television programmes. It published surveys that tracked changes in the amount of corruption over time. The commission also reviewed the rules of all ministries and modified them to reduce opportunities for corruption (Manion 2004).

So much for Hong Kong's intractable culture of corruption. According to the surveys, the frequency of requests for bribes fell very quickly. Today Hong Kong is among the least corrupt places in the world, ahead of Japan, the UK, and the US.
I don't know where Romer is getting this idea that postponing democratization until immigration stops and the city is "full" is a Hong Kong policy.

i'm guessing he's referring to the failed 'Young Plan'?
posted by kliuless at 8:32 PM on December 8, 2018


Searching for New Atlantis in China [1,2,3]
John James Cowperthwaite was born in Scotland in 1915, but spent most of his life as the financial secretary in Hong Kong for the British government, laying the foundations for what became its economic miracle. He is one of the 20th century's unknown heroes, on par with Norman Borlaug of the Green Revolution in agriculture. Having lifted tens of millions out of poverty, his ideas continue to ripple outward. And he is the only reason no official data on Hong Kong's economy was ever compiled from 1961 to 1971. Cowperthwaite batted away request after request. As he explained it to economist Milton Friedman, he was convinced that "once the data was published there would be pressure to use them for government intervention in the economy."

Intervening in the economy was almost always a no-no under Cowperthwaite's watch. He called his economic philosophy "positive non-interventionism," which was essentially Adam Smith with a twist. The market would generate wealth—letting entrepreneurs and capital free to discover new goods and services—but public funds could be spent on housing and education, provided it was within the bounds of low taxes. From the end of the Second World War to the mid-1970s, the government only required modest deficit spending twice. It was the exact opposite of the economic policies the United Kingdom pursued during the same time period and it is the opposite of what the U.S. pursues now. The results were astonishing. When Cowperthwaite arrived in Hong Kong in 1945, the average income per resident was 30 percent less than that of the average in Britain, its colonial ruler. Today, it is Britain that is the poorer; income per capita is 40 percent greater in Hong Kong.

When Lee Kuan Yew came to power in Singapore, he took the Hong Kong-Cowperthwaite playbook and put it in play with some local adaptations and deviations. Singapore took off. Now we have Crazy Rich Asians.

So when the reformers came to power in China after Mao's death in 1976, they decided to try an experiment in economic development. They had been to Hong Kong and Singapore and had seen cities grow out of bare rock in a single generation. If Cowperthwaite's ideas were that powerful, then they should work on the mainland, too. They wanted to "appropriate capitalism for the good of socialism," as the National People's Congress put it in their legislation. The reformers chose a city to rezone under new rules—light on regulation, light on taxes. It would be a confined laboratory to protect the rest of China. They called it a "special economic zone" but they might as well have called it a Cowperthwaite zone. That city was Shenzhen.
posted by kliuless at 11:22 PM on December 8, 2018


The Law of Nations, Sovereign Power Over Immigration, and Asylum: It's Not As Clear As It Seems - "The two most cited international law scholars in the above Supreme Court decisions, supporting Congress's unlimited power to restrict the movement of people across borders, are Emer de Vattel and Samuel von Pufendorf. A recent article in the European Journal of International Law by Vincent Chetail shows just how selectively the Supreme Court cited those two scholars."
Chetail’s paper begins with the work of Francisco de Vitoria (1480-1546), who is frequently portrayed as the founder of international law (also known as the law of nations). He argued that the free movement of persons is a cardinal feature of international law through the right of communication, meaning that the right of humans to communicate with each other implies that they also have the right to move in order to communicate...

Chetail then moves on to discuss the work of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), who endorsed Vitoria’s description of international law and refined it further by arguing that individuals have a right to leave their own country and to enter and remain in another...
posted by kliuless at 6:03 AM on December 11, 2018 [1 favorite]


The United Nations Migration Compact - In Context - "The ten countries that dropped out of the Global Migration Compact show that many governments in the world are turning against legal immigration in symbolic ways. Their individual national policies have likely shifted in a more restrictive direction as well. However, countries in the world had much more open immigration policies in 2015 than in 1996. Although the current global trend is worrying, it would be very difficult to roll back all the global gains over the last several decades."

'voters broadly were 59 percent less likely to back Republicans after hearing from them on immigration' - "Note that the GOP failed to pass any big changes to the immigration system before the Dems took the House. No repeal of family-based immigration. No attack on birthright citizenship. America dodged a bullet. But if Trump wins big enough in 2020 for the GOP to take back the House, I have a feeling we won't be so lucky a second time."
posted by kliuless at 2:34 AM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


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