Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb and this is a clear example of exactly why. Increasingly the digital world -is- the world and arbitrary geographical boundaries are causing nothing but problems. We are taking the ideas of physical borders and passports and, badly, applying that broken idea to a virtual space with typical results. It blows me away that the real problem with strictly enforced borders, virtual or physical, is that they almost always are used to enforce political ideology and rarely do they actually afford protection in any other way. Strict boarders should be looked at highly skeptically and always viewed as a temporary solution that should be solved diplomatically and/or socially. We don't need things like this going from city to city, county to county, state to state but wherever we see an entity that puts a strict boarder in place, virtual or physical, we suddenly see conflict and political games. There are real issues to consider here but the UK is definitely wrong, and creating more long term problems, with this 'solution'.
There's at least 2 billion people in the world that would move to North America and Europe in the blink of an eye if all the borders were opened! Can your countries support all of them without collapsing your systems?
People can fly in 'easily' right now and just not fly out. We used to be able to walk across boarders with nothing needed or, at most, a drivers license and '2 billion people' didn't suddenly show up. This 'argument' that 2b people will suddenly come in has been tested and proven wrong. It is hard to move, especially when impoverished. It is hard to leave the things you know, even when you have a good plan and resources set up in the new country. Universally, the immigrants I have met are hard workers and make things better but sentiments like this one cheapen the struggles they have overcome to get here. The stats back this up with lower crime rates from immigrants and the economic boon they bring to the industries they dominate. It really isn't OK to spout '2b people will suddenly show up'. I flat out deny your premise and won't take your follow-up bait of 'can you survive if..'. We have survived and thrived with more open borders. It is only now that we are becoming weak and fearful because of tighter borders.
With the invention of steam ships, railways, aeroplanes and the automobile; travel became almost trivial. In conjunction with those inventions, states also became a lot more involved in people's lives; culminating in large welfare states. 3-4 centuries ago, a state did not care much about who lived in in their territory; these days, they are likely to provide them benefits, and have certain obligations according to international treaties about how to treat people within their own borders. These state operations, along with obligations, makes states care a great deal about who enters or leave their territory.
> Let's start with a bang. Passports and strictly enforced borders are dumb
This.
It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs.
And that's how it was for like 99% of the time that humans have existed.
When did keeping people locked inside "borders" even become a thing? I'm guessing post World War 1? Looking up history on Wikipedia says documents for "citizenship" existed maybe as far back as Ancient Egypt but there doesn't seem to be anything that forced people to remain within the nation of their birth.
The West literally bombed Japan and China to open their borders for "tRaDe" then pushed for strict borders after the world's worst wars that they started.
> It's weird how it's not considered a basic human right to be able travel to where you want, and even live where you want as long as you can support yourself and comply with the local laws and customs
The "as long as you can" is exactly the reason. There is no way to ensure the travelers or migrants can (and want) to do that, if you don't have a border.
Really? If I go to another country and commit a crime they can't enforce their laws on me unless they stop me at the border? I don't see how stopping me at the border stops me from committing a crime when I get past it or stops the country from enforcing their laws when I am caught. What did the border magically do to change enforcement?
> The West literally bombed Japan and China to open their borders for "tRaDe" then pushed for strict borders after the world's worst wars that they started.
Eh, that literally is doing a lot of work. Where's evidence to this claim? And at what point did we bomb… checks notes, China?
Also keep in mind that “for like 99% of the time” people didn't move that much. People were very linked to their source of food, community, and what brought them stability. There isn't a lot of examples of 17-century travel influencers going around the world looking for The Best Places For Foodies.
Countries have tough challenges to contend with. Borders are arbitrary, yes, but we can't hand-wave them away now. What we can do is work together at the supra-national level.
