Shouldn’t that be an easy question to answer though?
If a supermajority left-wing government changed immigration law to free and unrestricted passage across borders, making anyone who sets foot on US soil is legally a resident if they wish and further entitled to a pathway citizenship if they want it, then that would be the law and must be followed.
Anyone would still be free to run their campaign on changing immigration law back, or to something else. Economic and societal performance under that hypothetical law change would determine if a supermajority of “change immigration law to XYZ” then gets elected to do that.
There is always a possibility that putting no or too few limits on immigration causes irreversible damage to a country before course correction can happen, but the same is true for extreme polarization and unresolvable political divide.
In my older age I’m completely in favor of an entirely borderless world. I know that’s unrealistic in our lifetimes but I understand a lot more now about how much of our actual division and fear of “flooding people” in one direction or another is entirely socially constructed and cemented by capitalism, so while I know that we currently live in a world of borders, my firm belief is that people should be free go where they want, and governments need to learn to respond. Got too many people flooding in from country X? Lets go see what’s happening in country X that’s making people leave and fix the situation. The only time you should look at your neighbor’s plate is to make sure they have enough.
When you say that you don’t want “too many” people from other places, you’re saying that your own value as a person is higher than theirs, that your culture is more important, that you’re too scared to adapt to change that will happen anyway. And yeah, this has become policy now so here we are.
I am less and less compromising on this attitude too, because in my decades, every time we cede too much ground to conservatism, their fear and anxiety towards change turns the compromise into walls and barbed wire all over again.
I am not going to expect us to get that world overnight, but I will always advocate for fewer immigration controls and greater international support and partnerships, even if we go back to how it was in whatever years when the markets were flourishing and you could enter a country with a smile and a nod, I still will push for us to tear down barriers between building much larger communities.
So yeah, we will have borders and checks and security and all that lip service to logically unnecessary systems from thousands of years, but I think we need to keep the end-goal of not needing it as our collective, shared value.
Shouldn’t that be an easy question to answer though?
If a supermajority left-wing government changed immigration law to free and unrestricted passage across borders, making anyone who sets foot on US soil is legally a resident if they wish and further entitled to a pathway citizenship if they want it, then that would be the law and must be followed.
Anyone would still be free to run their campaign on changing immigration law back, or to something else. Economic and societal performance under that hypothetical law change would determine if a supermajority of “change immigration law to XYZ” then gets elected to do that.
There is always a possibility that putting no or too few limits on immigration causes irreversible damage to a country before course correction can happen, but the same is true for extreme polarization and unresolvable political divide.
I used to have that perspective too.
In my older age I’m completely in favor of an entirely borderless world. I know that’s unrealistic in our lifetimes but I understand a lot more now about how much of our actual division and fear of “flooding people” in one direction or another is entirely socially constructed and cemented by capitalism, so while I know that we currently live in a world of borders, my firm belief is that people should be free go where they want, and governments need to learn to respond. Got too many people flooding in from country X? Lets go see what’s happening in country X that’s making people leave and fix the situation. The only time you should look at your neighbor’s plate is to make sure they have enough.
When you say that you don’t want “too many” people from other places, you’re saying that your own value as a person is higher than theirs, that your culture is more important, that you’re too scared to adapt to change that will happen anyway. And yeah, this has become policy now so here we are.
I am less and less compromising on this attitude too, because in my decades, every time we cede too much ground to conservatism, their fear and anxiety towards change turns the compromise into walls and barbed wire all over again.
I am not going to expect us to get that world overnight, but I will always advocate for fewer immigration controls and greater international support and partnerships, even if we go back to how it was in whatever years when the markets were flourishing and you could enter a country with a smile and a nod, I still will push for us to tear down barriers between building much larger communities.
So yeah, we will have borders and checks and security and all that lip service to logically unnecessary systems from thousands of years, but I think we need to keep the end-goal of not needing it as our collective, shared value.